Happy Saturday to all of our readers. We hope everyone has had a joyous and stress-free week, at least as much as possible in this fast-paced world of ours.

This week, we have an important announcement: we discovered yesterday that our Contact Us and Ask Us! forms had some technical issues. The problem has been fixed now and the forms have been tested and re-tested multiple times, so everything should be fine if you want to reach us. But if you’ve tried to contact us within the past few weeks and haven’t received a response, it’s likely that we never got your email. We’re now caught up on all email, and we would like to apologize to any readers who have been affected by this issue. If your message to us got lost in cyberspace, feel free to send it along again and we will do our best to offer a timely response.

This week, we are not posting a new “Saturday Symposium” question. Instead, we are going to ask our question from last week once again. We’re hoping to write on that topic this coming week, and since we’ve had technical difficulties we would like to give another opportunity for more readers to respond to the question.

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, we are doing some research for two topics we would like to write about within the next couple of weeks. Readers, you come to us from a wide range of life experiences and Christian traditions. We’re interested in knowing your thoughts on: 1) How can people holding a traditional sexual ethic be more supportive of celibate LGBT Christians? 2) How can people holding a modern, liberal sexual ethic be more supportive of celibate LGBT Christians?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

It’s Saturday again! Where did the time go? Apologies for not having this posted earlier today. We’ve both been ill this week with a stomach virus, and we’re still not back to 100% quite yet. That means we still haven’t totally caught up on email yet, but we will!

Now, for our new “Saturday Symposium” question…

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, we are doing some research for two topics we would like to write about within the next couple of weeks. Readers, you come to us from a wide range of life experiences and Christian traditions. We’re interested in knowing your thoughts on: 1) How can people holding a traditional sexual ethic be more supportive of celibate LGBT Christians? 2) How can people holding a modern, liberal sexual ethic be more supportive of celibate LGBT Christians?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Good morning, and happy weekend! We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this week. We’ve certainly enjoyed our interactions with readers. This week, we’re particularly backlogged with email from the past 3 weeks, so please bear with us as we try to respond to everyone. If you’ve contacted us, we will get back to you…it may just take some time.

Recently, Sarah was asked to write a short guest post on body positivity for Nate Craddock’s blog, In the Optative. Nate published that on Monday. You can check it out here: “It’s Not Just ‘I’m Beautiful.'”

And with that, we’re ready for a new “Saturday Symposium” question…

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, we published a post on how we’ve seen positive spiritual and personal growth as a result of being in relationship with one another. Lindsey also reflected on ways to cultivate a celibate vocation actively, and that post included discussion of close, emotionally intimate relationships with people other than Sarah. This week, we ask: have you ever had a close, emotionally intimate (but not necessarily romantic) relationship with another person where “friend” didn’t quite seem the most accurate label? How did this relationship teach you about meaningful relationships? What made it so meaningful?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Hello, Readers. Thanks for another awesome week of discussion and email feedback. The points you’ve raised this week have given us many new ideas for posts. We would like to remind you that if you have a specific idea for a topic you would like to see us address, you can send that through our Ask Us! form. We hope the weather is nice where you are–we are eager for springtime!

It’s time now for a new “Saturday Symposium” question.

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, Lindsey offered a reflection on The Language Police. We also released a post that discussed how married people define marriage and gave one reason (of many) why we do not conceive of our relationship as a marriage. Both of these posts touched on the issue of language: how people describe themselves and how we use language to describe other people, even if that language isn’t their preferred set of words. We ask our readers: has there ever been a time when you have felt that certain words, terms, or language in general has been forced upon you by others? What was your reaction to this? What do you think is the best way to respond when other people try to assign language to you that doesn’t feel appropriate for your circumstances?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.