Hello to all our readers. Since you’re accustomed to seeing us post 3-4 times per week and we have yet to post anything at all for this week, we wanted to give you an update. We truly love engaging with you at every possible opportunity and hope to be posting again soon. The past several days have been especially hectic with Lindsey recovering from a serious tooth infection and Sarah experiencing another flare of Ménière’s symptoms. It has done us good to take some extra time to attend to these health issues as well as other life circumstances that have needed extra attention. It can be difficult to accept that in certain moments, God asks us not to do but instead to rest. And that’s where we are this week. Come Monday, we hope to be back to engaging in interesting dialogue with all of you who challenge us to live more fully into our callings. May God bless you and yours today and always.
This week has been an absolute whirlwind of activity in our house. We got back from the GCN conference in Portland and jumped straightaway back into our normal everyday lives. That does presuppose, of course, that our lives could ever be described as normal.
We published our first post on this blog exactly a year ago. We never thought that Vulnerability Opens the Door to Intimacy would create a space for hundreds of people to join us in conversations about being LGBT, being celibate, and being Christians. It was a little weird to go to GCN conference to meet our readers…. Since when did we become a big deal? And really, how could this space at A Queer Calling be worthy of a shoutout in a keynote address? We started the blog because a handful of people approached us after the “Celibacy Involves Family” workshop we presented in Chicago. They wanted to hear our story. Because Lindsey had recently lost a job, we had a lot of time and wanted something to do. So we wrote. And we wrote some more. And we wrote so much that some of you said, “Gah! You’re publishing too much too fast! Please slow down!” Writing this blog has been about saying things we think ought to be said, sharing our lives with our readers such that we’re real people, and finding balance points so as to have a different sort of conversation about LGBT people in the Church.
Along the way, we’ve come to realize it’s important to tell you more about who we are and what life looks like for us away from the cliff face of sexuality and faith. As much as we are celibate LGBT Christians, our vocation calls us to be more. We’re teachers, friends, confidants, and earnest advocates. We strive to be transparent, at least as much as we can. Transparency is hard. It’s not much fun to be vulnerable in an extremely public forum. But we’re so grateful for how all of our readers and commenters have been here for us along the way. It was a sacred gift to meet some of you in Portland.
In Portland, we took another series of first steps: Sarah exhibited and sold art. We were amazed by how people at the GCN conference received Art Coming Out the Ears. And a few of them told us that we should put Sarah’s work up on the internet. We’ve spent the last few nights hard at work to follow up. It’s a distinct pleasure to unveil Art Coming Out the Ears: Artistic Explorations of Faith, Identity, and Life with Ménière’s Disease. We’d encourage you to go have a look, and if you’re so inspired, we’d love to send you print or some greeting cards that features images of Sarah’s original art. If money’s an issue for you, please avail yourself of code AQCFAMILY at the Etsy store to save 10% on all purchases.
Thank you for our first year. We look forward to continuing this journey with you. May God shower you with abundant blessings.
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We have been having a phenomenaltime at the Gay Christian Network conference in Portland. We relish in the time we get to spend with people here. We’d love to connect with you today in one form or another.
With over 1300 attendees, spotty internet access and temperamental cell phones, it’s been hard for us to finalize plans with people at the last minute. If we’ve missed your tweet, text, call, email or owl, please accept our apologies. We wanted to let you know how you could find us.
Visit Art Coming Out the Ears in the exhibit hall! Sarah is selling fantastic art prints. We have full-size prints, greeting cards, and postcards. The exhibit hall opens at 800. The best times to catch us in the exhibit hall are before the general session and during lunch. If you miss us in the exhibit hall or can’t join us in Portland, know Sarah’s art is also available on Etsy. Use coupon code GCNCONF to save 15% on Etsy orders over $30. The coupon code will be available for one week after the close of conference.
Attend our Celibacy in the Church workshop during workshop Session C in room C121. Our primary goal in our workshop is to help people living and discerning celibacy access quality pastoral care. Our workshop is not a theological apologetic, an attempt to convince you that you are called to celibacy, or the final word on celibacy in the church. If you want to follow along with the conversation, look for the #AQC hashtag on Twitter. We’ll be hanging out afterward to talk with folks who want to talk with us.
If you’re looking for some concrete ways to bless us today, please consider praying for us. We think it’s so important to be able to have different kinds of conversation about celibacy in the church. Sarah has also had an incredibly hard time hearing while we’ve been here. We’d love to have people fluent in ASL who can interpret our workshop. We would also appreciate some help staffing our booth in the exhibit hall, especially at 300 today.
Thank you so much for all you do to support us! If you’re new to our site, please be sure to read our comment policy before jumping into conversation with us.
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.
This year I have found myself thinking a lot about why we observe Christmas. So much in the world feels terribly wrong, and it’s hard to see God at work in any of it. I marked much of Advent hoping to see what would happen to Sarah’s vertigo after Sarah had ear surgery. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a location where one could feel more helpless than waiting for a loved one to come out of surgery. I found myself constantly reflecting that Sarah’s surgeon is an expert in the field who knows exactly what to expect and what to do as different things arise. Trying to distract myself wasn’t the most effective, and I found myself keeping a prayerful vigil throughout the procedure.
A lot was wrong on that particular Advent day. Sarah was in surgery. A friend’s Christian parents had given him a week’s notice that he was no longer welcome in their home. These parents had reasoned that it was inappropriate for Christians to shelter a person who “identified” as gay. Ferguson protesters decried police brutality while simultaneously seeking some recourse for the family of Michael Brown. I found myself dealing with all sorts of crazy emotions while looking at the sea of humanity gathered in that hospital waiting room. Many times, I couldn’t help but think, “Stop the world! I’d like to get off!”
Enter Christmas.
I think there’s a big temptation to look at Christmas as the day everything changed. Christmas is supposed to be the day where the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. Christmas is supposed to be the day where we experience Christ as Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, and Prince of Peace. But, still Christmas remains amid some rather incredible darkness. Christ was born, yet Herod still ordered the slaughter of the innocents. Christ was born, yet Joseph still lead his family into hiding.
In the microcosm of my own world, Christmas arrived this year with Sarah enduring more vertigo attacks, the two of us beginning the difficult process of seeking a new local church home, and a friend getting a call to report immediately to a hospital for further medical testing. I have watched as others have lost jobs, homes, and loved ones. I continue to be more aware than ever that the American justice system needs serious reform. There are structural levels of injustice in society that manifest in all sorts of -isms such as racism, ableism, and classism. The world is broken.
Isn’t it supposed to be Christmas?
As a Christian, I find myself hoping and longing for the day when everything is truly set right again. I want to see that day when tears, death, crying, pain, and illness pass away. After all, has it not been proclaimed that we should “behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away”? I can’t help but notice that I’m longing for the Second Coming of Christ even as I remember his first coming.
Until the Second Coming, I note that the only thing I can do is opt into remaining present. Being present can be exceptionally mundane. I didn’t expect to have a Christmas Day full of doing laundry while waiting for Sarah’s vertigo to subside. I don’t think anyone expects spending the Christmas season by keeping vigil over a dying loved one or visiting gravesides. I can’t imagine experiencing the Christmas season huddling with my friends and family in a war zone. There are many ministries of presence.
Christmas challenges us to value presence. As a baby lying in a manger, Christ could do very little to “fix” the world. He had made deliberate choices to empty himself of divine power. He became one of us to proclaim, “God is with us.” As an engineer, I find that admitting there’s very little I can do to “fix” the world is hard for me. I’d love to make Sarah’s vertigo disappear, but I know that’s not within my skill set. My skills look even more paltry against the larger problems plaguing people around the world. Yet, this Christmas I’m seeing that maybe there’s a kind of power present in just saying, “I am with you.”
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
Last night, Washington Postpublished an article on celibate gay Christians that includes the two of us. As a result, we’ve seen a number of new readers coming our way. Welcome! If you’re just getting started with our blog, you might want to check out the following posts first:
We would also like to clarify that in the article itself, there is an unfortunate typo in Sarah’s quote. We felt the need to address this because a number of comments on the article, on Facebook, and in other places have misinterpreted the comment due to the typo. Sarah’s correct quote is as follows (emphasis ours):
“It’s not that we don’t have moral convictions of our own, but we are tired of that conversation. We really wish people could look past the black and white thinking,” Sarah said. “But since same-sex relationships are being talked about more openly, there’s more space to talk about celibacy — this is the ideal time to be having this conversation.”
Because the original article uses the word “thing” where “thinking” should be, we’ve seen it suggested that 1) we are an interracial couple, or 2) Sarah was being dismissive of the existence of racial discrimination in the United States and the Michael Brown and Eric Garner protests, or 3) that our “true agenda” is to convince churches that issues of sexual morality should be approached with a whatever-floats-your-boat attitude.
To address each of these individually:
1) We are not an interracial couple. Both of us are white.
2) Both of us recognize the importance of the peaceful protest movements that have resulted from recent high profile cases of police killing unarmed black people. We support these movements vocally and would be participating in them more actively if Sarah’s health was not in such an unpredictable state. We’ve been using our Twitter account to raise awareness of these issues.
3) The black and white thinking Sarah was referring to has nothing to do with churches changing their teachings. To put things into a bit more context, our experience shows that every time gay celibacy is discussed, people are more interested in discussing the yes or no question, “Is gay sex a sin?” That question doesn’t interest us. Celibacy as a vocation cannot be reduced to avoidance of sex, and it’s incorrect to suggest that choosing celibacy is necessarily a repression of sexual desire. That’s the black and white thinking Sarah was referencing.
These things clarified, the article is great. Check it out by clicking the link in the first sentence of this post.
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.
