Category Archives: Vocation

The Hardest Question

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A reflection by Lindsey

We’ve been at this blog for a while, and a lot of people send us questions. I’m a person who freezes when faced with an uncomfortable question as much as I want to be a person who lives out a vocation categorized by radical hospitality and vulnerability. I believe that every person is invited into a vocation of manifesting God’s kingdom in the world. As an Orthodox Christian, I rejoice to be a part of a church where I can see people from seemingly every tribe, tongue, and nation coming together during weekly liturgies. I am amazed during services like Agape Vespers and Pentecost when people proclaim the Gospel in their native languages. I love how the Orthodox Church maintains that there is only one liturgy where sometimes I’ve seen four generations of people approaching the chalice together. There is something inspiring and amazing about watching an infant carried to the cup in the arms of his or her great-grandparent. In the Orthodox Church, I’ve seen arguably the clearest picture of what it means to be united into one faith. I love the Orthodox tradition, and I’ve come to rejoice in being a child of the Church. However, even standing in full appreciation of everything I’ve learned as an Orthodox Christian, one question that we get frequently as we blog stops me in my tracks.

How has your Christian tradition supported and encouraged you as you live out your vocation?

I’ve avoided answering this question for quite some time because, when I answer it honestly, the answer is “We haven’t received much support when it comes to living out our vocation.”

Like Sarah, I’m a convert to Orthodoxy. My journey to Orthodoxy started in 2007. By that point, I had already discerned that I am not called to biological parenting so I was eagerly exploring celibate ways of life. Additionally, I also knew that I was somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum regarding how I experienced my sexuality and gender identity. Somewhat ironically, my first serious invitation to explore the Orthodox tradition came from a person I met through the Gay Christian Network. I wasn’t a stranger to the challenges associated with being a LGBTQ Christian, and I investigated how the Orthodox tradition approached walking with LGBTQ folks. The resources were incredibly scant. One could argue that the most thorough discussion on the topic is the late Fr. Thomas Hopko’s book Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections. All along the way, I received assurance that the Orthodox Church approached these matters pastorally.

Pastorally can be a tricky word in the Orthodox tradition. In its ideal form, pastoral matters are worked out by talking with a priest you consider your spiritual father who knows you and your situation intimately well. Additionally, it is hard to experience pastoral care before one is received fully into the tradition because receiving pastoral care is connected to participating in the sacraments. In the Orthodox Church as found in the United States, it is common to discuss pastoral matters of spiritual direction in the context of sacramental confession. While the structure has definite perks, it also comes with a serious drawback that one’s priest is already thinking in terms of sin and repentance when approached with questions about vocation. One can’t assume that one’s local parish priest will be able to serve as a good confessor, even for rather routine discussions of sin and repentance. Many Orthodox Christians have shared with me about their challenges of finding a good confessor. It’s not terribly uncommon to drive an hour or more to meet with one’s confessor. Furthermore, a parish priest might not be the best person to talk with about the particulars of one’s vocation. Through a series of fits and starts, many priests started to recommend that I talk with monastics about how to live a celibate life.

I love meeting monastics. It can be amazing to witness the diversity of monastic life. I’ve had the privilege of meeting monastics living in three countries–the United States, the United Kingdom, and Romania. I’ve met monastics living in small communities of five to twelve monastics, in large communities of as many as 500 monastics, in sketes where two monastics live together, and living alone while attached to a parish. Over the years, my heart has done backflips of joy as I’ve seen yet another celibate way of living out faith. I’ve devoured works like Letters to a Beginner by Abbess Thaisia, Encounter by Metropolitian Anthony Bloom, and collected essays by Mother Maria of Paris. I have been inspired by monastics, living and reposed. I want to see celibate ways of life flourish as I believe the Church needs both married and celibate vocations to thrive.

The challenge is finding support to live out a celibate vocation in an American context dedicated to defending marriage. I’d go so far to say that marriage is not the problem but that homophobia and concerns about keeping up appearances are. The dominant reaction I have experienced in trying to explore what celibacy looks like in my life has been cautioning about sin. I’ve been consistently discouraged from using LGBTQ language even in the context of private conversations with people I trust. I have been encouraged to avoid cultivating close relationships lest I cause scandal. In a word, these reactions are confusing. I’m not talking about skete monasticism in an effort to excuse sin. I’m not reading monastic writers because I want to avoid repentance. I am looking at models of living a celibate life because I know I am called to a celibate vocation. I will gladly sit down with anyone who wants to read through an Orthodox marriage service. I can explain why it’s absolutely beautiful while at the same time articulating why I know it does not describe a kind of life that I’m called to. Chances are excellent I’d feel the same way about reading an ordination service. I would imagine that the ordination service is an incredible articulation of what it means to be a priest which contains many pointers as to why I, personally, would make a terrible priest. Defending ordination and marriage does little to help me discern what God would have me to in order to live my life faithfully.

I would love to see serious conversation in the Orthodox tradition, and in other Christian traditions, about what celibate vocations can and do look like. I would love to have retreats and books dedicated to meaningful celibacy. I cannot begin to tell you what it would mean for me, personally, to be able to commit to my celibate vocation in the context of witnesses gathered in a parish community. At the same time, I sit at the uneasy intersection of knowing that time has not come yet. It is the time of the pastoral. I long for the day when recognizing that situations need to be treated pastorally comes with widespread awareness of the need for both humility and compassion.

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.

A week after Obergefell vs Hodges, and I think I am still breathing

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A reflection by Lindsey

Hello readers. My apologies for what seems like radio silence. When I am overwhelmed, my instincts are to hide, curl into a ball, and hope things resolve themselves quickly. Sarah and I were already awaiting Sarah’s surgery date with considerable anticipation. We’re accustomed to smiling, staying strong, and doing our best in the face of stressful situations. By God’s grace, we’ve managed to keep our feet and our sense of humor through it all. It hasn’t been easy, and there are times where it has definitely been hard.

The past week has been arguably one of the hardest to navigate in the three years that we have known each other. The only other week that even comes close was when I suddenly and unexpectedly lost my job two days after Christmas 2013. However, after I lost my job, I experienced my friends and my family rallying around me and Sarah to help us strategize and regroup. Having a supportive community makes a world of difference when you are trying to remind yourself, “Everything is going to be okay. Breathe. Everything will work out. Breathe. You still have options. Breathe. There is a way forward. Breathe. You can do it. Breathe.”

This past week has brought a flurry of official pronouncements. I have been drawn, seemingly like a moth to a light, to reading every statement that is likely to provide some insight as to how clergy within my Christian tradition see the question of pastoring LGBT people in the aftermath of last week’s decision. It is simply remarkable how many statements fail to consider the question, “What should we say to congregants who are LGBT who desire to live their lives in harmony with this Christian tradition’s teachings?” I have lost count of the number of LGBT Christian friends who have approached me to parse the implications of their churches’ reaction to Friday’s ruling. Many statements contain directives that all people who enter into civil same-sex marriages ought to come under church discipline without any hint of an exception.

Did I mention that in ten days I will be keeping vigil in a hospital’s waiting room as Sarah undergoes surgery?

If you were to ask me to name my top fear, I would tell you that I am most afraid of Sarah losing health care access. Currently, Sarah’s health care access rests entirely on my employer extending coverage to domestic partners. We first opened the conversation about protecting ourselves legally over 20 months ago. We’ve been encouraged to grant one another durable power of attorney and write our wills naming each other as beneficiaries. It’s hard to believe that a document one can create using free internet templates would be the answer to our legal worries. If it were truly that easy for the two of us to protect ourselves legally, please tell me why I have never seen a conservative Christian discussing how granting durable power of attorney and keeping one’s will up to date provides adequate legal redress. Additionally, I cannot escape the observation that accessing health insurance in the United States seems to be contingent on where you work and to whom you are married even after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are terrified that Friday’s decision will mark the eventual end of domestic partner benefits, a fear that appears to have merit. One analysis suggests that unmarried partners comprise over 7 million American households. That analysis helps me feel just a bit less alone.

When I’ve shared my fears and anxieties with friends over the past week, I’ve encountered a range of reactions. The vast majority of people ask me why we haven’t already entered into a civil marriage. A handful of people suggest that no one would ever have to know if we contracted a civil marriage for legal purposes and certainly leaders in our tradition couldn’t possibly be thinking about someone in my situation when they authored their public statements. Some people shrug off my concern by reminding me that being a Christian is costly and that I’m not being asked to do anything unreasonable.

I have lost track of the number of times I’ve wanted to throw something in the past week.

Like Sarah, I can rejoice with my friends who have been rejoicing that they no longer need to worry about whether they will have their relationships legally recognized. I know couples who have made legal arrangements in upwards of four states in an attempt to care for each other. I had heard numerous personal stories of people driving around with every legal document imaginable in their glove compartments in an effort to ensure hospital visitation rights. Trying to sort my own affairs relative to my relationship with Sarah gives me deep and profound empathy for every LGBT person who has asked the question, “If and when the time comes, will this legal document carry any weight?” In the past week, at least 3 friends have posted pictures of their freshly procured marriage licenses online complete with extended discussions of why they are so glad they finally can access these pieces of paper in their home states. For them, this is the document that legally permits them to care for one another and alleviates any anxiety. I can only imagine what that feeling must feel like. I know I would be rejoicing if Sarah and I managed to figure out what we needed to do in order to ensure that we could care for each other even if calamity hits.

But, that rejoicing does not negate the fact that both Sarah and I have spent the better part of two years discerning what a celibate partnership looks like for us. We have done our best to live our lives as transparently as possible with our priests while also devoting considerable energy towards writing about celibacy and being LGBT in the Church. I’ve personally spent over ten years asking Christ to illumine my own vocation, striving to cultivate compassion and grace for every person I’ve met along the way. I earnestly believed that others were trying to do the same. Unfortunately, in the past week, it seems like any compassion or grace that others might have previously shown me as evaporated. Where is the compassion when conservative straight Christian friends tell me that it’s entirely reasonable for bishops to tell me that I must choose between sacramental care in my Christian tradition and doing what I can do to ensure that Sarah has continuing health care coverage? Where is the grace when my newly legally married friends accuse me of willfully neglecting Sarah to appease the homophobic whims of a man wearing a funny hat? Even more importantly, where do I find the way of Christ as I try to live faithfully within a vocation that has proved to be abundantly life-giving?

There are no easy answers here. In my ideal world, we would figure out a way to divorce health care access from one’s employment and marital status. Everyone would be able to see doctors and get the care they need. Given that historically Christians built an incredible number of hospitals, I’m surprised that churches haven’t been more active in creating systems for health insurance. If employers can offer health insurance policies covering their employees, why haven’t churches explored options to create health insurance for their congregants? Additionally in my ideal world, we would be able to recognize diverse structures of adult relationships. Your ability to give and receive care from another adult would not depend on your familial or marital status. I do not think it’s necessary to use civil marriage as a catchall category for all caregiving relationships between two adults if the two people are not related through family of origin.

I know we don’t live in my ideal world. In my ideal world, Sarah would not be needing to have surgery in ten days either. I’m an engineer, and brainstorming crazy out-of-the-box ideas is one way I cope with uncertainty. A week after the decision in Obergefell vs Hodges, I feel more uncertain than ever. I think I’m still breathing, hoping, and praying that Sarah and I will find our way through the legal quagmire…. I think.

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.

Some Thoughts on Sympathy, Suffering, and the Paschal Mystery

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A reflection by Sarah

In many of our past blog posts, Lindsey and I have discussed some of the different kinds of reactions other people have when they find out we are a celibate couple. Some folks are skeptical of us, others supportive, others cautiously optimistic about our claim that we really don’t care to discuss our sexual ethic in terms of, “Is gay sex a sin?” Lately, one of the most common reactions we’ve been receiving is sympathy. We have readers, friends, and family members who feel sorry for us because we are celibate. Occasionally people outside our Christian tradition tell us that we’re missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures because of blind obedience to authoritarian religion. During our series on sexual abuse last week, one person told me that she is sorry for what happened to me and will be praying I’ll heal completely from my history of sexual trauma so that Lindsey and I will finally be able to have sex. At the same time, plenty of people inside our Christian tradition believe that the kindest words they can possibly say to us are, “I’m sorry you’ve been given such a heavy cross to bear in life.”

I can’t help but make a connection to another circumstance in which I’ve received a great deal of sympathy lately. As I’ve become increasingly open in discussing my Ménière’s disease and the resulting hearing and vestibular loss, more and more people in my life have been telling me, “I’m sorry you’re stuck in such a bad situation. But good on you for making the best of it!” In truth, I do see my vestibular loss as a bad situation. Because I can no longer balance my body in the way most people can without even trying, my mobility is limited. I used to swim every day, and now I can’t do that anymore. I love socializing and getting out of our apartment to go on adventures by myself or with other people, and most of the time I can’t do that anymore either. I’ve gained lots of weight and have no endurance at all because most days, I can’t move very much. I can’t work right now either. But I’m not “making the best” of anything regarding this issue. I’m irritable all the time, I snap at Lindsey when I become frustrated with myself, and I try to do more than I’m able and end up hurting myself in the process. Nothing in that is making the best of a bad situation.

That said, I don’t see my hearing loss as negative in even the slightest way. Sure, I’ve gone through (and am still probably going through) a grieving process because it’s unsettling to lose one manner of interacting with the world that I’ve had access to for my whole life. Working on accepting myself as I am rather than trying to “fix” it has been painful in some ways, but pain is not always a bad thing. In the process, I’ve gained so many new ways of understanding the world around me — things I never would have experienced as a hearing person. When I’m participating in Liturgy by feeling the choir’s vibrations and noticing how those induce images of synthetic color, I’m not making the best of a bad situation; I am communing with God in a way I couldn’t have before my hearing loss. It’s common for members of my tradition to speak of monasteries as places that offer people a unique opportunity to encounter God in silence. Monasteries are indeed wonderful places, but my question is: how many monks, nuns, and monastery lovers truly know the experience of total silence? I’m talking about silence that is free from every possible distraction — no leaves rustling, no birds chirping and flapping their wings, no water running…not even the sound of one’s own breath. Assuming that there are no rock bands, gunshots, or jets around, when I take off my hearing aids I can experience the gift of total silence on some days. Even the best custom-designed earplugs will not give a hearing person that gift. I think that’s amazing.

I’m taking some online coursework this summer to help me keep my mind occupied until July when I’ll have my next ear surgery. Last week, the professor in one of those classes suggested that my Ménière’s is part of how I experience the paschal mystery. I’ve lost and I’ve grieved, but I’ve also seen the birth of many new and wonderful things. There are some days when, where my vestibular loss is concerned, I still find myself feeling much more connected to the crucifixion than to the resurrection. But is there anything wrong with that? There are also times when I feel deeply connected with the resurrection and other people tell me this isn’t theologically or emotionally right because I’m “romanticizing” my suffering. It has never made sense to me how someone else can claim to know better than I do when I am suffering and when I am not.

I’ve been thinking about how celibacy is also part of my paschal mystery. It hasn’t been easy for my to accept that I will never give birth to children. It’s definitely not easy to accept that I live in a society where marriage has become the default vocation for all people, and those who choose celibacy tend to be viewed as odd and repressed. It’s challenging to be so committed to a Christian tradition where there is little guidance for living celibacy outside a monastery. Nonetheless, I am joyous about continuing to cultivate a celibate vocation in the world alongside Lindsey. Celibacy is one of my callings. I didn’t ask for it any more than I asked God to make me deaf, but I’ve found both of these realities to be life-giving rather than limiting. There are days when I feel more connection with the binding of Isaac than I do with the Annunciation, but that’s how it is with any calling and any long-term state of being.

Sometimes, we don’t know what to say to another person except, “I’m sorry.” I include myself in that “we.” There are occasions when sympathy is a helpful response, and I don’t always know for sure how to differentiate between those occasions and others. But I do think that at times, sympathetic responses can miss the mark when it comes to understanding how callings and life experiences work differently for different people. What would it be like to spend more time discussing our callings and life experiences in terms of the paschal mystery? Several questions run through my mind. To name a few: what if we offered fewer condolences and made more effort to understand what we perceive to be another person’s cross? How might offering support look different if we could accept that what looks like a cross to one person can appear as a crown to another? Do we have to see crosses as negative in the first place?

What callings and experiences from your own life are part of your paschal mystery? If you feel led to share, the comments are open.

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.

On celibacy, head covering, and all things countercultural

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A reflection by Sarah

Why do people do the things that they do and choose the ways of life that they choose? Sometimes, there’s a clear story. Other times, the pathway is much more meandering with few direct signposts. Our journey with Christ is replete with experiences of God inviting us into different things, giving us gifts, and opening up to us unexpected possibilities.

During Lent this year, I took some time to step back and reflect on how intentionality is present in different aspects of my way of life. I think it’s important to examine our motives and our intentions regularly because life with God is dynamic. What was spiritually helpful two years ago might not be entirely beneficial now. We need time to discern what God might be calling us into in the here and now lest we find ourselves in a bit of a rut. God is calling us all to grow towards Christ.

Lindsey and I wrote an answer to the question “Why celibacy?” as our second blog post ever. We’re both asked the question constantly even now. Every time a person asks us why we’ve chosen celibacy, we have the opportunity to reflect anew on the life we committed to freely and joyously. My answer remains the same: I am celibate because I experience a strong sense of call to celibacy, and it brings me abundant joy. Living celibacy and blogging about celibacy with Lindsey has taught me a great deal about how other people perceive celibacy. Celibacy is countercultural, and one might argue that celibate partnership is countercultural in a different way than celibacy lived out in other contexts. Few people are accustomed to thinking about celibate vocations as diverse. Based on my early experiences of being drawn to celibacy, I’m not entirely surprised that as an adult I experience a call to this way of life. I committed to celibacy because I sensed that God was making this way of life possible for me.

But aside from vocation, I’ve experienced God opening up other things for me that would likely be deemed countercultural in American society. To be clear, I didn’t set out asking God to bless me to live a radically countercultural way of life. I wanted — and still want — to pursue Christ’s guidance and receive all of God’s provisions for my own journey, whatever those may be. There are parts of my life and my spirituality that would probably been culturally normative. And there are some parts that just seem a bit weird to others, including some members of my own Christian tradition.

My first encounter with head covering was interacting with Catholic nuns. I didn’t think any woman who wasn’t a nun covered her hair, and I had never thought much about it. The first time I realized that some Catholic lay women cover was in my early 20s when I attended services at one particular parish where a small group of women engaged in this spiritual practice. Immediately I found these women a bit brash and arrogant because they seemed interested in policing everyone else’s modesty. They would hand out pamphlets on modesty to uncovered women on a reasonably regular basis and shoot glances at people who were not dressed “properly” for church. I immediately associated these women with everything negative about overtly conservative forms of piety. They were the kind of people who always had an opinion about what rendered a Catholic especially devout or especially heretical and rarely hesitated in sharing their thoughts. There was no way ever that I would have wanted to be anything like these women. I didn’t see anything in their faith and practice that I wanted to emulate. Head covering was the last practice I ever wanted to adopt: I saw it as distracting, oppressive, unhealthily obsessive with proper devotion, and as an invitation to make one’s church politics visible.

Imagine my surprise when I got the first inkling that God might be opening head covering as a spiritual practice for me after my transition from Catholicism into my current Christian tradition. Whenever I experience a new idea that would — if followed through — case a major change in my life, I try not to jump to the conclusion that God is asking me act immediately. I know far too many people who have conveniently sensed “callings from God” that aligned tightly with their own desires, and have become miserable as a result of acting on these desires. I was confused because I didn’t actually want to start covering, so I kept an open mind that the idea might be coming from God and continued my regular spiritual practices as always.

I sat with this idea for a few months, and it never left. Over time, I came to realize that I might want to try covering. I eased into it slowly: I started wearing larger headbands to church to discern if there might be some spiritual benefit for me in covering. I noticed that since I never cover my head or wear large headbands when going about my daily life routine, wearing a covering at church or in my prayer corner helped me differentiate church from the rest of the world. I observed that it was easier for me to focus and viscerally encounter the truth that heaven meets earth during divine services. I saw my heart rejoicing with awareness that we exit time and space when we go to meet with Christ in prayer. I continued to bring all of my observations to God in times of private devotion, and I sensed God inviting me to make the practice of covering a regular part of my spiritual life.

While I felt peace about all of this, I noticed a huge amount of anxiety welling up inside of me at the same time because covering is easily noticeable. Even though a lot of women in my current Christian tradition practice covering, I still had some insecurity about whether I would stick out and cause distraction for others. Also, I didn’t know if other women who covered would recruit me to join some kind of effort toward spreading the practice to others in our community. I wondered if people would see me and think I had somehow willfully made myself a second-class citizen in church by consenting to the idea that women are somehow less than men. I thought about what my friends and acquaintances from other seasons in my life might think if they knew I was covering. How would friends who sat across from me in women’s studies courses respond? What lectures might I hear from Catholic friends at my former parish who robustly advocate against covering on any occasion? How would my friends who describe themselves readily as “liberated women” react? I even considered a question that I rarely ask myself anymore: “What would my parents think?” Despite all of these feelings and uncertainties, I decided to try it out anyway. I’ve been surprised and heartened that the practice of head covering continues to prove beneficial in my spiritual life.

When I’m talking to people about why I do what I do, I get just about as much variation in reactions from those asking me why I cover as I do from those asking me why I’m celibate. There are folks who expect me to respond with a blind appeal to one authority or another — something like “The Bible is clear that I should” or “Tradition has a consistent witness that I should.” These are the same kinds of answers people expect me to give when they ask me why I’m celibate. The real conversations begin happening when I explain the reasons for my choices. Occasionally a person who expects me to answer by appealing to authority will be challenged to consider alternate reasons for particular practices. Sometimes people ask me why I don’t answer first by appealing to authority. These folks occasionally go so far as to say that I clearly don’t respect the Bible or Tradition because I haven’t cited a certain verse or teaching as my first motivation. In these situations, I’ve received more than one lecture about why women should cover their heads and why gay people ought to be celibate. It seems odd to me that, for some people, unless your primary reason for making a particular choice is the Bible said so or Tradition clearly teaches, you can’t possibly be engaging in a practice in the right way. It’s bewildering to experience a person telling you that you’re just not committed to doing x, y, and z that you’ve made a voluntary decision to adopt because of God’s personal direction.

I don’t think every countercultural practice or way of life has to be engaged in with the intention of being countercultural. In fact, I think most of the time it’s better when a person adopts a practice because God has opened that practice up to that individual. I don’t think it’s necessarily good for a person to adopt a practice as an attempt to reject a cultural norm and shove it in other people’s faces. Taking on unusual practices in an effort to flee a cultural reality doesn’t always mean God will use that choice to bring one into a closer relationship with Christ.

It’s been interesting to live a few different realities that are countercultural alongside other realities that do fit into the box. I’m grateful for God’s immeasurable patience and good humor. And I pray that in all things God will continue to provide for me on my journey, whether God’s gifts are reasonably ordinary or delightfully personal in how they help me grow towards Christ.

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.

Finding our vocation

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In thinking about finding our vocation, we like to say that our vocation found us. Neither of us set out with the goal of finding celibate partnership. Our life together emerged organically in ways that surprised and delighted us.

We’re well aware that some people consider celibate partnership as a sort of “Holy Grail” for LGBT Christians who are striving to live into celibacy vocationally. We’ve talked to LGBT Christians who perceive celibate partnership as a way to have lifelong companionship without any moral quandaries related to sexual activity. There’s a tendency to see our way of life as “marriage minus the sex,” but this fails to consider the specific textures, features, and patterns of celibacy that undergird the life we share.

Celibacy can be lived in diverse ways. Monastic communities and religious orders provide windows into various celibate ways of life. Additionally, many people live lives as singles in the world according to their unique gifts and abilities. The two of us do our best to learn from monastics while also discerning our own vocation as a community of two. As we have gotten to know other people who are living celibacy, we have come to see that celibate vocations are characterized by vulnerability, radical hospitality, a shared spiritual life, and commitment.

We’ve talked before about how we met and the challenges of finding language to describe the relationship we share. We have a few posts geared towards people who are considering the possibility of celibate partnership. But over the past few weeks, we’ve noticed that a sizable number of people interacting with our writing assume that we actively sought a romantic relationship with each other in an effort to get as close as we could to marriage without violating the teachings of our Christian tradition — that we found a loophole and decided to take full advantage of it. In fact, we’ve received several emails from people who want to know, “Where could I find a person who would desire a celibate partnership with me?”

While we can appreciate the various motivations that prompt readers to ask this question, we want to be clear that we were asking different questions of life, purpose, and relationships when we first met. The broader questions matter, especially in a world where marriage is often the default vocation. We think that beginning with partnership in mind when embracing a celibate vocation is putting the cart before the horse. It would be impossible for us to list all of the salient questions that we were asking, but we would like to share a few with you now.

What does it look like for human beings to have meaningful relationships with other human beings? We live in a time and place where marriage tends to be exalted above all other forms of relationship. One of Lindsey’s central questions in discerning vocation has focused on how people can understand that a relationship has meaning if it is not headed toward marriage. This question became a regular fixture in Lindsey’s prayer life: asking God to reveal meaningful relationships while highlighting various meanings present in those diverse relationships. God has shown us that we’re both fantastically connected with so many people; we talk about them as our family of choice. Though we share daily life in our little community of two, there are very few ways in which our relationship is more exclusive than other meaningful relationships that we hold dear.

What way of life has the greatest potential to draw me towards God? The world is full of choices, and many of these choices have the potential to draw a person away from God. Sarah has long recognized a need for accountability. Living in close community with other people enables Sarah to make better decisions. Because of this awareness, Sarah started looking at monastic communities while first discerning the possibility of celibacy several years ago. When it became clear that God was not calling Sarah to a particular monastery, Sarah prayerfully considered how God would provide strong connections with other people.

Where do I find strength and support to do the things God is asking me to do? Living in Christ radically reshapes one’s way of life. God frequently calls us towards more than we could possibly ask or imagine. Doing what God would have us do is incredibly challenging, and God provides communities so that the Body of Christ can be built up. Lindsey has a natural gift for encouraging other people and finds encouragement from others to be life-sustaining. It has been important for Lindsey to cultivate deep relationships characterized by mutual support.

How is God asking me to love others? As we’ve said before, we believe that celibate people love and serve the world differently than married people do. The differences may not always be readily apparent or even definable, but they are there nonetheless. We’ve found intrinsic knowledge in our hearts that God is calling the two of us to love and serve the world as celibate people. Neither of us desires marriage, but we are grateful for the opportunity to choose to opt in 100% with another person. We find ourselves propelled toward loving other people more fully because we provide consistent support, care, and encouragement to each other. In many ways, celibate partnership has helped both of us to   be less selfish, more open-hearted, and more compassionate than we would be living separately.

In no way is this list of questions exhaustive of how we were processing the world when our celibate vocation found us. We do hope that we have given you a glimpse into what kinds of things were on our minds when we met each other. When people ask us about how they could meet their celibate partner, we try to change the question by asking How do you understand celibacy? and What draws you towards a celibate vocation?

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