Category Archives: Vocation

Vulnerability Brings Charity to Life — Henri Nouwen

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As we share about our experiences as celibate LGBT Christians, people ask us frequently if we know about Henri Nouwen. Nouwen has achieved a kind of celebrity status amongst participants in this conversation, especially those who are Catholic. His life, particularly while living at L’Arche, offers arguably one of most vivid portrayals of what celibacy can look like in our current cultural context.

Because Nouwen is so well-known, we have decided to take a different approach to this celibate profile. Instead of giving an introduction to Nouwen (several already exist) we would like to describe some ways that his life and writings map to our four core values of celibacy: vulnerability, hospitality, shared spiritual life, and commitment.

Nouwen’s life offers a counter-cultural embrace of vulnerability. He understands that leadership comes when a leader offers his or her vulnerable self:

“I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.” –from In the Name of Jesus

Nouwen has a way of appreciating that every person can gift others with his or her vulnerability. One reason Nouwen stands out to many people we know is that he voluntarily entered a life of serving people with a range of physical disabilities. Yet, Nouwen attempted to pass on a vision of disability that was rooted in profound respect for the image of God found in each person rather than viewing those he served as problems to be solved. Nouwen wrote a book called Adam, God’s Beloved where he detailed how Adam — who needed around-the-clock care — became his teacher and guide. It is clear that Adam taught Nouwen much about how simply being present with another person can be transformative, inspiring Nouwen to pen things like:

“Those who really can receive bread from a stranger and smile in gratitude, can feed many without even realizing it. Those who can sit in silence with their fellow man not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart, can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.” –from Out of Silence: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Being present for a friend or loved one often requires a great deal of commitment. Nouwen frequently described commitment as the kind of compassion that draws near to the vulnerable. In Nouwen’s thinking, vulnerability and compassion are two sides of the same coin and integral to the Christian life.

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” –from Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life

And compassion helps people move from hostility to hospitality:

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.” –from Reaching Out

Vulnerability enables us to find common ground even with people most different from us. Responding with compassion brings us to a place of hospitality for others through seeing our common humanity. This incarnational way of living helps us cultivate a shared spiritual life because we start to identify with others’ vices and others’ virtues:

“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death.

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.” -from Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Nouwen’s writings are accessible to do many people because his work is vibrant with spiritual wisdom. If you are still looking for Advent reading and waiting in hope for the ability to live out charity and other Christian virtues, we strongly recommend Nouwen’s writings, especially those on compassion. We wouldn’t be surprised if many of our readers are already familiar with Nouwen’s work. Feel free to share your own reflections in the comments.

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 Uselessness, Creativity, Dreams, and Letting Go

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A reflection by Sarah

“Yes, those who are sick or incapacitated in some way show the features of Christ; there is a “usefulness of uselessness”. After all, the most useful hours that Christ spent on this earth were on the cross, though they seem utterly useless from our prag­matic point of view.”

This bit of wisdom from the great spiritual writer and activist Catherine de Hueck Doherty came my way rather unexpectedly yesterday afternoon as I was sifting through some old files of research materials on my laptop. Feeling convicted by recent discussions about racism, I was looking for a particular quotation of Catherine’s on discrimination and segregation. But instead, God saw to it that the above paragraph fell before my eyes not even five minutes into my search.

By the time you read this post (if you read it the morning of its release) I’ll be at the hospital getting prepped for and undergoing a surgical procedure on my right ear. At this point in my process of managing life with Ménière’s disease, all nonsurgical treatment options have failed to reduce my chronic vertigo or prevent further permanent hearing loss. As much as I’ve tried to continue living a regular life that includes teaching, dissertation writing, babysitting my favorite toddler, being active in church, and other parts of laboring in my vocation, I have to admit that my level of ability has changed over the past few months — likely over the past few years despite my not noticing it so much until this year. The greatest challenge by far is accepting how my current situation fits into the way God is calling me to spend my life.

I’ve shared here before that doing art is one of my hobbies and that I planned to share some of my images here eventually. As I’ve experienced more periods of exhaustion from vertigo, I’ve found myself drawing or painting from my bed almost every day. I’m feeling rather inarticulate at the moment, so for the rest of this post I’ll use some of my artwork to assist me in reflecting. For starters, this is what I like to imagine is actually happening inside my ear on days when the tinnitus is particularly loud.

Tinnitus

Tinnitus

And this is how it feels to experience a vertigo episode that lasts for hours and includes multiple falls while attempting to get to the bathroom.

Falling

Falling

Returning to the Catherine Doherty quote at the beginning of this post, over the past few months I’ve noticed myself feeling especially useless. I’ve been unable to make dissertation progress, I’ve had to miss much more work than usual, and I’ve had to stop babysitting altogether. Some weeks, I’ve noticed depression symptoms creeping back in, and I’ve wondered whether there’s any meaning to a life lived constantly bouncing back and forth between extremes: productivity and inactivity, balance and out-of-control spinning, working and lying in bed with an art journal, hearing and deafness, good health and total disability. Identity questions that I never expected to arise for me at age 30 have been bursting forth from some place inside that I did not even know existed.

Unzipped

Unzipped

After several weeks of thought, prayer, and consultation with Lindsey, I reached the terribly painful conclusion that it would be best for me to discontinue Ph.D. studies at this time. This decision comes at a great cost, and I’ve already heard every possible challenge including, “Can’t you just take medical leave?” and, “You’re almost there. You’re ABD. Earlier this year, you were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Can’t you just push yourself to finish and take a break then?” Being totally honest with myself, I have to admit that the answer to both of these questions is “No.” I’ve been pushing myself to finish. I’ve been pushing as hard as I possibly can, which only makes me feel guiltier and more worthless when I can’t even get out of bed three days a week. Severe Ménière’s disease by itself is complicated enough. Trying to manage a dissertation in the midst of constant symptoms makes life a nightmare, and being able to call myself “doctor” is not worth what I’ve been putting myself through since my health began to decline rapidly.

My experience of my doctoral program has been fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for a better advisor or committee of readers. I received my MA from the same institution, and from the time I visited campus for my first interview I knew that God was calling me there. But just as clearly, now I hear God calling me to spend this season of life differently. It’s time to let go. As is true for navigating many tough decisions, my art served as a great processing tool.

Chotki

Chotki

Synthesis

Synthesis

Ecclesiastes 3

Ecclesiastes 3

So where is the meaning in all of this? At one time, it was my dream to serve God and minister to others by being a good academic theologian. I wanted (and still want) to share my love of Christ and his Church with university students, challenging them to think more deeply about their assumptions and guiding them toward using their gifts for the greater glory of God. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being a theology teacher. Even if I need to take a semester off here and there, I am confident that teaching is a significant part of my vocation. But lately, I’ve been wondering if God might be using my experience of hearing loss to open new pathways of ministry — even if all I can do some days is paint pictures of peacocks.

His Name Is Isidore

His Name Is Isidore

In moments when I see a playful peacock or an autumn dancer finding its way into my imaginative consciousness, I can’t help but feel joy during an immensely difficult period. Being a Christian has taught me how to wait for hope, joy, and even victory. There’s something profound when the Church observes Christ’s passion with full knowledge that the resurrection is coming. As with Great Lent last year, I find myself plunging into Advent’s darkness knowing that the Light will arrive.

Holy Week and Paschal Vigil

Holy Week & Paschal Vigil

Caught But Not Held

Caught But Not Held

Twister

Twister

Lindsey and I have been praying about what my hearing loss might mean for my ministry. I know that many of you have been remembering me in your prayers. Thank you so much. I’m profoundly grateful. I have questions about how God is shaping my vocation as my hearing loss creates new opportunities for experiencing the world differently. In this sense, it has shown some signs of being a vocational gain. And so I continue to entreat God, remembering Mary’s guidance to do whatever Christ tells me to do…and Catherine Doherty’s reminder that there is a sense of usefulness even in uselessness.

I’ll end today’s post with two abstract interpretations of the inner ear. I’m the sort of nerd who watches videos of any surgical procedure before undergoing it myself, and I’d like to imagine that what lies beneath my mastoid bone is full of fascinating colors. 🙂

Cochlea #1

Cochlea #1

Cochlea #2

Cochlea #2

(Note: the images on this page belong to A Queer Calling and may not be reproduced without permission.)

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.

Affirming the Unexpected

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Today we are delighted to host a reflection from our friend Nate Craddock. Nate is the priest of Mercy Way, a fledgling inclusive church community. Dignity and worth are two core values of the Mercy Way community where the relevant section of its values statement reads: “Every human being is made in the image of God, so we affirm dignity and worth of every human being and welcome them to worship and service in God’s family. (Yes, this means we are unapologetically inclusive and affirming of LGBTQ* folks, ethnic minorities, immigrants, and members of every economic stratum.)” Because our own experiences of interacting with inclusive communities have not been very positive, we were curious to hear Nate’s thoughts about what it means to him to offer pastoral care to an LGBT person discerning a celibate vocation. Please consider checking out more reflections on Nate’s blog or following Nate on Twitter. And as with all guest posts, the views expressed here are those of the author and may differ from our own personal beliefs.

A reflection by Nate Craddock

Two Saturdays a month I break apart spongy, honey-scented hunks of Jesus’ body. With each communicant’s name I place them in the expectant palms of those who have gathered to eat at God’s table with all the other people the Spirit has caught in her net and dumped out, flopping and glistening, onto the dock. Ah, the Church!

The church I serve is a beautiful accident—people have slipped and fallen into the shining slick of grace that oozes from the table like so much chrism. I find myself falling in it over and over again, and as I listen to the needs of the people who have come there to eat and pray, I realize to my chagrin that listening to the needs of the people I serve is vastly more important than living out any social project of inclusion and affirmation that I may have—which is precisely what I wanted it to be when I started dreaming about it. But even then, Mercy Way has spiraled into a wildly inclusive community precisely because we’re centered around the wildly inclusive Eucharistic meal.

One of the great tropes I’ve observed in the LGBTQ-inclusion movement in Christianity is that, more often than not, we’ve done a fantastic job of creating another “silo” for those people in our churches so they can feel like they have their own space. We’ve figured out how to square people’s sexual ethics with our tradition. We sign off on their relationships. We hold them up like a gleaming participation trophy from our 1st grade tee-ball league saying, “Look! I can inclusive!” as if God will pat us on the head like a benign grandparent.

Many inclusive churches do a phenomenal job at being inclusive of monogamous couples who have lived a life that’s nothing really more than a gay version of the American dream trope: an educated two-partner family in a committed relationship with 2.5 kids and a well-maintained house in the suburbs. We love this kind of arrangement—it looks great in bulletins and on parish websites and in our denominational reports. And it looks great sewn onto our sash of merit badges.

But because of our desire to be inclusive, we progressive pastors and leaders sometimes run into difficulty when a person comes into our care whose narrative doesn’t square with our ideas of “inclusivity.” The real challenge to inclusivity comes when someone who identifies as LGBT comes to us and says, in not so many words, “I feel like God is calling me to a different way of life than what you expect.”

If a person is coming to our church, we think, shouldn’t they want to be just like everyone else here? And so we chase after them screaming, “Let me affirm you! Let me help you get your hormone replacement therapy! Let me find you a partner! Let me baptize your adopted babies!”—notice a theme? Really, all that’s saying is, “Let me co-opt your narrative so I can feel good about being inclusive! I need you!”

It’s good to need each other. The danger comes when we need a relationship with a person’s label and identity over against a relationship with the person. While we’re often quick to congratulate people for living their truth, we come to an impasse when a person’s truth has led them to a place that we don’t necessarily want them to be. We need that person’s story, not to use as raw material for building our ivory tower of inclusivity, but rather as flint and fire to burn away our expectations of what another human being should be in the sight of God.

And so an LGBT person who comes to our church and says they’re discerning a call to celibacy—or worse, that they’re wrestling with the idea of a progressive sexual ethic—and we flip out. “I swear to Judith Butler,” we say, “I’ll make you believe in my narrative of the Respectable Well-Affirmed Christian Queer! Now let’s find you a partner—I’ve always loved June weddings, haven’t you?”

For me to affirm people means affirming them where they are, not where I think they should be. And so when someone I am serving comes to me and says, “I’m discerning a calling to celibacy”—in my beautiful, glittery, inclusive church, of all places!—the only appropriate response from me is, “Wonderful, tell me more. Let’s walk and discern this together. Let’s connect you with other people who are living out this vocation so that you can see if this is indeed something that God has gifted you for. Let’s pray together. And let’s eat.”

I say, “Let’s eat” because those hunks of Jesus’ flesh and sips of his tawny porto blood are the very meats that have sustained me on my journey to allowing myself to be included in the Christian community and to find my own calling as a priest, a gay man, a Christian. Such should be our response to anyone who comes to us priests and pastors with questions about their vocation.

For someone to open up to me about this, whether “I’m discerning celibacy” or “I’m discerning the priesthood” or “I think I want to marry my significant other” or “I don’t think marriage is right for us” or “I think I might be trans” or any such deep place of questioning is an invitation into a sacred trust. To be invited into someone’s journey of vocation is to be invited into a place carved out by God for God in that person’s life—it is where that person will meet God and work out their salvation, where they will find their deeper vocation to become Christs in the world. Would it be right to tread on that sacred ground by imposing our will for that person’s vocation on them? The answer should be clear.

All told, it’s not for me to choose and live a person’s vocation for them; my job as a priest is to give them food for the journey and encourage them along the way.

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.

“I believe God does not require celibacy for LGBT people. How do I support my struggling celibate friend?”

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We’re grateful for all of our readers. We know that we have many readers who hold various forms of progressive sexual ethics and appreciate that our blog helps them think more about the nature of celibacy. Many believe that people who have the gift of celibacy should be able to choose a celibate vocation independent of considering sexual orientation as a motivating factor. These readers share our frustration with the tendency of some church communities to issue celibacy mandates to LGBT Christians while making no effort to create healthier spiritual environments for vocational discernment. Recently, we’ve received some questions like this one:

I like reading your blog because it’s very clear that you personally feel called to celibacy and find your celibate vocations life-giving. However, what is the best way to support and encourage someone who struggles with imperfect celibacy? I completely understand why some people who don’t have the gift of celibacy nevertheless interpret Scripture or their own personal calling to be to follow that path. But it seems like sometimes some of the most sensitive, caring, and spiritual people still struggle with this. I don’t mean a case where celibacy is imposed by someone else, but when someone truly has a deep spiritual conviction to be celibate and yet struggles and fails at that. Their lives seem dominated by struggle, guilt, shame, and occasionally risky sexual behavior where I struggle to see how celibacy is bearing good fruit in their lives. I want to respect their convictions while, at the same time, helping to paint a positive picture of what life in Christ could look like. I don’t want to elevate my own same-sex marriage as a potential answer for my friends in this position, but…. what can I do?

This is a good question, and it doesn’t have an easy answer. It points to our collective difficulties in understanding celibacy and vocation. Often, there are gaps between our vocational aspirations and our lived experiences in the here and now. Some of the most intense times of spiritual bitterness can happen when people are confronted with how their actual vocations differ from the vocations to which they aspire. It’s not uncommon to experience “imperfect celibacy.” In fact, we would guess that most intentionally celibate people live celibacy imperfectly. Yes, there are some ways to fail within a celibate vocation that cause friends more distress than other kinds of failures. Here are some thoughts based on how we approach these questions with our own friends:

Try to understand the vocation to which your friend aspires. Sometimes it can be helpful to ask what hopes and dreams a person has for living into a celibate vocation. Many of our hopes and dreams have their roots in improving our abilities to practice radical hospitality. We believe that any vocation should help a person grow towards Christ. Especially if a person is in his/her twenties or thirties, looking to the future (without ruminating on it unhealthily) can sometimes be helpful. Often in times of immediate vocational crisis, people can feel as though their current or past conduct has disqualified them from particular ways of life. The grief over this is real. Nonetheless, sometimes people in these situations overstate the repercussions of how they fear their actions have closed doors. We’ve found it beneficial to use reflective listening techniques to try and help friends in vocational crises identify immediately accessible things that can help them live into their aspirational vocations just a little more.

Reflect on, and possibly share, your own experience being transformed by Christ in the midst of vocational struggles. We all have places where there is a gap between our convictions and our abilities to live out those convictions. Thinking more deeply about specific places where God has helped us grow towards our own convictions can be useful. Lindsey has experienced a profound sense of God opening up hospitality as a way of life. Although Lindsey has always wanted to be generous and welcoming, Lindsey has had to work to find ways to practice authentic hospitality as an introvert. Likewise, Sarah has always wanted to be a mother, but typically celibate vocations do not involve having biological children. Sarah has had to (and continues to) discern how strong maternal instincts can fit into a celibate vocation. Throughout our respective processes, we’ve both experienced amazing transformational moments. Cultivating deep empathy for a friend becomes possible when you bring to mind times and places where you need to have deep empathy for your former self.

Appreciate differences between your own spirituality and your friend’s spirituality. Discerning vocation is about finding one’s life in Christ. A variety of spiritual disciplines that aid in vocational discernment exist within different Christian traditions. We find ourselves writing constantly about making the kingdom of God visible because we’ve found that this core idea resonates with readers from diverse Christian traditions. However, we know that vocation is profoundly personal where each individual needs to connect with his or her own Christian tradition at many steps along the way. When we are talking with friends struggling to live their vocations, we do our best to center conversation within their specific Christian traditions rather than exalting our own.

Encourage and respect your friend’s search for compassionate spiritual direction within his or her Christian tradition. At the end of the day, we don’t consider it our job to provide a specific spiritual prescription during times of vocational crisis. We reserve that task for spiritual directors who commit to walking alongside the people to whom they minister. We believe ardently that every person needs a spiritual director. It’s essential for those struggling with vocation to find compassionate spiritual directors who can meet them where they are at right now, appreciate how Christ is calling them to participate fully in the Kingdom of God, and make wise recommendations about how to bridge the gap between a person’s current lived experience of vocation and his or her aspirational vocation. When a friend shares about his or her struggles with imperfect living of vocation, our natural next question is, “Do you have a spiritual director who is helping you with these struggles?” Spiritual directors are awesome because they have studied the wisdom of particular Christian traditions to guide people through life’s difficulties. If our friend says that he or she does have a spiritual director who is offering sound, compassionate, and wise counsel within the context of his or her Christian tradition, we trust that our friend is in good hands and remind our friend that nobody can snap a finger and live vocation perfectly.

We’re never terribly surprised when any person has trouble living out his or her vocation. Living into the fullness of what Christ is calling one towards is hard! As always, we welcome discussion in the comments. Feel free to ask follow-up questions, respond to our suggestions, and make suggestions of your own.

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.

Musings on the Meaning of Celibacy

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Almost exactly four months ago, we published this post on questions to ask oneself if considering the possibility of entering a celibate partnership. Commenters on that post challenged us to think more deeply about our own questions, particularly #4: “Do I have an idea of what celibacy might mean for me?” We think this is one of the most important items on our list, and we hope that we’ll always be asking ourselves this question as we continue living our celibate vocations together. If you’ve been with us since the beginning of our blog 10 months ago, you’ve likely read our “Why celibacy?” and “Defining celibacy” posts. Newer readers may have seen our post from two months ago where we revisited these. If you’ve perused the “Celibacy and Vocation” section of our index page, you can probably tell that our understandings of celibacy and vocation are constantly evolving. When we launched A Queer Calling on January 16, 2014, our concept of celibate vocation lived in partnership was very basic. One of our original hopes for AQC was that God would use our blog to help us mature in our vocations. Ten months in, we’re already seeing that the question “What does celibacy mean for us?” doesn’t have a simple, consistent answer. As we look through old posts and comment responses, we notice that over time there have been shifts — mostly subtle, a few more dramatic — in how we discuss the same topics we began broaching in January.

We think the best example of this is how we conceive of the four core values of celibacy that we laid out during week 1: hospitality, vulnerability, commitment, and shared spiritual life. One of the criticisms we’ve received over and over again is that our definition of celibacy says nothing about sexual abstinence. That was intentional because at the time we began blogging, we took sexual abstinence as a given when discussing celibate vocations. It’s obvious that part of a celibate vocation is not having sex, so our questions ten months ago focused on, “But what else? Christian vocations aren’t reducible to ‘having sex,’ or ‘not having sex.’ Vocations are more than that. Where is the more in celibacy?” Spending almost a year pondering the four values intensely has brought us a lovely surprise: at this point, hospitality, vulnerability, commitment, and shared spiritual life are becoming as much a given for us as sexual abstinence was in the beginning. We find that we no longer need to set aside specific, intentional times to think and pray about these issues. This focus is happening automatically, every day, and is often woven seamlessly into other aspects of our lives. It’s present even during seasons when we’re blogging more about LGBT issues than celibacy.

Last night over dinner, we were talking about how our approach to hospitality has changed since we first began our life together. While we’ve always wanted to be available for friends and acquaintances who need us, we used to be a bit more selective about how we would offer hospitality. Our primary questions for extending hospitality were once, “Is meeting x need something we can do without much trouble? How will extending hospitality in this way force us to make adjustments to our everyday lives?” As we enjoyed our salads and sandwiches, we reflected on the fact that neither of those questions enters our minds much anymore. Instead, we’re thinking, “How can we be most welcoming to this person? What are the needs, and how can we help?” We’re observing more unity of mind in our relationship as we discern how to best use what we have to welcome other people. If someone we know needs a place to stay short-term or long-term, we don’t even have to discuss pros and cons: without saying anything, we are already in agreement that this person can live in our guest room and dine at our table for as long as he or she needs. If a friend living several hours away is in trouble and has no one local to reach out to, we’re on the road as soon as work is over that day: Lindsey is packing bags and Sarah is planning logistics, and neither of us has ever questioned whether we would go. “Hows” instead of “whethers” have come to dominate our discussions of hospitality.

We’ve noticed that as we’ve spent more time thinking (and blogging) about celibacy, vulnerability as become less painful and more freeing for both of us. Our conversations at home, with celibate and non-celibate friends, at church, and in our professional lives have deepened beyond imagination. Both of us have already shared far more vulnerably at AQC than we ever thought possible. When we began this blog, Sarah had absolutely no intention of writing anything too specific about Sarah’s history of sexual trauma, eating disorders, and addiction. Lindsey had never dreamed of being able to share anything about celibacy or LGBT issues with people from our own Christian tradition. Our attempt to live the value of vulnerability has opened dozens of doors for conversation. We’ve been contacted by family members who had no idea what we’ve experienced while coming into our own as gay adults in the Christian faith, former classmates who wanted to apologize for haranguing us in middle school and high school, people we met in graduate school who never quite new how to engage thoughtfully with LGBT Christians, and folks from across the globe who are trying their best to discern what non-monastic celibacy looks like. In contacting us, they have gifted us with their vulnerability. At this point in our lives, we see vulnerability becoming so much more natural in our relationship with each other, our friends, and even people we don’t know that well. We’re learning that living into the value of vulnerability allows us to give of ourselves more freely.

Also, our commitments to each other, our Christian tradition, our faith community, our family of choice, and other people in general have grown in complexity and breadth since January. At the beginning, we really didn’t know what we were doing. We had been a couple for a little over a year, we had discerned vocations to celibacy lived in the world, and sensed that God was calling us into celibacy in partnership together. We were unsure of how this would manifest. How would we honor the commitment we have to one another, and what would be the best terminology for describing that? Would the people who had been telling us that we’re nothing more than “marriage without the sex” turn out to be right? As our relationship developed, would it come to look more like marriage, monasticism, or neither? The uncertainty hung over our heads like heavy rainclouds even though we had spent years independently pondering celibacy, marriage, and vocation. It has become clear to us over the past few months that we don’t need the perfect label to describe our mutual commitment or the commitments we have to God and others. For some things, there are no words — only wonder and mystery. We’ve learned that word choice isn’t what solidifies our willingness to be there for each other through thick and thin for the rest of our lives. We’ve also learned that as other people interact with our community of two in whatever ways they will, we don’t necessarily require language to describe our commitments to them either. A friend moves into our guest room for an indefinite period of time: does that make him a “member” of our community? Is he now part of our family? Another friend lives several hours away but is as emotionally and spiritually close to us as a brother: who is he to us, and how does that fit in with our vocation? We don’t worry about these things anymore. They’re distractions. Living celibacy is teaching us what it means to have faith that God — not humanity — is who truly makes vocations and relationships what they are.

The spiritual life we share began as a shared prayer rule. At the beginning of our relationship, we made a commitment to say Matins and Compline together every day, even if that meant one of us was reading while the other was driving to work. We experienced difficulty in honoring and appreciating the two very different spiritualities we bring into our current shared Christian tradition. Sarah’s inner Catholic and Lindsey’s inner evangelical had more than a few clashes at the beginning. As we’ve grown in our vocation, we’ve seen that a shared spiritual life involves significantly more than a daily prayer rule and debates over which variety of Christian music should blast from the car radio. Over time, we’ve experienced greater ease in discussing spiritual matters. We never hesitate to share openly about our personal spiritual lives with one another. Talking about our different experiences of sin and the graces of confession no longer has to be a theological debate and in hypothetical terms. These days in our home, “I’ve been struggling with x lately,” is met more often with, “I know and I’ve been waiting for you to talk with me about that,” than, “Really? What’s going on?” We’ve come to greater unity of mind when it comes to dealing with problems at church as well. We used to spend significantly more time thinking through dozens of possible approaches to troubled relationships with other parishioners and even more for broaching complicated issues with our priest. As it is now, we come to a sense of oneness very quickly most of the time when such issues arise. And if we’re in the midst of a difficult conversation with someone at church, we don’t have to wait for privacy to ask each other how to do better next time. We’re becoming a proficient team when it comes to managing the toughest parts of interaction with other humans.

When we started writing this post, we didn’t realize it would get lengthy this quickly! But we also wanted to touch upon a couple of other issues. This morning before publishing the post, we asked each other, “What do you think God is using our shared celibate vocation to teach you right now?” Lindsey’s answer focused on caregiving — that acts of providing and caring intimately for another person are not and should not be confined to marriage. We can both see how living celibacy is teaching us about the larger need for Christians (especially in the West) to rethink the artificial boundaries our societies have created around acts of care. Sarah’s response focused on the countercultural nature of celibacy — that an abundant Christian life in the world does not require marrying and having children, and that often, marriage has a way of locking people into certain cultural expectations. Celibacy poses challenges to the expectations our societies have for “responsible” adults, and it puts Christian traditions face to face with the idol we’ve made of marriage. We would like to delve more deeply into both these topics in later posts.

We’re grateful for all the lessons God has been teaching us as we strive to live our celibate vocations, and we’re awaiting eagerly what is to come. Circling back to the question at the beginning of the post: each day we see increasing evidence that, “Do I have an idea of what celibacy might mean for me?” is not truly a “yes or no” question. It’s a question that requires continuous and thorough self-examination in order to respond honestly. And our answer has become more organic and dynamic than either of us ever could have dreamed.

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