Tag Archives: celibacy

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.

“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.

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.

What I Wish I’d Known About Celibacy and Vocation As a Teenager, Part 2

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A reflection by Lindsey

Yesterday, Sarah wrote a surprise reflection about talking with teenagers about celibacy and vocation. I thought I’d follow suit with my own reflection on the same topic. Sarah and I grew up in radically different contexts, so I had different things I needed to learn about celibacy and vocation while growing up. Here are some of the things I wish I had learned about celibacy and vocation during my teenage years.

Not everyone marries. On the surface, it might be surprising to think that I needed to learn that not everyone marries. However, I grew up surrounded by couples. I knew marriages occasionally ended in divorce, but it seemed like every adult I knew had at least tried marriage. I can think of three adults I knew who weren’t married. I knew identically one nun, and I had two teachers who most deemed unable to attract a spouse. Growing up I thought every older single woman was a frumpy cat lady while every older single man was inept at dating. It was perfectly acceptable to mock older single people while regularly gossiping about why they were still single or how they were likely having a clandestine affair with each other.

Celibacy is a thing. To be honest, I can’t even remember hearing the word celibate as a teenager. I think I was 24 years old before I heard anyone talking about celibacy. I knew that some people failed to marry and were still single. Being single at 40 was a true tragedy. I learned to pity the two adults I knew who were unmarried, and I never once conceived of the idea that they might be actively loving and serving the world. It’s next to impossible to discern one’s vocation if one doesn’t even know about celibate lives.

One doesn’t need to “work for the church” in order to have a life-giving celibate vocation. When I started college, I became aware that some Christians decided to forgo marriage for the sake of God’s kingdom. People were actively encouraging me and my friends to become missionaries right after college. Many friends from college entered more formal kinds of ministry. I had this whacky idea that I’d somehow make it as a college professor who did college ministry on the side. My parents had instilled a profound sense of work-life balance in me. It made sense to me that I would divide my energies between being a professor and being a campus minister. I couldn’t imagine teaching and ministering to college students if I had a family to attend to. I saw every minister who worked as a “tentmaker” attempting to fund his or her own ministry efforts as bi-vocational. Other single people who were viewed highly by my college friends were people who did leave everything to become overseas missionaries. Celibacy made sense to me in the context of church-commissioned, full-time ministry. I would have liked to talk with people who had a broader view of vocation.

When discerning vocation, pay attention to which Scriptures speak to you… and which Scriptures don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like Scripture passages specifically discussing marriage spoke directly to my heart about how God wanted me to live my life. While I found the story of the Wedding at Cana intriguing, I also found it almost bewildering when my friends would start spouting off how badly they wanted to invite Jesus to their weddings. Was I a freak for wanting to understand more what Mary meant when she commanded the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to do? When I thought about the Scriptures that made me positively swoon in crazy hopes and dreams, why did I keep coming back to Luke 10? I would have loved to hear a spiritual director telling me that certain Scriptures had a way of depositing themselves into my heart for a reason and that it was okay for my set of most relatable Scriptures to be wholly distinct from those of other people in my Christian fellowship.

In many ways, I wish these lessons were more pervasive in the Church as a whole. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why celibate vocations are rarely discussed holistically in many Christian circles.

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.

What I Wish I’d Known About Celibacy and Vocation As a Teenager

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A reflection by Sarah

Of all conversations Lindsey and I engage in, some of the most interesting have been with people who are curious to know how we would talk with teenagers about celibate vocations. Parents and catechists in our own Christian tradition and others have reached out to ask us for input on discussing celibacy in church school and youth group contexts. A variety of other people have contacted us to express concern that because Lindsey and I are a celibate LGBT couple, we must be promoting a message that is toxic to teenagers, especially those who are or might be LGBT. On occasion we’ve been told, “I have to oppose what you’re doing at A Queer Calling because gay adults’ talking about celibacy leads LGBT youth to suicide.” Though I’ll admit upfront that I find this claim ridiculous, I can understand why readers are interested to know how Lindsey and I would talk about vocation with a group of teens if we had the opportunity for such a conversation. (By the way, up to this point such an opportunity has not arisen for us.) Sometimes readers also inform us that they are displeased with the way other celibate LGBT adults talk about celibacy with teenagers. My advice for dealing with this concern is that it’s best to address it with the person/people in question rather than holding us responsible for counsel offered by someone else.

Because we’ve been getting related queries more often in recent weeks, I’m reflecting on this topic today instead of posting one of our usual Saturday Symposium questions. For my part, I wish that teenage Sarah had known more adults who were willing to have no-holds-barred discussions of marriage, celibacy, and vocation with young people. I would have benefited immensely from this, and I see the absence of such conversation as a deficiency in my adolescent faith formation. In this post, I offer a list of things I wish someone would have told me about celibacy and vocation during my teen years. This list would be my starting point, should I ever be asked to give a talk to a church school or youth group.

Celibacy is not just for Catholic/Orthodox monastics and Catholic priests. There are lay people living in the world as celibates, and they are present in virtually every local community. Most of them have never had the opportunity to share their stories, and some would be delighted to talk with you about their lives. As you are coming into adulthood, you’ll develop a broader appreciation of what it means to be an adult in the Christian tradition if you engage in conversation with people living into different vocations. During middle school, high school, and college, challenge yourself to learn from the adults who are unmarried and unattached to monastic communities as well as those who are. As you do this, you will come to see that marriage is not the only way a person can participate fully in the life of the Church.

Celibacy is a vocation. Or depending upon how you look at it, we might also say that celibacy can be part of a vocation. Celibacy is not a punishment, mandate, or death sentence. It is a mature, adult way of life that enables people to manifest and participate in the Kingdom of God. This is also true of marriage. Just as there’s a lot more to marriage than having a spouse and welcoming children, there’s more to celibacy than sexual abstinence. If you are considering a celibate vocation, it is unhealthy and limiting to think of your purpose in life as “not having sex.” At fifteen, it’s tough to imagine what celibacy could possibly be if it’s not just about avoiding sex. That’s why it’s very important to get to know adults living celibate vocations. Exploring what it means to live a celibate vocation will enrich your understanding of the Christian tradition, even if once you reach adulthood you discern that God is calling you to marriage.

Celibacy can be a gift, but God sometimes calls people to do things for which they are not specially gifted or well equipped. Just like the vocation to marriage, a celibate vocation will involve joys as well as sorrows. You might have the gift of celibacy, or you might not. You may have a strong sense of this right now, or you may need to spend the next few years thinking about it. But you don’t have to figure that out right now, and it should not be the sole determining factor for answering the question, “How is God calling me to spend my life?” The key word in all of this is not gift — it’s calling. In the course of your lifetime, it’s likely that God will call you to at least one thing for which you do not feel prepared. That could be a career you never imagined yourself pursuing, missionary work in a faraway place that seems frightening, or friendship with a person who is struggling with a problem you have never experienced. If God calls you to parenthood, you may never sense that you are specially gifted as a mother or father. Jonah in the Old Testament was neither equipped nor eager when God commanded him to prophesy against Nineveh. Do not dismiss the possibility that the same can be true (and often is true) of those God calls to celibacy. I know a large number of celibate people in a variety of vocational contexts, and very few of them would say that their celibacy comes from a special gift. Some people may tell you that unless you know in your heart that God has given you the “gift of celibacy,” you should not consider pursuing a celibate vocation. These same people will probably never be able to give you a straight answer as to how you would know if you have this gift or not. Focusing on the gift of celibacy can be a distraction, especially if you grow up and do not sense giftedness toward any particular vocation. Think instead about “God’s calling to celibacy” and “God’s calling to marriage,” and find a compassionate spiritual director to help you ponder how God might be asking you to spend your life.

Celibacy and purity are not the same. Western Christianity, particularly in America, has come to emphasize purity so strongly that the practice of celibacy as lost its meaning in some traditions. While making morally sound decisions regarding sex is an important part of the Christian life, God knows that humans don’t do morality perfectly. If you have been or are currently sexually active, that does not make you unfit or ineligible for living a celibate vocation. If another person has sinned against you sexually, if you have been abused, assaulted, or raped, you are not at fault. You are not responsible for the sins others have committed against you. No matter what you have done and no matter what others have done to you, you are not a half-eaten candy bar, a wad of chewed gum, or a piece of tape that has lost its stickiness. Anyone who tells you such things is misleading you. Living fully into any vocation is a goal, not a lifelong state of perfection. Separate celibacy and purity in your mind right now. Committing a sin or being sinned against does not taint your body and soul for life. Living perfectly in accordance with conservative American purity standards from cradle to grave is not a requirement for answering God’s call to a celibate vocation.

Celibacy does not mean denying or repressing your sexuality, and God may be calling you to celibacy even if you find the idea of “having sex” appealing. Celibate people have sex drives just like married people. Most people who are called to celibacy do find the idea of sex appealing and often experience the desire for sex. While asexuality is real, the vast majority of celibates are not asexual. Celibacy is not a miserable state of getting through each day while trying every tip and trick possible to quiet unsatisfied sexual desire. If God is calling you to celibacy, the only way to live into that sustainably is to accept yourself as a sexual person (unless you are asexual, in which case accepting one’s asexuality would also be central to living celibacy sustainably). Where you are in life right now, it’s probably difficult to understand that it’s possible for a celibate person to integrate rather than excise his or her sexuality. This integration begins with honesty and open conversations. Depending upon your situation, it may also require learning to let go of shame.

Coming to understand and accept your sexual orientation might play into your vocational discernment process. Or it might not. For some people, discerning God’s call to marriage or to celibacy is primarily about the question, “To which type of vocation am I better suited?” For others, it’s about a deep sense of call that has been present from childhood onward. Still for others, the desire (or lack of desire) for a spouse and children is a starting point. There are probably as many possible motivators for considering celibacy and marriage as there are people discerning. Amongst many people across the sexual ethics ideological spectrum, the idea that sexual orientation could be a primary factor in vocational discernment is unpopular and sometimes met with hostility. You might be told by one person that if sexual orientation plays any role in your discernment process, you are engaging in self-loathing. You may hear from others that sexual orientation does not actually exist, and that people who “struggle with same-sex attraction” should work hard to prepare themselves for opposite-sex marriages. Avoid internalizing these messages and instead focus on asking God, “What are you calling me to do? How will I know what you are calling me to do?” Be open to the possibility that your sexual orientation could play a role in how you approach those questions. I’m not here to tell you that it necessarily should or must, but for some people it does and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In the spirit of our Saturday Symposium questions, I’m going to end this post by inviting our readers to reflect on the following: what do you wish an adult had told you about celibacy and vocation when you were a teenager? How would you use what you know now to help today’s tweens, teens, and young adults navigate difficult questions of sexuality and vocation? I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments.

Update: Lindsey wrote a brief companion piece to this one.

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