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Expectations of Perfection

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As LGBT Christians in our late 20s and early 30s, we’ve seen many differences in the way people are urged to develop healthy senses of sexuality. Throughout our own journeys in uniting faith and sexuality, we’ve observed time and time again the way many Christian traditions assert that if an LGBT person is sincerely a Christian, then he or she simply will not make any mistakes in the area of sexual morality. This line of thought might come from a belief that it’s adequate to tell a faithful, LGBT Christian to avoid every appearance of evil and give no further counsel.

Why might cisgender, heterosexual Christians expect LGBT Christians to be perfect? Perhaps these expectations come from cisgender, heterosexual Christians trying to get their heads around the idea that “Yes, it is possible to be a gay Christian.” People willing to extend a gay person the benefit of the doubt at times draw what seems to be a razor-thin line that differentiates the “good” gays from the “bad” gays. “Good” gays don’t have sex. When some conservative Christians draw these lines, anything less than perfect abstinence falls short and is understood as evidence that the Holy Spirit is not at work in the life of that gay “Christian.” Here, we see indications of a bit of neo-Pelagianism creeping into the forefront: a faithful gay Christian should be able to provide ample evidence of faithfulness because that person is capable of reigning in his/her sexual energies.

An unhealthy obsession with perfection enters because the LGBT person trying to live a faithful life in the Church zooms in on doing whatever it takes to prevent sexual sin, no matter how extreme. This kind of expectation puts insurmountable pressures on LGBT Christians and leads many of them down the road of questioning their commitment to Christ, their suitability to be in a church community, and their right to continue to draw air. LGBT Christians live on a spiritual fault line where one action has the potential to separate them from the Church. The expectation of perfection creates indescribable fear where they can become terrified to talk with their spiritual mentors, dreading interactions as one would dread a terrorist attack. LGBT Christians can develop practices of rehearsing their parts of the conversation when approaching spiritual direction, if they go at all.

To cope with this pressure, LGBT Christians can acquire a lexicon of various code-switching phrases to try to discuss sexuality safely… but may consistently feel under attack when a member of the clergy decides to read more into that choice of words than the person intended. For example, if the LGBT Christian is talking about concerns involving a close friend, some spiritual directors might assume the person has a sexually active relationship without ever asking if this is the case. Additionally, we’ve noticed that many spiritual directors are more comfortable with particular lexicons. These spiritual directors might encourage people to say they “experience same-sex attraction” rather than saying that they are “gay” or “lesbian,” sometimes going so far as to tell them, “Identifying as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ is denouncing your identity in Christ!”

Expectations of perfection may also emerge because many providers of pastoral care tend to view sexual sin as a type of sin that is around forever and must always be carefully contained. Some of this attitude may stem from how Christian traditions emphasize purity and virginity, especially when encouraging youth to wait until marriage before having sex. Any sexual sin in an LGBT person’s life can lead to extreme consequences within his/her faith community. Once as a young college student, Sarah sought counsel from a priest about how to develop a healthy relationship with a woman after they had experimented with some above-the-waist touching. The priest provided a stern directive that Sarah should never speak to this woman ever again and avoid her in every situation possible because Sarah’s salvation was at risk. Within the same week, one of Sarah’s heterosexual male friends sought advice from the same priest after engaging in sexual intercourse with his girlfriend. Sarah’s friend later told Sarah that the priest’s counsel was simply, “Obey the Church’s teaching that sex is reserved for marriage, and avoid situations like this one with your girlfriend in the future.” When LGBT people have spiritual directors bellowing over them that failure to be perfect endangers their salvation, it should come as no surprise that LGBT Christians can become so focused on trying to be perfect that they begin to hate themselves for being human.

Cisgender, heterosexual people can (and should!) encounter a lot of grace in navigating questions around sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression. Most LGBT Christians are not so fortunate. Part of adolescence involves exploring, finding yourself, and figuring out how to get up when you fall down. No one expects a teenager to have instant control over the hormones raging through his or her body, and everyone can acknowledge the need for gracious support as young adults work to discover themselves in Christ. There’s a certain collection of behaviors that we tend to associate with people at different stages in sexual development. It’s good to match our words of advice with a healthy understanding of a particular person’s likely stage in sexual development. LGBT people need to be afforded the same courtesy as cisgender, heterosexual people. To expect LGBT Christians to prove their faithfulness over and over and over (and over….) again by remaining without sexual sin is to tie up heavy burdens on people without any willingness to lift a finger to help them manage the load.

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.

9 Things We Wish Straight Allies Knew

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We know many straight people who are interested in actively supporting the LGBT community. Some people choose to be allies by simply being our close friends, other people choose to be allies by lobbying for legislation that can mitigate harms being done to the LGBT community, and still more people choose to be allies through different mechanisms. Some of our friends have felt compelled by their Christian faith to learn more about LGBT issues and concerns to be agents for positive change. So many of our straight allies have worked to educate themselves when encountering LGBT people with unfamiliar stories. Yet at times, we feel that messages regarding what makes a person an ally are given with the assumption that all LGBT people have the same needs, views, and life experiences. From our perspective as a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple, here are 9 things the two of us wish our straight allies knew.

1. We are individuals.
LGBT people are just as diverse as the rest of the population, so there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to being supportive of all of us. What one LGBT person might perceive as supportive, another may see differently. This is also true of LGBT Christians. For example, many LGBT Christians are grateful for allies who advocate for change in their denominations’ theologies of marriage. However, there are also LGBT Christians who are in complete agreement with the teachings of their respective Christian traditions on this matter. There are LGBT couples who desire that their relationships be recognized as marriages within their denominations, and there are LGBT couples who understand their relationships as something different from marriage. Because we are individuals, it is helpful to ask us what we would find most supportive instead of assuming that all of us have the same feelings, needs, opinions, and theological positions.

2. Our stories belong to us.
Regardless of sexual orientation, every person has a story. Stories are powerful and dynamic. They come in many varieties: childhood stories, coming of age stories, coming out stories, faith stories. They hold vital pieces of ourselves, so to share one’s story with another person is to become vulnerable, entrusting that person to safeguard a precious gift. Please remember, especially with stories related to our coming out processes and faith journeys, that these stories belong to us even if we’ve shared them with you once. Not every LGBT person is comfortable with his or her story being used for political purposes. If you’re going to share our stories with other people, cultivate real relationships with us where you can stay current on how our stories are developing over time.

3. We are glad to answer your questions.
We really mean that. Of course, the two of us can’t speak for every LGBT person, but at least from our perspective, questions are welcome. We would much rather answer questions about our way of life, our self-understandings, and our faith than be told what we should or shouldn’t be doing by people who haven’t walked a mile in our moccasins. We have many straight ally friends who are constantly posing new questions to us. Often, these questions challenge us to think more deeply, and to become better Christians. However we have also encountered many allies who seem to think they know everything that is best for LGBT people. They’ve done a lot of reading, talked to a lot of people, and formed their own conclusions. We would like to stress that we appreciate all the researching and communicating our allies do on a regular basis, but what you have read, heard, and seen from other people and sources does not give you the right to make blanket statements about what all LGBT people should do in a given situation.

4. We aren’t just LGBT. We are people, first and foremost.
Our self-understandings as lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender, queer, etc. are very important to us. However, our identities also have many layers. We are sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, teachers, engineers, church members…but we are also people, and that is what matters most. We are not just your “gay friends” or “transgender friends.” We are human beings made in the image and likeness of God. While we are glad to talk with you about LGBT issues, our lives do not involve thinking constantly about our sexual orientations. Start conversations with us in the same way you would with other straight people you know. Ask us about our trip to the art museum last weekend, or our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, or the time we spent volunteering with the local wildlife rescue. There are far more interesting subjects to discuss with us than how we feel about the most recent case of a gay couple being denied a table at a restaurant. The more you talk with us, the more you’ll probably see that our lives aren’t very different from yours.

5. Gay marriage isn’t the only issue.
It seems almost anytime a straight person realizes that we are members of the LGBT community, that person’s conversation with us ultimately ends up at the topic of gay marriage. Sometimes, that person will self-identify as an ally and begin telling us how ardently he/she supports gay marriage and how deeply shameful and oppressive he/she thinks it is that gay relationships do not have legal recognition in every U.S. state. We’ve written on the issue of legal recognition before, so clearly we see it as an important topic worthy of serious discussion. But gay marriage is not the only issue of concern for LGBT people. We’re also concerned about the discrimination we can encounter in our places of work, the fact that our LGBT statuses could prevent us from being offered a lease on an apartment, and the reality that we could be refused services at a local business on the basis of our sexual orientations and gender identities. But much more significant than any of those issues are the experiences of LGBT people in countries with far fewer freedoms. There are countries, like Uganda, in which being gay can land a person in prison with a life sentence. There are also places in the world where gay people face the risk of being killed. In the grand scheme of things, we believe situations like these call for a much more urgent response, including constant prayer from the entire Body of Christ.

6. Celibacy and self-loathing are not synonyms.
Frequently, well-intentioned straight allies assume that if an LGBT person is celibate, he or she is trapped in a state of self-loathing. Secular allies can be quick to tell celibate LGBT people that we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated by religious dogma. Christian allies can be just as quick to offer the message, “Jesus loves you no matter what. I can support you in accepting that it’s okay to have sex.” Sometimes, allies make assumptions about the sexual activity statuses of LGBT couples; if a person is in a relationship, this must mean he or she is sexually active or intends to become so in the future. These kinds of attitudes and remarks can be exceptionally wounding, and just as hurtful as the common message we get from many conservative Christians: “You can’t be gay and a Christian.” When straight allies either state or imply that we are repressed because of our celibacy, the message we hear is, “You can’t be gay without having sex.” Asking more questions about our way of life is a much kinder, more compassionate approach.

7. Not all LGBT people want to be activists and educators.
It’s true that some LGBT people feel drawn to the roles of activist and educator. However, not all are so inclined just by virtue of our sexual orientations and gender identities, and we do not “owe it to the LGBT community” to fill those roles. Many of us want only to live our boring, daily lives in peace. Please do not assume that if there is a local protest regarding a marriage amendment that all your queer neighbors will be penciling that into their calendars. And please do not expect that we will want to make the national news if we experience discrimination in some aspect of our daily activities. When we share an experience of hurt or injustice with you, “Which news outlet should I call first?” is not the appropriate question to ask. Forcing us into the spotlight over said incident is not doing us or the broader LGBT community any favors. A better question to ask might be, “How did you feel when that happened?” or “What can I do to support you as you process this?”

8. Pronouns matter.
Many LGBT people can feel exhausted by having to play pronoun games. We sincerely appreciate friends who care enough to learn our patterns of pronoun use. For some of us, respecting pronoun preferences can be as simple as asking, “What are your preferred pronouns?” Yet for others, the pronoun questions are not so simple. Transgender and genderqueer people might relish in having a safe place where others use the right pronouns but could also fear being outed in public. Some genderqueer people prefer avoiding pronouns all together. Be willing to ask questions, practice using appropriate pronouns, and understand why certain people might feel like they have no choice but to try and play pronoun games.

9. We are grateful for your support.
We know many LGBT people who probably wouldn’t make it without support of straight allies. The two of us have been tremendously blessed by some of our straight friends who have committed to travel with us as we adventure through life. As we reflect on the people who have been most supportive and just generally wonderful friends, we can identify an incredible number of straight allies. Some of our straight allies were the first people to know our LGBT identities. Many of our straight allies have helped us feel safer and more welcome in various church communities. We have been so blessed by sharing our lives with some of you for 10 years or more. Thank you so much for seeing us not simply as your LGBT friends but as members of your family.

Whether you are an LGBT person or a straight ally, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. What do you wish straight allies knew?

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.

Choosing Celibacy: Why I’m Glad I Waited

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A reflection by Sarah

There’s a story that celibate gay people are supposed to tell with regard to how and why we became celibate. It’s little more than a variation on the ex-gay narrative that dominated the discussion about LGBT people in the Church until recent years. It goes something like: “I lived the gay lifestyle, was a slave to promiscuity, did a lot of drinking and drugging, and then years later, realized something was missing from my life: Jesus. I repented, began seeing a Christian counselor, and ultimately God helped me to stop having sex.” That’s not the story you’re about to read. That story, excepting the substance abuse bit (a topic I might address in the future), is not mine.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a certain type of popular article emerging on the Internet: different riffs on the theme, “Reasons I’m Glad I Married Young.” I have a number of friends who married immediately after high school graduation (some during high school) and many more who tied the knot during college or within a year of graduating. My younger sister met her future husband in college and married last June, just three weeks shy of her 23rd birthday. My parents were high school sweethearts and married two months after my father’s college graduation. I have no opposition to people embracing the vocation of marriage at early ages if they feel so inclined. I’m happy for my friends who have felt called to this pathway, and I wish them many joyous years of life with their spouses and children. But reading articles like this one and this one tends to evoke a consistent reaction in me: “I’m glad I waited until my late twenties to choose celibacy, and to begin a celibate partnership of the forever kind. I’m glad that I did not commit to this vocation at an earlier age.”

At this point, you might be perplexed. To many, celibacy seems like a default condition in life. It’s the temporary state that traditional Christianity teaches a person is supposed to maintain until marriage. It only becomes permanent once a person reaches his/her marriageable expiration date and becomes a bachelor or old maid, or less often, once a person embraces a call to religious life. Many view it as the state of life for those who are too young to have sex, those of age who are simply waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right, and those who don’t have a prayer of ever experiencing sexual activity in their lifetimes. And if you’re young, society tells you that you’re supposed to avoid the last category at all costs. If you’ve been reading any of our other posts, you’re probably well aware that Lindsey and I don’t see celibacy this way. We believe that celibacy is as much a commitment to a way of life as is marriage, and that in order to make such a commitment, either as a single or with a partner, one needs to be prepared.

I wasn’t born prepared for celibacy any more than my sister was born prepared for marriage. In fact, if someone had told me as a teenager that I would eventually end up living a celibate lifestyle, I would have thought that person was a few apples short of a bushel. Even by age 19 when I had begun to consider the possibility of a monastic vocation, celibacy was still more of a faraway possibility than a realistic pathway for working out my salvation. During my time as an undergraduate and, to a lesser extent, as a master’s degree student, I visited several monasteries and attended a number of retreats aimed at vocational discernment. There was something about the way nuns loved and gave selflessly to the world that captivated me. The witness of several sisters I had known personally spoke to my heart in a way nothing ever had before. But I never could conceive of myself actually becoming a nun.

In many ways, I desired what the sisters had, but every time I visited a community and started to head home afterward I thought, “This way of life isn’t for me. There’s something about it that just doesn’t fit.” I attempted to discuss this with friends, spiritual directors, and other people I trusted. Everyone seemed to have the same set of questions: “Is it the celibacy thing? The fact that nuns can’t have sex? You can’t see yourself living a life without sex, can you?” Though I knew all along that it wasn’t the “not having sex” part that was bothering me, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the problem was. The way the sisters cared for each other and the people they served, the spiritual life they shared in community, the generosity that was so apparent in every moment of every day at the monasteries…though I’d had a couple of less-than-pleasant monastery visits, in general I could think only of the positives. Still, it was all too easy to reach the premature conclusion that if I didn’t feel called to join a religious community, God wasn’t calling me to a celibate vocation after all.

In the midst of all my monastery adventures, I was also engaged in another type of exploration. Though I can now remember being attracted to other females from as early as age 8 or 9, the idea that I might be “one of those girls who likes other girls” hit me hard for the first time around age 17 when I was a senior in high school and was dating a boy. It took me a few years more to realize that “lesbian” was the most fitting term for describing my sexual orientation, and slowly I began dating other women. My first sexual experience with another woman came during my senior year of college. The relationship I had with this person was significant on many levels, and I’ll always value the ways in which our emotional intimacy helped me to learn about loving and being loved. Throughout most of my twenties, I pursued a number of romantic relationships, many of them having a sexual element. Some were more serious than others, and some included aspects that I am not proud of, but I can say with confidence that each of these women had something to teach me with regard to becoming more fully human and coming to understand Christ’s love with greater intensity. I struggled a great deal with the conflict between my positive experiences of love shared with other women and my perception of the celibacy mandate I heard constantly from clergy and lay members of the Church. While I am now grateful for the celibate vocation I eventually committed to cultivating in partnership with Lindsey, I am also thankful for many aspects of the intimate relationships I experienced before making this commitment. Those two feelings are not mutually exclusive.

All things considered, why am I glad that I waited to choose celibacy? The answer is simple: because when I did choose this way of life, I was ready to embrace it fully—its beauty, its mystery, and its challenges. Taking the time I needed to mature and prepare for this vocation was absolutely necessary–even though during the process, I wasn’t always aware of that for which I was preparing.

When Lindsey and I first decided to become partners, all the missing pieces from my active vocational discernment period began falling into place. The notion that celibacy might be the way God was calling me to live reemerged, and this time it made sense in a way it never had before. It no longer felt like a distant possibility or an order handed down from a tyrant. The very first hour we began to envision what life together might look like, I remembered wise words I had heard from a nun during a monastery visit eight years prior. I had asked Sister Elizabeth, “When did you know for sure that God was calling you to this vocation, and in this specific monastic community?” I’ve never forgotten her reply: “I knew when I visited the monastery and felt an unmistakable sense of joy.” From day one of my partnership with Lindsey, there has been no expression more fitting than “joy” for what we experience together—whether we are taking an exciting road trip, praying Compline, visiting our favorite cupcakery, wringing out laundry due to the washing machine’s malfunctioning mid-cycle, or arguing because of a misunderstanding. But even as powerfully as I feel that joy now, I am equally convinced that if I had attempted forcing myself into celibacy within the wrong context for me or at a time when I was not prepared, profound depression and emptiness would have been the most likely result.

I am glad I waited to choose celibacy because I believe it is a gift—or at least it can be. Waiting allowed me the opportunity to listen as God gradually, in His own time, invited me to discover it and begin unwrapping the layers. Waiting also gave me several years to reflect and reach the conclusion that celibacy is not simply the default state for the unmarried—that it is a way of life one must actively choose, and defining it as “the absence of sex” limits the meaning of all celibate vocations. All too often, Christians encourage celibate LGBT people to forget the experiences of their non-celibate pasts, viewing these as times of sin to be regretted and pushed aside. I believe this approach is unhealthy and detrimental to the development of a mature spirituality. Because I waited to choose celibacy, I am able to look fondly upon all previous stages of my emotional, spiritual, and sexual development and know that each period of my life thus far has brought with it new wisdom, insight, and lessons taught by others far wiser than me.

The decision to embrace any vocation is just that—a decision, and one that requires careful thought and formation within the context of a supportive community. Sometimes, I wonder what might happen if the Church were to take as much responsibility for guiding and directing those God calls to celibacy as it does for those God calls to marriage. But perhaps that’s a question for another time.

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.

Dealing with Loneliness

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Since we have started this blog, we’ve noted different people on the Internet and in real life creating questions to help them make sense of the choices we have made. Some of the questions have included: Are these two terribly oppressed by religion?, Do they have non-existent sex drives?, How long could they possibly last as a ‘celibate’ couple?, and What kind of boundaries do they have?. Recently, Mark Yarhouse authored a blog post where he encouraged people to avoid rushing to judgment about how we have chosen to live our lives as LGBT Christians. In this post, he writes, “I suspect that for them it feels like the ‘risks’ (if you will) associated with a partnership of this kind outweigh the potential for loneliness or isolation many people report in remaining single.” Here, Yarhouse seems to be suggesting that we embarked on our partnership together with an expressed intention of avoiding loneliness. Indeed, loneliness is often perceived as the issue for LGBT people adopting a celibate way of life. Wesley Hill’s book Washed and Waiting devotes nearly 30 pages in an attempt to give celibate LGBT people hope that loneliness can end. However, we think it is all too easy to view loneliness as a celibate person’s most significant struggle, and also to assume that two people have decided to live in a celibate partnership because it is the best alternative to lifelong loneliness.

First a disclaimer: We have both benefited from being embedded in many different kinds of communities before we ever met each other. Being in academia (as we both are) connects an individual to communities where people regularly share ideas, have reasonably flexible schedules, and organize periodic social events. We’ve lived with roommates, housemates, and alone. We currently live together, and we suspect that celibate people who live their lives in community with others experience loneliness differently than people who live alone.

Now for a more direct answer to the implicit question raised.

To be completely honest, loneliness was the farthest thing from our minds when we began our relationship. We had spent several months getting to know each other as friends. Sharing life together came naturally for us. We have common interests, life goals, and spiritual commitments. Our lives intersected in an organic way, and we fell into a rhythm of doing life together.

We’ve seen plenty of people from across the entire sexual orientation spectrum enter into romantic relationships with the intention of overcoming loneliness. From where we sit, these relationships are ripe for partners to manipulate each other. In this sort of relationship, a person becomes a means to an end rather than being seen and appreciated as an individual. We’d also contend that people in relationships driven primarily by a desire to overcome loneliness will likely struggle to live out a celibate vocation together. The pull of overcoming loneliness can cause the pair involved to look inwardly towards each other rather than outwardly towards a radical hospitality.

While it seems like we are speaking from a privileged position of being in a relationship, we would like to point out that in certain circumstances, being in a relationship can actually cause people to experience profound loneliness. Sarah has had previous experiences in committed relationships, some involving sexual intimacy, that lacked the emotional and spiritual depth required to be vulnerable, to feel safe, to be heard, and to feel validated. When committed relationships of any kind carry with them a vacuum of love and support, a person can experience the most profound sense of loneliness associated with being rejected by the person with whom he or she is trying to share life. There’s at least some truth in the adage that you must first learn to enjoy being in a relationship with yourself before you have much to offer another in a committed partnership, celibate or otherwise.

It also strikes us as sort of bonkers that two people would forge a lasting partnership from the ordering of “I’m lonely, you’re lonely, let’s be lonely together!” Lonely is an individual emotion in which every person has to sort his or her preferred strategies for coping. When Lindsey feels lonely, Lindsey distinctly prefers to take a walk in solitude somewhere reasonably connected with nature or to enjoy a special treat like a cupcake. When Sarah feels lonely, Sarah seeks a change of venue and looks for opportunities to be around a lot of people in the city, having random conversations with people hanging out in different places. We’d contend that loneliness is an emotion that can clue us in that something’s not quite right. It’s a valid emotion to look out for. When loneliness is not addressed, it can lead to unhealthy forms of isolation; but the two states do not need to go hand-in-hand.

We do not mean to trivialize how other people experience loneliness. In some ways, we think it makes sense to speak of the experience of a celibate, LGBT person as alienating. A celibate, LGBT person can experience a double-whammy of social exclusion in a world that normalizes the experience of married, cisgender, heterosexual people. It can be difficult for any unmarried individual to feel especially at home among peers who are establishing families. It is much harder when unmarried people feels as though they need to be vigilant less they let their LGBT statuses “slip” in unsafe contexts. We are grateful that more LGBT Christians have come out of the closet even in very conservative Christian traditions. It’s harder to feel alienated when you know other people like yourself.

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.

Providing Spiritual Direction

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We do our best to maintain an active Twitter feed where we socialize with people reading our blog in real time. We regularly ask people what questions they have or what topics they would like us to address on the blog. One of our Twitter friends raised the following questions: How do you view spiritual direction? How would you counsel spiritual directors of LGBT people?

We’ll start with a brief, but hopefully helpful, definition of spiritual direction. We believe that spiritual direction is a process forged in a mutually respectful relationship where a spiritual director comes alongside a person to help that person discern how God may be calling him or her to grow ever-increasingly towards Christ-likeness. Every human being finds himself or herself negotiating complex realities where it’s not immediately clear how God might be working in and through the specific circumstances. We think spiritual directors would do well to remind themselves constantly that spiritual direction is a fearsome task that must be fully bathed in prayer. Good spiritual directors spend the vast majority of time in spiritual direction listening, both to the person seeking spiritual direction and to God.

Relative to providing spiritual direction to LGBT members of a parish community, we think it worth mentioning that LGBT people are first and foremost people. An LGBT person will bring very similar concerns to spiritual direction as a cisgender, heterosexual person. Many times, LGBT people will be talking with spiritual directors about all sorts of human issues before discussing their LGBT status. However, as soon as a person discloses his or her LGBT status, many spiritual directors truncate their usual practices and immediately start talking. For some spiritual directors, learning that a person is gay can cue an auto-tape where suddenly, the spiritual director is the font of all wisdom and the gay person cannot get a word in edgewise. If you find yourself as a spiritual director with this habit, stop that. So many LGBT people have encountered such a great number of auto-tapes that they have adopted a habit of listening politely once, and then never darkening the church’s doorstep again.

One reason spiritual directors start talking and stop listening is they make assumptions about what a person means when disclosing his or her LGBT status. The sentence “I’m gay” can conjure up all sorts of associations. As a strategy for cutting through the script, spiritual directors can ask questions like “What does being gay mean to you?” to offer reassurances that they are still listening and care about providing direction to a person. It’s also great to ask questions like “Have you discussed this with anyone else? What were their reactions?” Sentences like, “I’m glad you thought you could broach this subject with me,” can be reassuring to some people. We think it’s impossible to go wrong in telling LGBT people that they are welcome in your faith community, they are beloved by God, and you know that they bring a tremendous blessing to your community. You might be the first spiritual director from within your tradition ever to tell that LGBT person he or she is welcome in the parish.

We think there are two main ways certain auto-tapes can negatively impact members of the LGBT community. One, some spiritual directors can default into assigning someone a vocation. A reasonably common assigned vocation is, “Well, if you’re gay, then you have to be celibate.” For many LGBT people, this assignment comes like an unfunded mandate at best and a death sentence at worst. Another commonly assigned vocation is, “Well, just pray and God will enable you to live fully into a heterosexual marriage.” This latter assigned vocation can lead to false hopes and produce destroyed lives should the LGBT person feel obligated to enter a mixed-orientation marriage. Two, other spiritual directors try to emphasize guiding people towards normative gender expectations. Spiritual directors will typically start these auto-tapes with sentences like, “Your identity should be in Christ. You are a powerful, strong, and talented MAN of God!” When spiritual directors using this approach begin to pray for people, they emphasize pronouns: “God, thank you for SUSAN. Guide HER into all truth, showing HER your plans for HER life. Help HER to see HERSELF as you see HER.” They start encouraging “the guys” to join in on various athletic teams organized by the church while connecting “the girls” with opportunities to serve in the children’s ministry. For transgender and genderqueer individuals, this kind of pastoral treatment can leave them feeling invisible and discarded. For gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals, all of a sudden gender norms have become the sole marker of their “gifts” to their community.

While some LGBT people may feel comfortable with educating their spiritual directors on matters related to sexual orientation and gender identity, many (even most) likely will not. Do not automatically expect an LGBT person to educate you. If you as a spiritual director do not have any experience offering spiritual direction to LGBT individuals, then default towards treating them like your other parishioners. Trust God to give you wisdom about how to respond to specific individuals (because everyone is different) and know that each LGBT person is likely figuring out his or her own queer calling. If you’d like us to try to track down resources that might be useful for your specific context, feel free to use the comments box or our Contact Us form. One good starting resource is a documentary called Through My Eyes that can give you some idea what it might be like to sit across the table from a young adult trying to sort questions of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Relative to your own education as a spiritual director, think about what you know about marriage and celibacy as vocations. It can be helpful for you to review what your own Christian tradition says about marriage and celibacy from a theological standpoint. Too many spiritual directors look for resources about what their tradition teaches about homosexuality. In traditions that regard homosexuality as a sin full stop, the official teaching can be focused so much on exhortations to avoid homosexual sin that it backs LGBT people into a corner. For example, it’s commonplace that spiritual directors will recommend that men do not cultivate close, intimate friendships with women unless the man intends to marry a woman. When you apply this counsel to LGBT people, it can sound like “We don’t want you to have close, intimate friendships with people of your same sex because you will be constantly facing temptation, but you still can’t have close, intimate friendships with people of the opposite sex because we don’t let heterosexual people do that unless they are planning on marrying each other.” An LGBT person trying to follow such direction can very easily find himself or herself cut off from all relationships; and, these efforts can wreak havoc on the person’s sense of well-being and acceptance. If you as a spiritual director focus on finding resources about marriage and celibacy, then you’ll have a much greater appreciation of the struggles LGBT people have applying the existing teaching to their lives… and you’ll be in a better place to help them locate information within the context of your specific Christian tradition.

Because Christian culture broadly understood is readily perceived as telling LGBT people NO!, we’d like to stress that good spiritual directors want to cut through the noise in order to find all of the yeses associated with an abundant life in Christ. Many Christian LGBT people can be so aware of what they cannot do that they lack any assurances that there are things they can do. Remember that good spiritual direction is borne out of a mutually respectful relationship that encourages a person to cultivate greater Christ-likeness. As a spiritual director, it’s important to meet people where they are so you can journey towards Christ together. Keep your focus on Christ, cultivate humility by practicing empathy, and be quick to ask for forgiveness when you make mistakes. May the light of Christ illumine the way.

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