Tag Archives: spirituality

Cultivating Emotional Intimacy

Posted on by

When someone you know is going through a hard time, it’s natural to ask that person whether he or she has adequate support. As our regular readers know, the last several months have thrown many challenges our way. We are continuing to stand firm because we’re able to support one another. Many people have asked us what our intimacy looks like, and today we’d like to address a question we’ve received: “How do you cultivate emotional intimacy in a celibate relationship?” In most ways, our response is no different from what we would expect to hear from a healthy, non-celibate couple.

Upon coming into relationship with one another, we fell almost immediately into a natural pattern of cultivating deep emotional intimacy, and we’ve seen that continuing as our relationship has grown. There’s something about our personalities that has allowed each of us to “get” the other, even though we’ve both experienced being profoundly misunderstood by many people in our lives. Sometimes, two people can just click.

Our friendship blossomed because we were willing to be vulnerable with each other. As we’ve shared before, we believe that vulnerability opens the door to intimacy. When we were just beginning getting to know each other, we shared random facts about ourselves and our lives. Lindsey learned that Sarah used to wear mismatched socks to express Sarah’s individuality in elementary school. Sarah learned that as a kid, Lindsey worked to save money so Lindsey could attend Space Camp three times. These micro-stories gave us opportunities to share an incredible number of life experiences and the various emotions associated with these experiences. We each saw bits and pieces of the other’s personality, and came to appreciate some similarities while acknowledging some real differences in our pasts. Our selections were truly random, spanning from the deeply significant to the absolutely trivial. In addition to helping us get to know one another as people, sharing these stories laid a foundation for our coming to trust one another.

Early on in our friendship, we made a commitment to being completely honest with one another. Honesty is one of the highest values for both of us, and we’ve both experienced past relationships in which we or our significant others have had difficulty with being forthright. Because of this, we’ve challenged each other to be radically open about our thoughts, feelings, and mistakes when there’s a problem. Within the first month of our friendship, we had already started to see this pattern emerging between us. Though at first Lindsey considered the topic embarrassing, Lindsey shared openly with Sarah about Lindsey’s writing anxiety and the kind of support needed in order to manage it. Since we’re both writing doctoral dissertations, that type of information has been vital to ensure that we’re accomplishing our goals without sacrificing our emotional needs. Since the time Lindsey first opened up to Sarah about writing anxiety, Sarah has been able to check in with Lindsey about it and provide comfort and encouragement when Lindsey needs it most. Equally humiliating was the first time Sarah told Lindsey about Sarah’s eating disorder history. Because many people assume that these conditions are merely attention-seeking devices for wealthy, white, teenage girls and not legitimate medical conditions that could affect someone Sarah’s age, it has been a struggle for Sarah to be authentic about the need for support. But when Sarah did open up to Lindsey about this for the first time, Lindsey was unimaginably supportive and impressed by Sarah’s commitment to living a recovery-focused lifestyle even during the hard times. Examples like these have built upon our foundation for trust in one another.

Over the first few months that we knew each other, we learned a great deal of information, including the most painful and hidden parts of one another’s lives. A crucial piece of our emotional intimacy has been accepting each other’s emotional pasts for what they are and being able to appreciate that, by virtue of our humanity, we both carry deeply-rooted wounds. Whether it’s related to an issue that occurred during one of our childhoods, ways we’ve experienced hurt within the Church, Sarah’s trauma and the resulting PTSD, negative messages Lindsey received in ex-gay ministry, or something else entirely, we know that there will be space for conversation and respect for that experience’s symbolic meaning when we’re ready to talk about it together. Cultivating empathy for each other’s brokenness–that which we share in common and that which varies individually–has helped both of us to feel safe in being completely genuine with one another, regardless of how ugly that might look sometimes.

While emotional lives are built over the entire lifespan, all people experience their emotions moment by moment. We tend to regard in-the-moment emotional experiences as slightly unpredictable because emotions can vary, especially when people are under a good deal of stress. We have made a practice of affirming one another’s right to feel in the moment, even if the other doesn’t understand exactly why that particular mix of emotion is present at a given time. Our commitment to opting in 100% as we do life together has helped us develop a strong emotional intuition. When Lindsey experiences a panic attack, Sarah can usually tell whether Lindsey would benefit most from reassurance and empathy, some clear direction to start problem-solving processes, or a mixture of approaches. This emotional intelligence goes both ways in our relationship. One day recently, Lindsey just held Sarah as Sarah started crying hysterically after a conflict with Sarah’s nutritionist. Given that Sarah had been in a car accident the day before and Sarah rarely gets upset to the point of tears, Lindsey knew something was up. Nevertheless, Lindsey sat in that space with Sarah until Sarah was ready to share the specifics of what had happened. We’re profoundly grateful God has opened up to us a space of grace to be able to discern what emotional response would best draw us into a deeper relationship with one another, even though we’re still learning.

While some aspects of emotional intimacy have come naturally, other aspects of emotional intimacy are more difficult. We’ve struggled with and will continue to determine the best pathway through the difficulties associated with being open about our spiritual lives and places where our spiritualities differ. On some levels, our spiritualities are incredibly compatible: we both value intellectual honesty, placing life in the Church in its historic contexts, cultivating a prayer life, and being shaped within our specific Christian tradition. On other levels, we’re continually surprised at just how hard it’s been to honor our natural spiritual inclinations when developing our own sense of tradition. Lindsey’s faith journey has been profoundly influenced by mainstays of the Evangelical tradition, as Lindsey’s faith began to blossom in college while Lindsey was participating in Intervarsity and playing on the worship team of a nondenominational congregation. Sarah’s personal spirituality and formation has been tied to more liturgical traditions, as Sarah has naturally grown in faith through partaking of the sacraments and engaging in robust intellectual reflection. Even though our spiritualities may look very similar at first glance, we’ve learned that we value incredibly different facets of the spiritual experiences we share. We have welcomed the opportunity to learn more about each other even though we’re still learning the best way to have these conversations. That said, we should also note that we have high expectations and hopes that we will find our way.

The emotional intimacy that we’ve been able to cultivate within our partnership has also manifested in spillovers into other relationships. We find it easier to be compassionate when others are going through hard times. We can affirm other people’s emotions and create space for whatever feeling happens to be in the room. We’ve learned that matching appropriate responses with how a specific individual experiences emotion can be hard, so we try to respond first with empathy. Cultivating emotional intimacy in all one’s relationships is a lifelong process, and we’re glad to take in whatever wisdom the journey may bring.

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.

Putting the “Tradition” in a Traditional Sexual Ethic

Posted on by

A reflection by Lindsey

I have a personality that adapts well to things being in flux. I embrace the uncertainties associated with not always being aware of where I’m going and rarely being sure of the best path towards any goal. When I was in college, I thought I could have everything all sketched out in terms of my 5-, 10-, and 20-year plans. But every time I started feeling like my plans were coming together, something major happened to upset my apple cart. Eventually, I stopped trying to pile all the apples together and tried instead to carry one piece of fruit at a time. I feel like my spiritual journey mirrors many other aspects of my life, where it is regularly in a state of flux as I explore seemingly uncharted waters.

I didn’t start my spiritual journey particularly attached to any Christian denomination. Along the way, my spirituality has been shaped by a number of Christian traditions: I can trace significant influences upon my faith to the Anabaptist, Evangelical, Lutheran, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Quaker traditions. I’m a bit of a spiritual mutt.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I mean when talking about a traditional sexual ethic. There are lots of assumptions about what that phrase means. Many Christian traditions band together in defense of sex being reserved for marriage and marriage existing only between one man and one woman. But that’s not what I’m talking about when I refer to a traditional sexual ethic. What I’m talking about is a sexual ethic strongly mapped to a particular spiritual (or moral) tradition.

I’ve journeyed through enough Christian traditions to know that not all are the same. Each Christian tradition has its own set of emphases and guiding questions. And I earnestly believe that all robust Christian traditions offer people a set of tools for thinking about sex, marriage, vocation, and life in Christ. I find myself wishing that more Christians would leverage the full weight of their traditions to discern how those traditions can more openly welcome, embrace, and guide LGBT Christians into the fullness of life in Christ.

However, as much as I might wish for each tradition to look within its own borders to help LGBT Christians find abundant life, I’ve noticed that many Christian traditions have formed various alliances with other Christian traditions in order to shout down dissenters. As a result, it seems that people have allowed key differences among their traditions to evaporate in effort to find some basic commonality on which orthodox believers in all denominations can agree. The net effect is that Christian traditions write doctrinal statements that hint at vague ideals without showing people the connection between where the tradition is going and where the tradition’s theology came from in the first place.

I think within Christian traditions that consider themselves progressive, it’s entirely possible to have a “traditional” sexual ethic that embraces people who enter into same sex marriages simply because of the way those specific traditions frame their theological questions. I’ll never forget hearing Lillian Daniel speak on the heritage of the United Church of Christ during the 2013 Gay Christian Network Conference. Daniel spoke on how the UCC as a Christian tradition sees itself as inescapably using abolitionist arguments to break down the dividing walls between people and work toward social justice. After the talk, as I reflected on how this Christian tradition views itself I wondered, “In this denomination, is a heterosexual marriage principally about repairing the breach in relationships between man and woman? How would one think about the divide between gay people and straight people? Does one need to have a clear dichotomy in order to have a ‘dividing’ wall? What sort of space is afforded for bisexual and genderqueer people who might find themselves in the ‘middle’ of binaries?” If the United Church of Christ was my tradition, I’m rather hopeful that asking these sorts of questions would help me draw closer to the heart of Christ and pull me into a deeper connection with other people in the same tradition. I’m also reasonably confident that people within the UCC tradition can tell that I have only passing familiarity with their tradition because of these questions I asked.

Looking to the Christian traditions I’ve been a part of, I can see many reasons why these traditions do not affirm same-sex relationships as marriages. Some of these traditions seek to discern how God commands us to live as Christians by offering detailed direction on activities one must avoid. A good number of these traditions also explore gender as a very significant component of how we grow to maturity in Christ. How can a girl grow into a woman of God? How can we raise boys to be men after God’s own heart? In the sacramental traditions, offering the correct ‘elements’ in Holy Matrimony mirrors the pattern of offering bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharistic mystery. Many of these traditions teach that both marriage and celibacy reveal something about the Kingdom of God, where all vocations are essential. Yet, each of these traditions grounds its sense of a traditional sexual ethic in a different line of reasoning.

In the midst of all my queries, I’ve spent a lot more time trying to figure out what different Christian traditions say about celibacy. By the time I started asking questions about celibacy, I was in a Christian tradition that didn’t say much other than “Sex is a great gift from God, so God opens up the possibility of heterosexual marriage for almost everyone.” I found myself with little choice but to shop around to see what other Christian traditions offered to people exploring celibacy. I found that many Protestant traditions stress the beauty of the single state, discussing celibacy as the opposite of marriage. I found a rich jumble of resources discussing celibacy within the Roman Catholic tradition. I guess it helps that the Roman Catholic Church has spent hundreds of years exploring the various implications of having different kinds of celibate vocations: clerical, monastic, and friar. Within the Orthodox tradition, I found a focus on practically living out one’s vocation and integrating oneself more deeply within the tradition as a whole through the practice of this vocation.

I think it’s absolutely critical to remind Christians that nearly all Christian traditions have a rich theology of marriage, of celibacy, and of sharing God’s love with the world. A Christian sexual ethic needs to be intricately connected within the broader tradition in order to equip people in that tradition for faithful discipleship.

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.

Saturday Symposium: Easter Traditions

Posted on by

A very blessed Saturday to all of our readers. We rejoice that all Christians share a common date for Easter this year, and we pray you experience the joy of the Resurrection this weekend.

This year, we felt like the joy of Easter entered a bit early. Lindsey has formally accepted a job offer. While we still have a bit of time before the start date, we’re prayerful and hopeful that God will provide for us in the early summer.

And now for today’s Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, we’d like to ask you how you observe Easter. What are your Easter traditions? How have your Easter traditions changed over time? What has remained constant in your Easter celebration? Do you have any particular things you do before, during, and after the joyous day of Easter?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

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.

Good Friday, East and West

Posted on by

Today, Christians from many different traditions stop to remember the events of Good Friday. This year is unique because the Eastern and Western dates for Easter match. We have found some videos to share with you that showcase the beauty of Good Friday as observed by Christians, East and West, for hundreds of years.

The first three videos capture the Passion According to St. John, presented in Gregorian chant. The last video is the first stasis of the burial lamentations in the Orthodox Church, chanted in Greek. Don’t worry! All videos also have English translations.

We pray constantly that God would heal the schisms dividing Christians from being one body. We hope this collection of videos will speak to your heart and soul as we all contemplate Christ crucified.

May Good Friday bring you hope that God’s power exceeds even our deepest darkness.

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.

Adventures in Praying Together

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

“The poor shall eat and be satisfied and the hungry shall be filled with good things. O Master Christ our God, bless the food and drink of these, thy servants, for you are holy always, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

That’s the blessing Lindsey says over every meal we share together. Since the first time Lindsey and I joined over Skype for dinner, I’ve known that I can count on hearing this prayer at least once a day. It has become a key element in our shared spiritual life, and during certain seasons it has been the only prayer we’ve consistently engaged in together.

Concerning spirituality, Lindsey and I have discovered that we take very different approaches. Our dissimilar preferences are likely rooted in the two distinctive contexts in which we came to faith. Sometimes, I find myself surprised that we both ended up in the Christian tradition we now share, traveling to it from pathways so unalike. I grew up in a Christian family and was exposed to a variety of Christian spiritualities from childhood through college. Though I lived in an area where the Freewill, United, and Southern Baptist denominations dominate the religious landscape, I knew early on that I felt God’s presence most profoundly in liturgical worship. I’ve always believed in God, but if I had to identify a specific “this is real and I accept it” moment in my faith journey, I’d say without hesitation that it was during a Eucharistic holy hour one autumn when I was 18. I knelt in silence before the tabernacle in a rural Kentucky Catholic church and felt Christ’s presence as I never had before. I was overcome with peace and relief from the anxiety I had been attempting to ward off earlier that day, and I knew without a doubt that I was kneeling before Christ himself.

In contrast to my experience, Lindsey grew up not going to church and first became part of a faith community by playing electric bass in a praise band. Lindsey made a personal commitment to Christ during Lindsey’s freshman year of high school at a youth event, and later became active in various evangelical ministries during college. Because Lindsey came to faith within a contemporary, evangelical context–a world which was almost totally foreign to me until college–there have been times when I’ve experienced difficulty understanding Lindsey’s spirituality. One example of this is that I’ve never been especially drawn to free-formed prayer. It doesn’t come naturally, and historically I’ve had some experiences with spiritually abusive free-formed prayer. Whether my intention is to praise God, to give thanks, to ask forgiveness, or to cry out for help, I’m more apt to search the traditional prayers of the Church for something appropriate than to begin with my own words. Typically, I’ve found greater comfort in the rosary or prayer rope devotion than in approaching God informally. Lindsey, on the other hand, can articulate any diversity of prayer intentions with eloquence, yet in a conversational manner. I remember once after we first met, I asked Lindsey to pray for me regarding a health issue, and a second later Lindsey was responding to that request on the fly with an evangelical-style free-formed prayer. It took me a moment to catch up with what was happening. I recall staring blankly at Lindsey afterward and asking, “How did you do that?”

As Lindsey and I have been developing a way of life together, we’ve had many conversations about how different our processes were for coming into our shared Christian tradition. Lindsey first felt compelled to explore this tradition after attending Liturgy and observing the centrality of the Gospel in worship, making connections between this and the emphasis evangelical Christianity places on spreading the Gospel and encountering Christ in a personal way. Having been part of a liturgical tradition previously, I was attracted initially to the level of reverence people within this tradition have for the Liturgy and sacraments, and the mystical (and in many ways, organic) approach to theological issues I had previously been exposed to in more legalistic terms. Lindsey and I enjoy praying together during Liturgy, and because of the differences in our backgrounds sharing the experience and talking about it afterward becomes even more fascinating. Often, we’ll spend the drive home on Sunday discussing our responses to and observations during worship that day, and frequently the conversation will lead me to further reflection on my own experience based on what I’ve learned from Lindsey’s.

We learn a great deal from observing each other’s personal devotional practices and experimenting with ways to draw connections between our individual spiritualities. Sometimes, I see a bit of Lindsey rubbing off on me. There are times when I can sense the Holy Spirit’s presence during one of Lindsey’s powerful free-formed prayers—sometimes so much that when I need Lindsey to pray for me I ask, “Could you channel your former evangelical self for a moment?” And while I’m sure I’ll always prefer Gregorian and Byzantine chant to contemporary Christian music, thanks to the influence of Lindsey’s former praise band experience I find myself asking Lindsey to turn the car radio to our local praise and worship station occasionally. At the same time, Lindsey has begun to take great joy in asking me historical questions about the Liturgy and occasionally praying one of my favorite litanies with me when I’m feeling the need to be surrounded by the entire communion of saints. Our personal quirks and their impact on each other make for a rather unique learning experience as we approach the question of how best to cultivate a shared spiritual life.

In some seasons, we’ve made a regular practice of praying parts of the Divine Office together. In others, we have gravitated more toward praying individually, but joining together in discussion of scripture and spiritual reading materials. Still in others, the only prayer rule we’ve been able to follow jointly is Lindsey’s blessing over our evening meal. Endeavoring to pray together consistently is a challenge, and I imagine it will be for the rest of our lives together. We’re still learning how to appreciate and honor each other’s spiritualities because we believe it important to respect the different ways we came to know God individually prior to meeting each other. We see all of this as yet another adventure, and are eager to see all the places it will lead us along our journey towards Christ.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.