Tag Archives: vulnerability

This video ends with a hug!

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Within the past two weeks we’ve been discussing celibacy, marriage, language for describing celibate partnership, the value of listening to diverse stories, and much more. To give ourselves a break and our readers a chance to catch up, we are taking a day off from our usual kind of blog entry. Today, we would like to share with you a short video titled “The Power of Empathy.” We think it’s good to get a refresher every once in a while on the differences between empathy and sympathy because none of us is the perfect listener. It can be easy to forget that when a person is experiencing something difficult, he or she might just need to hear, “I’m glad you were able to share that with me.” Both of us are fixers by nature–when someone has a problem, we want to find a solution and make it better. We appreciated the reminder that attempting to remedy the problem and searching for “silver linings” aren’t necessarily the most helpful or welcome approaches. We hope you will enjoy this video as much as we did. Our favorite part is that it ends with a hug!

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Of Sacredness, Intimacy, and Lentil Soup

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A Reflection by Sarah

I’ll never forget the first time it happened. It was a chilly day in late autumn, and I had just returned home with a mountain of papers to grade after a long commute on a crowded subway train. Anxiety and eagerness welled up inside me as I unlocked the door to my apartment, walked in, and plopped my teacher bag into its usual spot on top of my desk. Offering my cats a few gentle strokes was my attempt at preparing for that which I dreaded. I knew it was inevitable. It was going to happen eventually anyway, and that set me into a panic. Our friendship had only begun a few months prior; was I ready to let my guard down, to become so exposed? How could I know when, if ever, would be the right time to open this door of intimacy? By the time my phone rang, I had procrastinated as long as I was able. “Hello, Lindsey,” were the only two words I remember saying specifically. And before I could put all the pieces together, it was happening. It was one of the most intense, fear-provoking moments I had ever experienced. But it was also sacred. There was pain, consolation, prayer traveling from the Midwest to the East Coast and back…and a batch of lentil soup. It was the first time Lindsey and I shared dinner together.

For most of you, eating with a special person in your life probably doesn’t sound like a very big deal unless you’re profoundly challenged in the culinary department. But for me, the evening of lentil soup shared across four states was deeply meaningful and challenging to my previous assumptions about food and intimacy. I developed bulimia at age 12 and began my recovery journey more than a decade later. With lots of hard work, this condition has stabilized over the past few years. However, I still struggle from time to time, and though I thrive on frequent socialization, I often find situations requiring shared meals to be exceptionally draining. But experiencing the intimacy of sharing food with the most important people in my life, especially Lindsey, has begun to change this reality for me.

In the time we have known each other, and even more since taking up residence in the same apartment, Lindsey and I have attempted to cultivate a meaningful shared life in a number of ways. Some of the approaches we try tend to stick around longer than others. One that has managed to find a permanent place in our daily life is a commitment to eating dinner together every night. Unless some unusual circumstance (i.e. business trip with an odd schedule) has kept one or both of us from being available, we have shared every dinner since the evening of lentil soup. We have eaten together over Skype and on the phone during different seasons of our relationship, but now this sacred hour almost always takes place in our dining room, where we can relish in a few moments of quiet after even the most hectic of days.

On a typical evening, I arrive home late, exhausted from a long day of teaching, writing, and working with tutoring clients. As I am on my way, Lindsey prepares our usual simple meal of swai fillets, green vegetables, and fresh fruit and tries to time it so that everything will be ready when I get home. Cleanup will be my responsibility. (Anyone who has ever visited a monastery with me knows I make a much more useful contribution to the community’s daily work when I’m assigned to the dishes instead of the cooking.) As I walk through the door and put away my work things, aromas of curry, or oranges, or ginger greet me. We sit at our dining room table–a table that a Catholic priest once used to say Mass. Portraits of family members and icons of Christ, His Holy Mother, and the saints face toward us, joining in the nightly ritual as Lindsey says the blessing over our meal. Our two curious tabby cats that have been with me since my first year of graduate school join us as well, climbing into an empty chair, peeking over the table’s edge, and sometimes sneaking up onto the tabletop. We eat from our set of green, ceramic plates–the first item we bought together after signing the lease on our apartment.

A simple “How was your day?” begins a conversation that can unfold in infinite directions. We discuss how my lecture went that morning, new recipes we want to try, the problem of evil, the water bill, and the Christmas card we received from my pistol-packing, Appalachian grandmother. We reflect on moments during the day when God’s presence was unmistakable, and times when we’ve felt abandoned to wander in desert places. Sometimes we just sit in silence as Lindsey holds my hand. Other times, members of our chosen and proximate families join us at the table for an evening, and after we’ve eaten, we’ll indulge in a jigsaw puzzle or a round of our friend Matt’s homemade Harry Potter board game.

Dinner time in our household is a constant reminder of so many important truths I am prone to forget or downplay. The meals I share with Lindsey challenge me to recall that as humans, we are dependent upon God and each other; that God calls us into meaningful relationships that help us to nurture and sustain our vocations. I find myself reflecting on Jesus’ radical hospitality and the invitation God extends each of us at every Eucharist. I am challenged to consider how sharing meals with our loved ones compels us to extend grace and welcome to strangers. I am convicted by Jesus’ words in Luke 14:3, “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.” Our nightly dinner routine, which began with Lindsey extending grace and hospitality to me in my moment of weakness, leads me to ponder how we, individually and together, can be a blessing to others who have endured illness, suffering, and rejection. I pray that our home might become a refuge and our dining room a place of intimate welcome for those who need it most–one bowl of lentil soup at a 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.

The challenge of drawing “the line”

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A reflection by Lindsey

Many people begin exploring celibacy by trying to answer the question, “What counts as sex?” After all, if one defines celibacy as abstention from sexual acts, then it makes sense to spend time trying to figure out when a particular gesture of affection crosses the line into sex. However, I believe that actually making a celibate vocation work involves throwing this particular question out the window.

To say things a bit candidly, many definitions of sex focus on the location of the genitals. Sex can be “defined” when Part A interacts with Part B. In these definitions, sex is entirely mechanistic. <Please say this next sentence with a good deal of snark.> All the celibate person needs to do is mind his or her genitals. </snark>

I see many problems with this approach to celibacy.

Drawing “the line” at the genitals moves the line away from the heart, into a quantifiable legal idea, and asserts that one person can rightly judge another person. Celibate couples can make odd rules that seem arbitrary or artificial. “We will never look at each other’s bodies barring a reasonable expectation for medical care.” “Never touch a person in areas covered by a swim suit.” “Maintain separate bedrooms.” For some people living celibate vocations, these sort of boundaries may naturally emerge as they settle into their understanding of celibate life. For other people living celibate vocations, these sort of boundaries may hamper and impede extremely authentic expressions of caring. Can you give a person a hug if you’re trying to avoid touching areas that might be covered by a one-piece swimsuit?

Another huge problem with trying to live this way is that everything before “the line” becomes a new line. If you know the most physical contact you will have with a person is holding their hand, then “holding hands” can take on an incredibly sexual dimension. If two people “decide” that kissing is permissible, where is it permissible? Is it on the lips, on the neck, and/or on the cheek? If a person talking about a particular topic (completely unrelated to sex) is so intellectually stimulating and just flat out sexy [Yeah, just imagine an American’s reaction to someone saying anything with a strong English accent….], is that conversation topic (or style) off-limits on the grounds that it introduces “too much temptation”? It doesn’t take too terribly long to see that this sort of exercise quickly delves down to reductio ad absurdum.

From experience, I can also say that focusing on the “NO sexual ACT-ion!!!” mandate has a lot in common with the “Don’t think of a pink elephant” command. Whatever you do, do not think of a pink elephant! I said, DO NOT think of a PINK elephant!! I even put it in bold! Why did you think of a pink elephant?!? Our thoughts are entirely malleable, based on our environment. When a person trying to explore a celibate life is thinking, “Don’t have sex, don’t have sex, don’t have sex,” there’s not room to think about what one should actually do. There’s nothing in the “Avoid sexual acts” command that helps a person learn how to extend hospitality, be vulnerable, pray, or commit to a particular way of life.

I’ve previously shared that my sexual experiences came from difficulties in knowing how to navigate these lines. Even though I didn’t break any of my “rules” about avoiding sex, I didn’t have control over how my heart would connect a sexual meaning to actions previously deemed “safe.” My previous sexual education had me convinced I was in no danger of crossing “the line” into sex. In reality, that sexual education was more focused on defining sex as the action that preceded pregnancy. I don’t regret learning that sex can be complicated, consent is especially tricky in a world that constantly promotes the pursuit of sexual pleasure, and people can connect intimately in surprising ways. But I do wish someone somewhere would have told me that zooming in on mechanics can undercut the development of a healthy sexuality.

In order to discover how to live a celibate life, I had to throw the “NO SEX!” command out the window. I had to see how people actually lived a celibate life. I needed time and space to practice finding my own rhythm as a single person trying to live a celibate life. I craved authentic memoirs of LGBT people who had run the race and found life within a celibate vocation. I also had to learn to extend myself grace for the times I had shared an intimate experience with another person and unexpectedly found myself feeling like, “You know, I really think that particular thing was not aligned with cultivating a celibate vocation.”

Trying to stay on the “right” side of “the line” nearly brought about the end of me. I had spiritual guides and mentors telling me that if was intentionally deepening a relationship with another person, I needed to look out for any signs of developing inappropriate desires. My job was to search my heart to see if there was any offensive thought within me…. and so on, and so forth….

That kind of living requires navel gazing of the worst sort, especially when any failure on my part would justify God excluding me from participating in the life of His kingdom. I’d contend that no one can live life if they are under that sort of pressure. Equally, I’d say it’s heresy. It’s heresy because it’s GOD’S JOB to search our hearts. It’s GOD’S JOB to guide our paths. And it’s GOD’S JOB to prune off the various parts of our life that are not pleasing to him.

And I’ve found a great deal of release as I’ve asked God for His help in trying to discern what my celibate vocation looks like.

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.

10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew

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We both spend a lot of time talking about how best to interact with our church family. The environment can be a bit trying at times, but we stumbled into one particular parish as our home parish and have decided (after much discussion!) to remain there. We’re grateful for the handful of people who go out of their way to make us feel welcome. However, we often wish we could share our experiences a bit more openly and freely in this setting. We hope that, one day, we will be able to do this, but we’re not there yet. To lay out a road map of where we’d like to be able to go, we present “10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew.”

1. We are aware of the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality, and we don’t need a constant reminder.

Straight people in the Church are constantly trying to tell LGBT people what the Church teaches or what the Bible says. As such, every LGBT person in the Church has heard the official line multiple times from multiple people. It can be really off-putting when a person finds out we’re LGBT and suddenly acts like we’ve never read Romans 1. We’re grateful to be in a tradition that bears witness to the Truth through Word and Sacrament. We believe that every member of our faith community has something to show us about what is true and holy, but there are effective and ineffective ways of serving as a teacher. Inviting us to share in your family celebrations–whether it is your wedding, your child’s baptism, or your mother’s funeral–is much more effective than proof-texting and quoting official Church documents as a way of showing us what it means to be a family within the Church. It also shows that you respect us enough to include us in your family’s big moments.

2. Insults to sexually active LGBT people are also insults to us.

Our vocation to celibacy does not make us immune to discrimination. When you suggest that you cannot support non-discrimination policies because these policies might condone same-sex sexual activity, what you’re really saying to us is that you don’t think we should be able to secure housing or enjoy a workplace free of harassment. We do not appreciate hearing your disdain for organizations that permit LGBT people to participate, especially if the participation of LGBT people is your only objection to a particular group. How do you expect us to know that we are welcome in the Church when you indicate that we certainly would not be welcome in another social context? During times of fellowship, it is incredibly hard to overhear comments that suggest LGBT people are on the same level as animals or are a threat to civilization as we know it. Those kinds of comments lack any degree of Christian charity and make it hard for us to gather the strength to come to church the following week. We also abhor the idea that there is somehow a “good” LGBT person and a “bad” LGBT person. The practice of celibacy does not make us spiritually, morally, or (insert your favorite adverb here) superior to other LGBT people. At the foot of the Cross, we are all radically equal. And we are all human.

3. Our being LGBT is not the cause of personal struggles we face.

Just like other human beings, we face short-term and long-term personal struggles. Between the two of us, we’ve dealt with depression, chronic health conditions, debt, addiction, an eating disorder, job loss, PTSD, and more. Often, we feel like we have to keep up a strong exterior because we’re afraid that straight people in the Church will attribute any personal struggle we experience to our LGBT status. It’s part of the legacy of reparative therapy: well-meaning Christian counselors sought to uncover the root cause of homosexuality in order to repair the damage. We’re not damaged; we’re human. And when we’re really honest, we know that some of you have likely navigated similar problems and can be ashamed to share your own vulnerabilities within the church community.

4. It’s okay to ask us questions.

As much as we hear negative comments about LGBT issues, we have never been able to have an honest, open conversation about our lives with Church members. We have never tried to hide anything from you, but it seems like some of you are more comfortable with avoiding the questions. Lindsey once had a friend say, “If you want to get to know me, make friends with the question mark.” Consider asking us more questions about our travels (especially when we’ve just gotten back in town), about what we do for fun, or about how we are learning to pray together. Talk with us about the experience of the service that day: How did you encounter Christ in the service? What are you taking away from today’s time of worship? How can we be praying for you throughout the week? Questions are the stuff relationships are made of, and we could probably do better at modeling how to ask questions by asking you these questions ourselves.

5. Your families inspire us in our vocation.

Being in the unique situation of a celibate partnership, we learn about vocation not only from celibate monastics, but also from families. The way you approach living life as a family is profoundly meaningful to us. It is meaningful for us when you encourage your children to serve within the parish, when you bring your children into the services, and when you allow them to stay present within the people of God even when their behavior isn’t the best. It is inspiring for us to see your children grow and to have your children tug at our shirts to tell us a story. Watching you as parents love your kids before, during, and after our times of worship shows us a great deal about how Christ loves His Church. We pray for you and your family constantly because we know we’re all mystically a part of the same family anyway.

6. Sometimes, communing with you is hard.

We love being part of a Church that affirms we all share the same faith when we approach the cup. Our friends from open communion traditions often suggest that because we’re from a closed communion tradition, we’re not spiritually challenged to see ourselves at the same table as people who are different from us. In reality, we constantly face this challenge because we know that we have to share the same cup with many of you who are capable of making very biting remarks about LGBT people. We like to remind ourselves that we’re not perfect, and though we might sometimes regard you as the thorn in our side, the feeling is likely mutual. And we come to communion anyway, and we hope you will come too, because we long for each and every person we have ever met to be united to Christ.

7. We aren’t trying to have our cake and eat it too.

We’d like to devote a whole post to this subject a bit later, but we thought it made sense to address the issue here. It is no mystery to us that most people who know us as an LGBT couple presume that we are sexually active. We are equally aware that those people who know us as celibate have trouble with the idea that we live out our vocation as a couple. So we frequently get the questions, “Are you trying to have it both ways? Are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes? How can you be celibate and legitimately a couple? How can you be a couple and legitimately celibate?” Though we can see how it might be easy to perceive our situation as doublespeak of the worst sort, we truly believe that we are called to this unusual vocation. We try, sometimes more successfully than others, to focus all of our energies on serving Christ and His Church. We remember that Christ said where two or three are gathered, there He is among them. And we constantly pray together that He would reveal to us how His will might be done in us and through us.

8. We have been profoundly hurt by the ex-gay movement.

The ex-gay movement is a “ministry” effort geared toward helping LGBT people become straight and thereby, capable of entering into heterosexual marriages. Within this movement, there is an emphasis on using various pop theories about what caused someone to consider themselves LGBT in order to “fix” that person. At its core, the ex-gay movement promotes the idea that LGBT people are fundamentally broken and all our relationships are suspect. Intimacy gets denounced as “emotional dependency” and any kind of gender variance is regarded as “gender identity confusion.” Any suggestion that we cannot have meaningful relationships with others because we are LGBT is profoundly alienating and separates us from the rest of humanity. It’s important for you, our church family, to understand the incredibly harmful messages that have been thrust in our face. The ex-gay movement also colors LGBT people’s experiences of celibacy. Ex-gay ideologies recommend divorcing oneself from one’s sexuality rather than entering a celibate life as a wholly integrated person. Just because we’re celibate, please don’t think that we advocate approaches that encourage LGBT people to denounce, rather than to integrate, their sexualities. Simple reminders that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God and is worthy of respect can go a long way.

9. The Church provides no resources for cultivating a celibate vocation outside the walls of a monastery, so we need your prayers and support.

If you’ve read any other posts on this blog, you’ve probably seen us referencing monastic communities. We do that because monastic communities are places where a person can find others living celibate lives. But even though these communities provide us with wonderful inspiration for many aspects of living a shared celibate life, the two of us do not live in a monastery. We are doing our best to live out a celibate vocation in the world, and the Church remains remarkably silent on these vocations. You, as our church family, know better than most about what obstacles we encounter as we try to live in the here and now out in the world. We need your help, prayers, love, and support as we navigate our journey. Think about all of the ways the Church has helped you learn what it means to live a married life, and then what would happen if you tried to pay that blessing forward in your own prayers that God would illumine our way?

10. We love you and are committed to sharing life with you.

Doing life in the Church is messy, dysfunctional, and human, as the Church is a hospital for the ailing. All of us together share in the Church’s mess just as we all share in the Church’s beauty. Towards that end, we actively choose to answer Christ’s call to be a part of His Body every day. We choose to share life, both globally and locally, with every person who is a part of that effort to be the Body of Christ. And that includes the people in our local church family with whom we may not always agree or communicate well. Despite all of our weaknesses, we want our lives to be orientated towards Christ’s grace that extends everyone a profoundly radical hospitality. As Rachel Held Evans recently reminded us at the Gay Christian Network Conference, we often become angry at God for being so generous that the scandal of the Gospel is not who it keeps out, but rather who it lets in. In that spirit, as much as we are able, we want to rely on God’s grace so that we can continue to share our lives with you…. even when it’s really, really hard.

In no way do we mean for this list to encompass everything we wish our church family knew, but we think it’s a start. Feel free to add to the discussion 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.

It’s not easy to tell a story

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A reflection by Lindsey

“Tell stories — yours and other people’s.”

My friend Justin usually starts with this piece of advice when he’s talking about how LGBT Christians might try engaging with others who may be less-than-charitable when it comes to LGBT issues.

My experience in telling my story is that it’s tricky. My life experience doesn’t fit into any neatly defined categories. As I’ve reflected deeply on Christian sexual ethics, I keep seeing that it’s an arena full of nuance. Godly living cannot be communicated in under 140 characters. The “answers” do not boil down to neat sound bytes. And the more I try to share what I have been learning, the more I feel like people are telling me I just need to go away. To many people, my story is dangerous.

It is hard for me not to internalize the message that I should just sit down and be quiet. Because I am intensely introverted, I’m naturally inclined to hide when I sense a threat and wait for the whole mess to blow over.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s worth telling my story because I’ve learned nearly everything I’ve learned about sexual ethics by sharing stories with other people. Some of the best stories come from people who find themselves in remarkably different situations from mine.

The good stories, the ones that really shape my understanding of sexual ethics, came from my very closest friends. These stories were stories that everyone else wanted to ignore or shame. And they were stories from people who had done the “right” thing! It seems that no degree of “right conduct” saved anyone from having stories that other Christians wanted to simply ignore.

Too often, it seems like the Church wants LGBT people to tell one kind of story. It used to be that the story was somehow about how God enabled you to overcome your sexual attractions and enter into a heterosexual marriage. However, so many very brave people have told the Church that sexual orientation doesn’t change. As such, the story from the Church appears to be changing.

Yet, similarly, the LGBT community wants LGBT people to tell specific kinds of stories. Be proud. Fall in love. Safely enjoy sexual relationships. Do what you need to do so your body conforms to a particular gender. However, as more LGBT people tell their stories, the more I think people realize that LGBT people are not typecast into certain story lines.

We started this blog because other people wanted to hear our story. The goal of this blog is to share our stories of ourselves as individuals and of ourselves as a couple. People have encouraged us to tell our story because it’s unique, because they haven’t seen other stories like it, and because they think it’s interesting. Yet for all of the encouragement that we’ve had to share our story, it seems like an equal number of people have tried to tell us that we should remain silent: that telling our story will only cause pain for others who will attempt to live as we are and eventually realize this pathway is not their own, or for others already pursuing pathways different from ours.

I’d like to close with an observation that telling one’s personal story requires the teller to be vulnerable. When people respond to a personal story of any kind by encouraging the teller to just go away, it’s a pretty harsh rejection. Personal stories, by definition, are incredibly rooted in the context of a single person’s life. It’s not up to the teller to help the listener figure out which part of the story is most applicable to the listener’s life. That can only happen through mutually respectful dialogue, where both parties are vulnerable and both parties share their stories.

But that doesn’t make telling your story any easier.

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.