perseverance

If I Don’t Have the Gift

Posted by

9

This past Christmas ended with my friend Zach and I watching Love Actually with a glass of wine. I love Zach, and we love wine and Love Actually, so it was a solid ending to a quality Christmas day. But I was keenly aware of the fact that as much as I love Zach and wine and Love Actually, I wanted a girl on the couch with us. I wanted a girl by my side, giggling with me and feeling a rush of warm fuzzies when all the gushy moments caused an explosion in my heart.

I find so much joy in the life I’ve been given, and I tend to write about the joy more than the challenges because the joy far outweighs the difficulties. But I’m human and humans are wired with natural desires for romance—innocent desires to shower affection on that one special person. People often say to me (even here on the blog): “Julie, maybe you just have a special gift for celibacy, and that’s what makes it sustainable for you, but not everyone has that gift”. When it’s fleshed out further, they seem to imply that “the gift” would mean I have a lower level of sexual desire or that I don’t experience romantic longings. The gift would be that thing that makes it easy and convenient to fly solo in a culture crawling with adorable couples.

Continue reading →

Real Talk for Straight Folks

Posted by

11

I wrote a post about celibacy recently, where I shared some of the ways God has surprised me in the middle of this awkward celibate gay path. I said I hesitate to talk about celibacy because I’ve heard many gay people feel the traditional sexual ethic is burdensome—that the call to celibacy feels like a death sentence to them. Since the last thing I want to do is contribute to shame in vulnerable people, it can be difficult for me to discuss it. But I write about it because I want people to know some of us are experiencing a robust life in our quest to align with the church’s teaching on sexual ethics. I want them to know this awkward path that’s often framed as impossible can be the place where we experience the richest intimacy with Christ. 

Some of my closest friends are gay affirming in belief and practice. I love these friends and these friends love Jesus. We see this point differently, and we have endless discussions about the Bible and God’s intention for sexual expression, but we love each other and we all love Jesus. We’ve walked together as we’ve prayed, cried, struggled and strived to discern how to honor God with our sexuality. Because I love my friends, I’ve got to share with you a common thread that runs through their stories and tears me up.

Continue reading →

Fourteen Points

Posted by

1

On April 27, 2001, the members of Courage Seattle met with then-Seattle Auxiliary Bishop George Thomas (now the Bishop of Helena, Montana). Before his consecration as Bishop, Fr. Thomas played an instrumental role in encouraging the creation of a chapter of Courage in Seattle. With the Chapter up and running, he graciously consented to meet with us to see how things were going and to encourage the ministry.

In preparation for Bishop Thomas’s visit, we prepared the following Fourteen Point summary of the approach to ministry we had adopted in Courage Seattle. 

† CHRIST THE CENTER We place Christ at the center of our existence, subordinating all other aspects of our lives and pledge fidelity to Him without counting the cost.

Continue reading →

The Choice of Chastity: Practical Advice

Posted by

2

In the previous post in this series, I discussed what led me to the topics of celibacy, the lay vocation, and ultimately pastoral ministry to chaste gay Catholics. I have a few useful practical insights about the pursuit of celibacy, picked up from my own experience of lunging towards that crown. (I am not a strong swimmer, and so few of us are, but I learn my lessons well.)

1. You may not have a spouse, but you are not without a Beloved.

There were times in the Novitiate when temptation would choose its moment with an all-too-familiar power. Priests know all about these moments. You are tired, it has been a stressful week; maybe you forgot to say your Divine Office once, twice, seventy times seven times; maybe saying it a hundred times seems no more useful than saying it once. Your call is being sorely tested by either an undue love or an undue hate. You simply want relief from the pressures of everyday life. Even in the space of the best year of my life, there were times when I wanted to just walk out the front door. If I had done so, moreover, nobody would have thought less of me.

Continue reading →

The Choice of Chastity: A Personal Account

Posted by

0

Since I became a contributor for Spiritual Friendship, a number of people have asked me why I decided to start exploring the question of homosexuality within the Church and its relation to the lay vocation and the philosophy of the person. As a philosophy major, and therefore a super nerd, my usual first thought is “Isn’t the topic interesting enough? That’s three different and yet connected areas of human reality!”

Nevertheless, it is also true that my own background has led to this as well. Vicariously, I experienced the difficulty of the failure to accept people with SSA within the Church, a failure all too commonplace, through watching it happen more publicly to Joshua Gonnerman, who was already as a brother to me.

Continue reading →

Surprised by Celibacy

Posted by

8

If you’ve read many of my posts , you’re aware of the fact that I’m attracted to women. I don’t mean I occasionally see a pretty girl in a magazine and I happen to think she’s cute; I mean I’m attracted to women. All those things straight couples seem to feel for one another physically, emotionally, sexually, spiritually—I feel those things toward other women. It sounds weird even saying it because I tried so hard to hide it, deny it, change it, or at least reframe it in my mind for so long that it feels a little awkward to state it so explicitly on the internet.

You’re also probably aware that I believe sexual expression is reserved for a man and a woman in a lifelong marriage, where the two commit to sharing their lives with one another and never go back on that promise. And when I fell in love with Jesus, I fell in love with the entirety of God’s way: that He created the world with such brilliance, that He grieved when we decided we knew better, that He rescued us when we’d made our choice and our choice was our sin, and that He’s coming back one day to write a glorious ending to a tragic tale. I cry at least 6 times a week when I think about that story because it’s so overwhelming to me that God would take such drastic measures to open the door for a relationship with us, the ones who decided we’d get on better without Him. As cynical and selfish as I can be, that kind of love wins my heart every time I start to feel a little inconvenienced by the call to respond to His love with a life that honors Him.

Continue reading →

Some tools of chaste living: Turning toward God

Posted by

0

I recently started a series of posts about graced realities which I have found to be helpful in the pursuit of chastity, defined deeply as the mastery through grace of internal sexual desires and passions, and their ordering according to the will of God. When people are married in the Church, they undergo marriage counseling; when people enter religious life, they have a period of intensive formation. Yet for people in the most difficult situation within which to pursue chastity, cut off from both marriage and the support of a religious community, there is little discussion of how to make this sustainable in a lifelong way. In previous posts, I discussed friendship, stress management, and ascesis.

In my previous posts this week, I have talked a bit about things which I have found helpful in striving to live chastely despite the relative lack of support structures of a celibate life lived outside a religious order.

In my last post, I want to explore the fundamental concern for direction in life and a turn towards God which the Christian tradition has inherited from Neoplatonic philosophy.

Continue reading →

Some tools of chaste living: Ascesis

Posted by

2

I recently started a series of posts about graced realities which I have found to be helpful in the pursuit of chastity, defined deeply as the mastery through grace of internal sexual desires and passions, and their ordering according to the will of God. When people are married in the Church, they undergo marriage counseling; when people enter religious life, they have a period of intensive formation. Yet for people in the most difficult situation within which to pursue chastity, cut off from both marriage and the support of a religious community, there is little discussion of how to make this sustainable in a lifelong way. In previous posts, I discussed friendship and stress management.

The third graced reality I would like to discuss is ascesis. We can sometimes think about asceticism in terms of a denigration of the physical, or an advanced practice which belongs only to monks and hermits. In fact, the heart of asceticism is an attempt to imbue a life with structure and to train us in the graced exercise of a certain measure of control over our desires, and it is something which we can practice even in little ways, whatever life we are living. The task is of course significantly more daunting when it comes to chastity, for (in the case of a gay person), there is no fulfillment of libidinal desires which conforms to the divine will.

Continue reading →