Saturday, July 23, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Past Few Hours
Feeling inexplicably lonely.
And so I open up Washed and Waiting and turn to its section on loneliness.
I expect to refer to this book for years to come.
Bolding is mine:
"What if the church were full of people who were loving and safe, willing to walk alongside people who struggle? What if there were people in the church who kept confidences, who took the time to be Jesus to those who struggle with homosexuality? What if the church were what God intended it to be?"
An anonymous Christian who struggles with homosexuality
Admittedly, entrusting our souls to the fellowship of the church, being open about our struggles with homosexuality and our longings for love, can seem to make loneliness worse, not better.
A heterosexual friend of mine, unaware of my sexual orientation, told me once about his friendship with a twentysomething Christian who was coming out of an "active" gay lifestyle. "I'm trying to minister to this guy, to help him make this transition in his life, and he shows up to our one-on-one breakfast meeting one day with a bouquet of flowers for me, " my friend said, incredulous and embarrassed. I winced inwardly at his story. How many times have I made my heterosexual friends--the ones who know about my being gay and want to encourage me--uncomfortable in similar ways? Asking questions like this, I recoil from intimate relationships, fearing the discomfort and uneasiness of the ones who, as I know in my saner moments, most want to encourage me. [or do they? So I struggle with even believing that they want to. hm.]
As I recounted in an earlier chapter, I still vividly remember the first time I talked with a vocational counselor about my homosexuality. I had just graduated from college a couple of months earlier and was entering a two-year ministerial apprenticeship program at a church in Minneapolis. The counselor told me pointedly, "I would hate for you to get to the end of your two years with your fellow apprentices and feel like you haven't gone deep with any of them." Then, in a question that has haunted me ever since, he asked, "Do you find yourself holding other males at arm's length for fear that if you come to know them deeply and intimately, it will somehow be inappropriate or dangerous or uncomfortable?" Though I had never thought about it before, I found myself answering yes. My very longing for loving, affectionate, yet nonsexual, relationships with persons of the same sex had paradoxically led me to shrink back from those relationships.
(pg. 113-114)
How this passage reminds me of my friendship with Chris is remarkable. And yet it still applies so readily today. That question... "Do you find yourself holding other males at arm's length for fear that if you come to know them deeply and intimately, it will somehow be inappropriate or dangerous or uncomfortable?"
Sometimes it doesn't feel true.
Other times I am shocked at how the author could somehow peer into my soul and pull out what had always been ineffable.
Elsewhere,
All the people I love, I trust, I want to be around, all of them answer, with varying volume, "yes" to the following basic question: "Will you be there for me?" I've come to believe it's the question that houses all my other questions, fears, and longings.
Jeremy Clive Huggins
(pg. 98)
. . .
Over and over again, I come to friends and ask in a thousand direct and indirect ways, "Do you really love me? Are you really committed to me? Do you really like me? Do you desire a relationship with me?" I asked a close friend once if he would still love me after he gets married. "Will I still be able to call you in the middle of the night to talk and pray?" I wanted to know.
(pg. 117)
Insecurity. When I initially read this book, at some points I'd think that the author sounded so incredibly needy, as he reached out for people in ways that I would never think to encroach upon them.
Cultural differences, perhaps. Or maybe this level of desiring community, of desiring intimacy, will only grow stronger and more insatiable as I get older. I may not even know the half of it yet.
Rereading the above passages, however, I can understand that drive to need to know. I must know if you are committed to me.
I know I can't always bank on another fallible person's commitment, but still.
And so I open up Washed and Waiting and turn to its section on loneliness.
I expect to refer to this book for years to come.
Bolding is mine:
"What if the church were full of people who were loving and safe, willing to walk alongside people who struggle? What if there were people in the church who kept confidences, who took the time to be Jesus to those who struggle with homosexuality? What if the church were what God intended it to be?"
An anonymous Christian who struggles with homosexuality
Admittedly, entrusting our souls to the fellowship of the church, being open about our struggles with homosexuality and our longings for love, can seem to make loneliness worse, not better.
A heterosexual friend of mine, unaware of my sexual orientation, told me once about his friendship with a twentysomething Christian who was coming out of an "active" gay lifestyle. "I'm trying to minister to this guy, to help him make this transition in his life, and he shows up to our one-on-one breakfast meeting one day with a bouquet of flowers for me, " my friend said, incredulous and embarrassed. I winced inwardly at his story. How many times have I made my heterosexual friends--the ones who know about my being gay and want to encourage me--uncomfortable in similar ways? Asking questions like this, I recoil from intimate relationships, fearing the discomfort and uneasiness of the ones who, as I know in my saner moments, most want to encourage me. [or do they? So I struggle with even believing that they want to. hm.]
As I recounted in an earlier chapter, I still vividly remember the first time I talked with a vocational counselor about my homosexuality. I had just graduated from college a couple of months earlier and was entering a two-year ministerial apprenticeship program at a church in Minneapolis. The counselor told me pointedly, "I would hate for you to get to the end of your two years with your fellow apprentices and feel like you haven't gone deep with any of them." Then, in a question that has haunted me ever since, he asked, "Do you find yourself holding other males at arm's length for fear that if you come to know them deeply and intimately, it will somehow be inappropriate or dangerous or uncomfortable?" Though I had never thought about it before, I found myself answering yes. My very longing for loving, affectionate, yet nonsexual, relationships with persons of the same sex had paradoxically led me to shrink back from those relationships.
(pg. 113-114)
How this passage reminds me of my friendship with Chris is remarkable. And yet it still applies so readily today. That question... "Do you find yourself holding other males at arm's length for fear that if you come to know them deeply and intimately, it will somehow be inappropriate or dangerous or uncomfortable?"
Sometimes it doesn't feel true.
Other times I am shocked at how the author could somehow peer into my soul and pull out what had always been ineffable.
Elsewhere,
All the people I love, I trust, I want to be around, all of them answer, with varying volume, "yes" to the following basic question: "Will you be there for me?" I've come to believe it's the question that houses all my other questions, fears, and longings.
Jeremy Clive Huggins
(pg. 98)
. . .
Over and over again, I come to friends and ask in a thousand direct and indirect ways, "Do you really love me? Are you really committed to me? Do you really like me? Do you desire a relationship with me?" I asked a close friend once if he would still love me after he gets married. "Will I still be able to call you in the middle of the night to talk and pray?" I wanted to know.
(pg. 117)
Insecurity. When I initially read this book, at some points I'd think that the author sounded so incredibly needy, as he reached out for people in ways that I would never think to encroach upon them.
Cultural differences, perhaps. Or maybe this level of desiring community, of desiring intimacy, will only grow stronger and more insatiable as I get older. I may not even know the half of it yet.
Rereading the above passages, however, I can understand that drive to need to know. I must know if you are committed to me.
I know I can't always bank on another fallible person's commitment, but still.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Anyways
I think of this poem whenever someone says or writes "anyways."
By Suzanne Cleary:
Anyways
for David
Anyone born anywhere near
my home town says it this way,
with an s on the end:
“The lake is cold but I swim in it anyways,”
“Kielbasa gives me heartburn but I eat it anyways,”
“(She/he) treats me bad, but I love (her/him) anyways.”
Even after we have left that place
and long settled elsewhere, this
is how we say it, plural.
I never once, not once, thought twice about it
until my husband, a man from far away,
leaned toward me, one day during our courtship,
his grey-green eyes, which always sparkle,
doubly sparkling over our candle-lit meal.
“Anyway,” he said. And when he saw
that I didn’t understand, he repeated the word:
“Anyway. Way, not ways.”
Corner of napkin to corner of lip, he waited.
I kept him waiting. I knew he was right,
but I kept him waiting anyways,
in league, still, with me and mine:
Slovaks homesick for the Old Country their whole lives
who dug gardens anyways,
and deep, hard-water wells.
I looked into his eyes, their smoky constellations,
and then I told him. It is anyways, plural,
because the word must be large enough
to hold all of our reasons. Anyways is our way
of saying there is more than one reason,
and there is that which is beyond reason,
that which cannot be said.
A man dies and his widow keeps his shirts.
They are big but she wears them anyways.
The shoemaker loses his life savings in the Great Depression
but gets out of bed, every day, anyways.
We are shy, my people, not given to storytelling.
We end our stories too soon, trailing off “Anyways....”
The carpenter sighs, “I didn’t need that finger anyways.”
The beauty school student sighs, “It’ll grow back anyways.”
Our faith is weak, but we go to church anyways.
The priest at St. Cyril’s says God loves us. We hear what isn’t said.
This is what he must know about me, this man, my love.
My people live in the third rainiest city in the country,
but we pack our picnic baskets as the sky darkens.
We fall in love knowing it may not last, but we fall.
This is how we know home:
someone who will look into our eyes
and say what could ruin everything, but say it,
regardless.
--http://www.writersdigest.com/article/poetry-wordchoice/
By Suzanne Cleary:
Anyways
for David
Anyone born anywhere near
my home town says it this way,
with an s on the end:
“The lake is cold but I swim in it anyways,”
“Kielbasa gives me heartburn but I eat it anyways,”
“(She/he) treats me bad, but I love (her/him) anyways.”
Even after we have left that place
and long settled elsewhere, this
is how we say it, plural.
I never once, not once, thought twice about it
until my husband, a man from far away,
leaned toward me, one day during our courtship,
his grey-green eyes, which always sparkle,
doubly sparkling over our candle-lit meal.
“Anyway,” he said. And when he saw
that I didn’t understand, he repeated the word:
“Anyway. Way, not ways.”
Corner of napkin to corner of lip, he waited.
I kept him waiting. I knew he was right,
but I kept him waiting anyways,
in league, still, with me and mine:
Slovaks homesick for the Old Country their whole lives
who dug gardens anyways,
and deep, hard-water wells.
I looked into his eyes, their smoky constellations,
and then I told him. It is anyways, plural,
because the word must be large enough
to hold all of our reasons. Anyways is our way
of saying there is more than one reason,
and there is that which is beyond reason,
that which cannot be said.
A man dies and his widow keeps his shirts.
They are big but she wears them anyways.
The shoemaker loses his life savings in the Great Depression
but gets out of bed, every day, anyways.
We are shy, my people, not given to storytelling.
We end our stories too soon, trailing off “Anyways....”
The carpenter sighs, “I didn’t need that finger anyways.”
The beauty school student sighs, “It’ll grow back anyways.”
Our faith is weak, but we go to church anyways.
The priest at St. Cyril’s says God loves us. We hear what isn’t said.
This is what he must know about me, this man, my love.
My people live in the third rainiest city in the country,
but we pack our picnic baskets as the sky darkens.
We fall in love knowing it may not last, but we fall.
This is how we know home:
someone who will look into our eyes
and say what could ruin everything, but say it,
regardless.
--http://www.writersdigest.com/article/poetry-wordchoice/
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Less and less
Ultimately, I want to be respected. I want people to look up to me and see how I'm dealing with my struggles and tell me how awesome I am and how they wish they could be like me.
(I'd feel a little stressed to actually continue living up to their expectations, but for the most part, I'd naturally enjoy the praise)
But what's the point? So I look awesome now, but then what? Am I living my life just so I can be praised and looked highly upon?
Our culture is driven so much by success, that it's hard to see anything else sometimes. Sure, on the wayside, you see broken families, egotism, and neglected relationships, but that's the price one pays, after all. And I don't just mean success in terms of one's career--I'm not at the point in my life to really see that yet--I really mean personality. I want people to see me as a good person... to reflect Christ, sure, but in the end it's about me and how successful my personality has become. I want everyone to want to care for me (and of course, do so) and to intensely desire to be with me because of who I am, and for them to find me interesting and funny. I want to feel secure.
I want to be used by God. But I want to be used by Him to give myself glory. It's the funny way that sin twists our perceptions... when we think we're doing everything for God, but in the end, we just want to get all the praise for ourselves.
John 3:27-30 (NLT):
John [the Baptist] replied, "No one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven. You yourselves know how plainly I told you, 'I am not the Messiah. I am only here to prepare the way for him.' It is the bridegroom who marries the bride, and the best man is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows. Therefore, I am filled with joy at his success. He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.
I stopped praying to be straight a long time ago. Maybe once in a while, I might pray to be lifted of this burden, but even then, it's usually only half-heartedly. Granted, being straight should not be the goal for anyone who is gay, bi, or somewhere in between. The goal should be a desire of holy sexuality, a sexuality that honors God with his or her body.
Being straight, however, would probably make life much easier.
So is it that I don't believe God can answer prayers? Well, not quite, because I've seen Him answer my prayer for Angela, at a time when I had already given up hope. Plus, this is almost moot... His answering of my prayer is not bound by whether I truly believe He can or not.
I realize it's in part for my own desire for glory, and in part for my desire for God to be glorified. I want Him to show so powerfully in my life, displaying the fact that I am so content in Him and His providence, that I don't need to pursue a same-sex relationship. At the same time, though, I want people to praise me for being able to be God's tool, and I want them to honor me for it.
"He must become greater; I must become less." (John 3:30 NIV)
Hmm.
It reminds me of an analogy from John Piper that Jason Tarn told us, about magnifying by microscope vs. magnifying by telescope.
"So there are two kinds of magnifying: microscope magnifying and telescope magnifying. The one makes a small thing look bigger than it is. The other makes a big thing begin to look as big as it really is.
"At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one's own greatness. For genuine gratitude admits that we are beneficiaries of an unearned bequest; we are cripples leaning on the cross shaped crutch of Jesus Christ; we are paralytics living minute by minute in the iron lung of God's mercy; we are children asleep in heaven's stroller. Natural man hates to think of himself in these images: unworthy beneficiary, cripple, paralytic, child. They rob him of all his glory by giving it all to God. Therefore, while a man loves his own glory, and prizes his self-sufficiency, and hates to think of himself as sin-sick and helpless, he will never feel any genuine gratitude to the true God and so will never magnify God, but only himself.
(I'd feel a little stressed to actually continue living up to their expectations, but for the most part, I'd naturally enjoy the praise)
But what's the point? So I look awesome now, but then what? Am I living my life just so I can be praised and looked highly upon?
Our culture is driven so much by success, that it's hard to see anything else sometimes. Sure, on the wayside, you see broken families, egotism, and neglected relationships, but that's the price one pays, after all. And I don't just mean success in terms of one's career--I'm not at the point in my life to really see that yet--I really mean personality. I want people to see me as a good person... to reflect Christ, sure, but in the end it's about me and how successful my personality has become. I want everyone to want to care for me (and of course, do so) and to intensely desire to be with me because of who I am, and for them to find me interesting and funny. I want to feel secure.
I want to be used by God. But I want to be used by Him to give myself glory. It's the funny way that sin twists our perceptions... when we think we're doing everything for God, but in the end, we just want to get all the praise for ourselves.
John 3:27-30 (NLT):
John [the Baptist] replied, "No one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven. You yourselves know how plainly I told you, 'I am not the Messiah. I am only here to prepare the way for him.' It is the bridegroom who marries the bride, and the best man is simply glad to stand with him and hear his vows. Therefore, I am filled with joy at his success. He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.
I stopped praying to be straight a long time ago. Maybe once in a while, I might pray to be lifted of this burden, but even then, it's usually only half-heartedly. Granted, being straight should not be the goal for anyone who is gay, bi, or somewhere in between. The goal should be a desire of holy sexuality, a sexuality that honors God with his or her body.
Being straight, however, would probably make life much easier.
So is it that I don't believe God can answer prayers? Well, not quite, because I've seen Him answer my prayer for Angela, at a time when I had already given up hope. Plus, this is almost moot... His answering of my prayer is not bound by whether I truly believe He can or not.
I realize it's in part for my own desire for glory, and in part for my desire for God to be glorified. I want Him to show so powerfully in my life, displaying the fact that I am so content in Him and His providence, that I don't need to pursue a same-sex relationship. At the same time, though, I want people to praise me for being able to be God's tool, and I want them to honor me for it.
"He must become greater; I must become less." (John 3:30 NIV)
Hmm.
It reminds me of an analogy from John Piper that Jason Tarn told us, about magnifying by microscope vs. magnifying by telescope.
"So there are two kinds of magnifying: microscope magnifying and telescope magnifying. The one makes a small thing look bigger than it is. The other makes a big thing begin to look as big as it really is.
When David says, "I will magnify God with thanksgiving," he does not mean: "I will make a small God look bigger than he is. He means: "I will make a big God begin to look as big as he really is." We are not called to be microscopes, but telescopes. Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor's product is far superior. There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is. The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God."
To magnify God by telescope, Piper calls us to be thankful.
. . .
The text [Psalm 69:30] goes on, "I will magnify God with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs." Why is that? Why does the offering of some expensive animal please God less than offering genuine thanks?"
Piper uses Psalm 50:9-14 as an answer, explaining,
"One of the reasons God was not pleased with the offering of an ox or bull or goat was that the giver often thought that his gift was enriching God, was supplying some deficiency in God. But what seems like an act of love among men—meeting someone's needs—is an insult to God. "Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills." You can't give me a bull or an ox! They are already mine.
Here is man's self-exaltation again. Even in the practice of religion, he finds a way to preserve his status as giver, as self-sufficient benefactor. In the very act of worship, he belittles God by refusing to assume the part of a receiver, an undeserving and helpless beneficiary of mercy."
And so, the point of life is to lose ourselves. My sexuality and my ability to withstand the pressures of being with another guy sexually, aren't even gifts to give God, for He owns everything, and He was the one to give me that ability. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to withstand it.
John the Baptist's disciples were telling him about Jesus, "Rabbi, the man you met on the other side of the Jordan River, the one you identified as the Messiah, is also baptizing people. And everybody is going to him instead of coming to us." (Jn 3:26)
He responds with, "No one can receive anything unless God gives it from heaven." (v. 27)
True gratitude. Piper continues in his sermon, saying, "As an antidote to this arrogance in worship, God prescribes the opposite: "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanks!" Acknowledge God as the giver and accept the lowly status of receiver. This is what magnifies God. That's why the last verse of Psalm 50 (23) says, "He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me." So when David says in Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise," he is simply describing the only sort of heart from which the sacrifice of genuine thanksgiving can flow. Until the stiffness of man's arrogant neck is broken and the hardness of his self-sufficient heart is softened, he will never be able to offer genuine thanks to the true God, and therefore will not magnify God but only himself."
All I can do is acknowledge His great providence and thus come to Him with a broken heart. Only in Christianity does this happen. I sometimes look at these verses with a slight skepticism, seeing how this could breed cult-like behavior in a belief of God, seeing if this could be man-made. But if it is, then why is there no other religion that so boldly claims that we can't do anything for our salvation?
God doesn't even want our sacrifices, He just wants our thanks for the everything He's done for us.
And yet that can sometimes be the hardest thing to give.
"He must become greater; I must become less."
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