Category Archives: Christianity

Jesus Likes Me, This I Know

22 Friday Jan 2021

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Hey all…I know it’s been a while. Lots of COVID-related emotional down-ness (I’m a hyer-extrovert) and working on projects when I’m able (I’m scoring a silent film from 1925 at present), so I’m trying to keep busy. I’ll do a full personal update soon.

Someone recently asked me what I would tell my 16 year old self knowing what I know now. Here’s what I answered, edited for clarity (I hope):

Yes, I know this is a deep cut. If you get it, you get it.
  • That Jesus loves and LIKES him.
  • That at 38, he has more friends than he can imagine
  • That his sexuality is a precious gift and is a reason he has so many friends

Someone else asked me to talk more about the first point, so this is what I wrote:

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National Coming Out Day, 2020

11 Sunday Oct 2020

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I grew up in a home where anything related to coming out was met with a sneer. “Why do they have to force their sexual depravity on us?” was a common refrain in discussions. From the time that I began actually dealing with the fact that my sexual attractions and my experience of the world just didn’t fit the narrative which my friends and relatives seemed all-too-comfortable in, I weighed the options of coming out.

For years, I refused. My freshman year of college, I was asked point-blank by a friend in marching band: “Are you gay?” I told him no. I had reasons, of course. Being a conservative Christian, I reasoned that I wasn’t actually gay because I wasn’t sleeping with men. I was same-sex attracted and was attempting to be free from the curse thereof through prayer, accountability, and just plain perseverance.

There is nothing at all wrong with any of those three things. It was, for me, a misguided attempt to grapple with reality as I found it.

But was he asking about my sexual practices? No, probably not right then. He was likely only asking if I liked dudes. And so, I was lying. He probably doesn’t even remember the conversation, but that lie has weighed on me much more heavily than the lies I later told my parents.

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Scripture & Prayer, 20200211

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

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Call to Prayer

Psalm 68:19-23 (ESV)

19 Blessed be the Lord,
    who daily bears us up;
    God is our salvation.
20 Our God is a God of salvation,
    and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.
21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
    the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.
22 The Lord said,
    “I will bring them back from Bashan,
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea,
23 that you may strike your feet in their blood,
    that the tongues of your dogs may have their portion from the foe.”

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Scripture & Prayer, 20200128

27 Monday Jan 2020

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Call to Prayer

Psalm 3:1-6 (ESV)

O Lord, how many are my foes!
    Many are rising against me;
many are saying of my soul,
    “There is no salvation for him in God.” 

But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
    my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the Lord,
    and he answered me from his holy hill. 

I lay down and slept;
    I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
    who have set themselves against me all around.

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St. Aelred Liturgy 2020

17 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Christianity, Theology

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A COLLECT

Reader: Loving God, you have lived among us and you have called us friends. Inspire us through the life of your servant Aelred to create relationships that show forth the intimate embrace of sacred love. Grant that the witness of our loving relationships may draw all people into the embrace of your unbounded love, through Jesus Christ, who loved as we love.
People: Amen.

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Gay Celibacy and Relational Capital

27 Tuesday Aug 2019

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I have a public service announcement for all the celigaybies* out there:

I suspect that at least some of my readers wrestle with how to keep their families and manage those family members’ expectations of them. I suspect also that there are many for whom the reasons they choose celibacy are cloudy sometimes. I resonate with that very deeply; I’m simply trying to turn on some fans to disperse the smoke so that others might see clearly.

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National Coming Out Day, 2018

11 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by in Christianity, Personal

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I grew up in a home where anything related to coming out was met with a sneer. “Why do they have to force their sexual depravity on us?” was a common refrain in discussions. From the time that I began actually dealing with the fact that my sexual attractions and my experience of the world just didn’t fit the narrative which my friends and relatives seemed all-too-comfortable in, I weighed the options of coming out.

For years, I refused. My freshman year of college, I was asked point-blank by a friend in marching band: “Are you gay?” I told him no. I had reasons, of course. Being a conservative Christian, I wasn’t actually gay because I wasn’t sleeping with men. I was same-sex attracted and was attempting to be free from the curse thereof through prayer, accountability, and just plain perseverance.

There is nothing at all wrong with any of those three things. It was, for me, a misguided attempt to grapple with reality as I found it.

Continue reading →

The Love of God

19 Saturday May 2018

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St. Aelred lays out a template for Spiritual Friendship in his book of the same name. He cautions his readers that in order to have close, spiritual friendship, everything about the relationship must be founded upon the love of God. He cautions that we must be especially careful that whatever we build atop this foundation fits with it. Whatever doesn’t fit the foundation must be corrected, using that foundation of the love of God as a template. In other words, if the building hangs over the sides of the foundation, bad stuff will happen.

Recently, I was discussing this passage with some folks one evening recently and I asked, “What does the love of God look like in practical terms?” Continue reading →

Two and a half years later

13 Tuesday Feb 2018

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More than two years ago, the interim senior pastor at the church I worked for sidelined me from ministry because I call myself a gay Christian. He criticized me behind closed doors, telling me that by calling myself a gay Christian I was uniting the name of my sin to the name of my Savior and bringing dishonor on the Gospel. He talked well about me in public, telling parents of kids in the youth group that I was living the single life better than most other single guys he knew, gay or straight.

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