When you’re 25, a lot still happens in the span of half a year. I’ve moved, flown to Kosovo and back, been ordained as a deacon, lost a close friend, maybe fallen in love and applied to and matriculated at a seminary across the country. These are things a 25-year-old would generally tell his mother.
Stories about Faith & Sexuality
It’s been almost a year since the pastor of my parents’ megachurch issued a statement on Facebook denouncing Obama’s support of gay marriage. His message, which at one point declared ”A same sex union, whether by human beings or cheese mites, will end up in the extinction of the species in a short time,” reached thousands
My first published piece. I’ll keep writing independently and using Oxford commas here. I probably err too much on the side of grace in most of my writing, but I believe some things necessitate taking a firm stand. Marriage equality is important for any number of civil reasons. I think it’s critical for preserving
A quick afternoon rain, long enough to stir up earth smells, leave the tree blossoms dripping, but too short to darken the clouds: Everything was beautiful, beautiful, the blue sky almost mawkish. I listed out what made me believe in God and included owls I was so happy. I read Mary Oliver, her poem about
This morning Brent Bailey, perhaps the main inspiration for this blog, tagged me and two other great gay Christian bloggers on Twitter, asking us to write our variations on a theme: his latest post about Christians who’ve handled his sexuality with grace. It’s a lovely piece and so necessary. Bleak and brooding describes most of my
Sometimes the only thing that keeps me believing in God is the memory of believing in God. When those letters from Mother Teresa surfaced about the years she spent without feeling the presence of God, I remember relief. I hadn’t heard of other Christians, much less the celebrities of our faith, who acknowledged sometimes “blessed
It’s difficult to write about my family. I tried on Christmas, while they were thousands of miles southeast of me, quarantined in my apartment with a fever and very productive cough. Given the flu and loneliness, the holiday depressed me enough; trying to write about the people I was expected to be with made me
Add to the list of my anxieties this blog. For three months, in part due to some other major writing projects, I’ve started and left about 10 posts unfinished. It’s OK. They weren’t good. They’re probably not salvageable. That’s a part of writing, almost every professor I had in college consoled. But shitty first drafts aren’t
I went walking tonight, because I’ve spent the last two days depressed, mostly in my apartment, and after therapy, praying, lifting weights at the gym, and talking to friends I’d run out of solutions to try to end my melancholy. I bundled up (nightfall this evening finally brought with it a cold appropriate for the
I cry a lot. This weekend, I hosted my church writer’s group. It’s mostly older ladies, all of whom are adorable, a few of whom are allergic to animals, so I woke early on Saturday and spent an hour sweeping, dusting, and airing out traces of my cat Linus. While doing this I played an