Sharon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
syf) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tothehilltops2011-02-11 03:05 pm
syf) wrote in tothehilltops2011-02-11 03:05 pm
Welcome
Hello and welcome to "To the Hilltops!" We're so glad that you are joining us and choosing to share in this journey toward an ethics of Christian womanhood.
Please view this post as an invitation to a comfortable seat beside a cozy fireplace. Come in, kick up your feet, grab yourself a cup of tea, and introduce yourself to everyone. Who are you? What brings you here? How do you see the need for a community like this one in your life right now?
Excitedly,
the mods (Kay, Sharon, and Tamara)
no subject
Hi. My name is Sophia. I'm engaged. And I've had sex.
Yeah, I know, I'd like to introduce you to other aspects of myself (like the fact that I think I have the dubious honor of being the only person to have actually met in person all but one of the members here). Or the fact that I'm an event planner and I just got the most brilliant internship ever. Or the fact that my fiance and I are improvisers, and I think that basically all of life should involve doing improv comedy or reading a book.
But honestly, the thing that has kept me lurking in the background, afraid to open up to this community, is anger and fear and shame and joy regarding the very purpose of the community: sex.
I'm a pretty liberal Christian, which I think makes me a minority in this community. I'm a Lutheran (ELCA). My pastor is a partnered gay man. My relationship with God is long on love and short on obedience. I'm a bit defensive about this, because I've been pretty burned in the past by people of a more conservative theological bent whose keen intent on holiness had narrowed into an obsession that deadened them to remembering to love me. I'm defensive about saying that, because several members of this community are members of the church community or network that I perceive in this way, that I still feel I am recovering from, that I still occasionally desperately want to warn people away from.
I'm also bisexual. I'm defensive about this too! (Are we noticing a trend?) But I think that the fact that I am attracted to both men and women is a healthy, beautiful, God-given thing, and that my sexuality as the whole being of my thoughts and spirit and body in relation to sex cannot be untied from its queerness, and shouldn't be. That I have a uniquely lovely sexuality in part because it is queer.
Right, back to the having sex. I was talking with Kay on the phone earlier today, and she mentioned that everyone here is struggling with sex and sexuality in a very visceral, powerful, painful way--we're just struggling with different aspects of it. That's hard for me to enter into, because the struggle of sex being so right because everything is right about it except the timing wrestling with the words of well-intentioned friends who believe the lying Church narrative of "you will feel horrible about sex before marriage" is very, very visceral and painful right now. It's hard to look up and see other people's struggles, and it's hard to believe that the well-meaning but ultimately useless platitudes are actually well-meant, that the somewhat academic space in which our minds meet is underlain with blood and tears and love.
And the short version is: I don't regret having had sex. (Maybe I will tell this story sometime, how the first time I had sex was, in the words of the Exultet, a "happy fault / O necessary sin of Adam / that won for us so great a redeemer." How I treasure it, because of its beauty. How having sex was what finally helped me see why God asks us to wait, what finally helped me to trust God enough to want to wait for sex until marriage.) What I regret is that we keep trying not to have sex and failing. It's discouraging. It allows guilt and shame and separation to God to enter into something that is staggeringly gorgeous and intimate and freeing and unifying (us to one another and us to God). It's alienating, lonely-making.
So, here I am, sisters. I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do. I ask Blessed Mary, all the angels and saints, and you, my sisters, to pray for me to the Lord Our God.
Joy at seeing you, dear one!
I think you've arrived at clarity at last in the sentences you wrote here: "My relationship with God is long on love and short on obedience. I'm a bit defensive about this, because I've been pretty burned in the past by people of a more conservative theological bent whose keen intent on holiness had narrowed into an obsession that deadened them to remembering to love me."
That is really the heart of all the long rambles we sent back and forth to each other, yes?
And if I know anything about you, it is that you are opened and quickened to life by a lavishing of love---that contempt, judgment, or true-in-content-but-not-in-spirit rebukes whip up your hackles and drive you away. I happen to be married to a man who responds to life and fellow believers the same exact way, and his heart, as yours, is precious to me. :-)
So, I am praying that you joining hands with all of us motley crew will increase God's ability to lavish His love on you, and that in our camaraderie, we might all stumble a little nearer to Truth.
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It is nice to hear your voice here. And all of your perspectives. We will have much to talk about as I have struggled with some of your struggles, yet never come to understand my beliefs on all of them.
I grew up in a very conservative home, and was taught very conservatively about gender roles and marraige all my life...
Until I was in my senior year of highschool ready to go off to college and my dad left my mom...for a guy. Talk about confusion... I fought and struggled a lot with this... and I still struggle...maybe it will be good to hear your perspectives. I have finally learned how to have a good relationship with my dad after a lot of anger and hatred over my family being destroyed more by his leaving than his choices, but it was hurtful to me for a very long time that he had struggled so much with his own sexuality since he was in college really... and that I had been taught so conservatively and then got a bomb dropped on me... at least it felt that way.
ANYHOW. All that to say I am so thankful and blessed by your honesty of self and of feelings and thoughts and beliefs and I am so so glad you are going to join us.I will be very glad to hear your opinions on all our discussions....and I check all the threads allll the time to look for new comments so jump in! :)
-sarahjean
honesty among friends
I value your honesty here. I know for me, it is easier to be honest among strangers - the chances of judgement are minimal among people who don't know you. I am praying for you, my dear.
I am also very glad that you have joined in our fellowship here. Each perspective and testamony adds greatly to our discussions.
Also, since when are you and Tom engaged? It occurs to me that I have been terrible about keeping up with you since I saw you at Christmas...
Re: honesty among friends
We are engaged but not technically engaged. As in--we decided in November that we want to get married, and have been working off of that presumption (finding a wedding date, beginning pre-marital counseling). Tom asked me to keep it under wraps so that he could do a more traditional surprise-with-ring and we could call everyone and squee and share joy then.
This worked...sort of...for two months, before I broke down and told Tom, "I HAVE TO TALK TO PEOPLE. THERE ARE ALL THESE BIG LIFE CHANGES AND FEARS I HAVE, AND NOT BEING ABLE TO SHARE THEM IS CUTTING ME OFF FROM EVERYONE I LOVE." And Tom went, "Oh, duh, that makes sense."
So you will still get a squealy phone call when Tom proposes, with ring, but in the meantime, we know we are getting married, and I have this time to talk with my sisters less about wedding planning and more about fears and struggles and joys of the process of joining our lives together.
Make sense?
Re: honesty among friends
Re: honesty among friends
Re: honesty among friends
But, yes, a Happy Chant Dance will happen.
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Welcome!