By Rev Naomi Miller, Church of the Apostles, Guelph. Thank you, Rev. Miller, for letting me share this here!
O God,
You know me by my name.
You know <name> by <pronoun> name.
Let the words I use when I speak to <name> and about <pronoun> show my love for <pronoun>.
No amount of busyness or responsibility cures clinical depression, anxiety disorders, or neurodivergence. I believe people when they say they “just” needed (a kid, a partner, a job change, spirituality, a move) and now they feel better. But that’s not a cure for our disorders.
Sometimes in life, we do need a change. Whether it’s a weekly “me time” or a cross-country move or a new business, change can be good. But you cannot outrun your disorder. You can’t out-schedule it or out-perform it or out-laugh it. You can’t fill your life with enough people. You can only face it. Discover your values. Accept what you have been given and commit to living according to those values. Set your boundaries, and unravel your shame. Deconstruct and reconstruct and get help from people qualified and trustworthy to give it.
The only way is through. The only way is honesty with yourself and your past, present, and future. It takes lament and commitment, feeling the pain and not avoiding and learning to be whole while shattered. There is no easy out or clever trick or shortcut.
We take our meds and pay for the help we can afford and research, listen, and grow. We do what’s healthy for us emotionally, mentally, and physically. Knowing sometimes it will be a choice between one or the other. And we forgive ourselves and keep going when we hurt ourselves. We can’t outsmart it, but we find balance in the tumult. Slowly, over time. Like a raging river wearing on a rock.
We pray, “just enough for today, God.” That’s all we need. To keep breathing another day. and eventually, it is easier to breathe some days.
But we never graduate from this. We never achieve enough or get promoted out of a disorder. We can make it work and learn to live with it and do things to reduce it. But those are done in humility, with the step of facing it, saying I cannot hide in fake fine. If you are struggling this month, this year, this lifetime. It’s not too late and it’s not too early. You don’t have to wait until you hit the bottom. You don’t have a lack of will or spiritual weakness or identity of failure; you have a disability.
I don’t know that I’m there yet to be proud of my disabilities, but this #DisabilityPrideMonth, please don’t let anyone tell you that you just haven’t tried hard enough or are not busy enough or have too much time on your hands. You deserve the help you need.
Asexuality is not the same as celibacy. Lots of asexual people do have sex. Asexuality is about attraction, not behavior.
I am also celibate. I consider this a calling in the sense that God made me sex-averse intentionally and for a reason.
Not all asexual people are sex-averse.
My understanding of this vocation is different from those who typically get the microphone in regards to celibacy, talking about a traditional understanding of what gay people must do with their sexuality to be “orthodox.”
I’m Side A. How does this work?
Celibacy should be for those who are personally called to it. It should not be in any way related to your orientation. Straight, bi, pan, queer, ace, gay, whatever… you can be called to celibacy.
Important: This also has nothing to do with anyone else. It’s you and only you.
Side A theology doesn’t reserve any specific restrictions on any orientation. We are all one in Christ Jesus and each individual part of Christ’s body has its own calling. This is why I’m all over the podcast land as a celibate ace telling you to create your own sexual ethic.
Can you be Side A and celibate? YES. There is no sexual liberation without the choice not to have it. Side A doesn’t mean you personally feel called to have sex. It means the Bible is fully affirming of queer relationships and identities including the choice to have sex. Or not!
If anyone tells you you have to be Side B if you’re called to celibacy, here is your sign that that’s a lie. It’s about belief and biblical interpretation. Not behavior.
Stuff like this is why the church needs asexual leadership. We have the vocabulary for this. We need more Christian aces affirmed and heard. We need the church to understand the difference between attraction, behavior, desire, and vocation. Aces can lead. We’re worthy and called.
Remember: We aren’t new. Just erased. Just today I ran across a blog on a queer Christian website acknowledging asexuality as a queer orientation. It was written 21 years ago. We’ve been here. You just haven’t been listening or haven’t had the opportunity because of gatekeeping.
We’re in your churches. We may not know the label (though that’s changing as awareness grows), but we’re there. We might be partnered. But some of us are happily single, and we might be celibate and/or sex-averse. And we have words to describe that array of sexuality and desire.
Give aces a voice and you’ll discover so many keys to this beautiful diversity of God’s kingdom. We can help those called to celibacy and unite in our common goals. We can support singles who need help accepting their vocation to singleness.
We also face queerphobia, often recycled arguments used against bi or pan or gay and lesbian people are used against us, right here on this website every damn day and in churches and elsewhere.
Asexuality is so difficult to see because it is not only against traditional understandings of sexuality (heteronormativity) but also against the assumptions that we can sub in different genders into that traditional understanding (all have sexual attraction = allonormativity).
Asexuality is compatible with the Bible (and so is celibacy) but runs counter to “traditional Christian teaching” that emphasizes being created for heterosexual marriage, aka a lifelong sexual relationship, implying that God gives everyone attraction. So while asexuality and celibacy aren’t the same, we do have shared history.
Theology that only says same-sex marriage is ok without seeing vocational singleness and/or celibacy as holy too is missing it just as much as those who demand celibacy is the only “orthodox” answer for queerness. Both are missing the parallel diversity the ace community provides.
(Meaning that for centuries, asexuality has had to work out whether it is only for those not interested in the acts of sex, behavior, or for anyone without attraction, regardless of behavior. We landed on the latter in recent years. More on this elsewhere.)
So do I need Side A theology for my “pet sins”? Am I just capitulating to the culture to sleep with whoever I want? Am I Side A because celibacy is too hard? Am I going along with sexual trends of “the world”? Nope. I’m ace, single, and celibate. But I’m Side A because I’ve seen the good fruit when everyone is allowed to live out their own unique, God-given identities and vocations and behavior. Asexuality is a form of queerness that reveals anything is possible when we discard the narrow roles normativity would place on us.
So don’t devalue my calling by claiming it’s tied to orientation. Don’t perpetuate myths about asexuals by claiming it’s just “not having sex” or the same as celibacy. That’s not it. But aces and celibate people do have a lot of overlap and goals in common. It’s time to work together, fully affirming each other’s callings.
Usually, when someone becomes affirming, it is because they have seen the bad fruit of non-affirming theology. They know you can judge a tree by its fruit, and the fruit of the Spirit are useful tools for discernment. They usually know someone who is queer or know of them in some circle of proximity. They want to love their neighbors, and see that God is love, and can no longer support the theology of fear, hate, exclusion, suffering, and death they have previously been told is correct. They have usually had some sort of awareness (whether through gender or abuse or promises that never panned out or science or a thousand other things) that what is “traditional” in the church is not always what is faithful, best, or loving. At some point, they have to ask, “Is this really what the Bible says about LGBTQIA+ people? Is this really what God wants for his people and his church? If this is orthodoxy, what does that say about the gospel? Can I keep my faith and love my neighbor?”
Continue reading “Queer theology and the Bible”A few podcasts around queerness, queer faith, and aromanticism and asexuality. For my own podcast appearances, see Podcasts.
Queer – general
Queer Christian
Search for these on your favorite podcast-listening platform!
Welcome, welcome to the wandering
I was once welcomed
And here you are too
Take a tea or a coffee.
There is no brochure
You’ve left rulebooks behind
It’s the wilderness, yes,
And it feels so alone
But look around! There’s a caravan
Wagons and timbrels
The young and the wise
We’re all growing
Welcome, you’re welcome
Don’t be ashamed
It’s never too late or too early
You’re not behind
There’s no supply list
No one leader or route.
You’ll wander awhile
Take your time
You’ll settle in, no rush.
One day you will welcome
One day you’ll be the guide
But we’re all just evolving
Take out your tools
Get down to the bones
Clean out and start anew
Remember it’s yours
Not anyone else’s
Only you know what to be
It’s not the destination
Or a linear line
There is no success or perfection
Holiness wanders
Righteousness blooms
Hunger and thirst are rewarded
Belonging comes in
When you least expect it
Exploration through yeses and noes
Find your path
Find yourself
Find freedom out here
The wilderness
welcomes you
home.
She needs him
Like she needs air
He needs her
Like water
But I breathe
I drink, I gasp
I drown
All on my own
She soothes her hands
through her hair
She kisses her
Soft and gentle
But I tighten my jaw
And say I’m fine
Because I will be
I am my own
He brings them soup
And pills and tea
They relax into him
He is there
But I will my way
To the shelf
I pour and heat
and brew alone
I choose myself
I chose alone
But I didn’t choose
To be made this way
I can’t pretend
I don’t wish
For you
To see
Me.
Written for Aroventures: AAA Literary Journal: Aromantic Awareness Week 2021.
I take aim
Correct form
Exhale
Release
The word hangs
In the air
A whisper
A whisper
I lower my arm
I lower my voice
I say
I just thought
You should know
My heart-drum
Pounds
Time in ice
Inhale the frost
Wait for the target
To receive
Or reject
The aro
Written for Aroventures: AAA Literary Journal: Aromantic Awareness Week 2021.
I had the great privilege of joining my friend Kelly Wolfe on her blog, Let It Matter, this week discussing Mary Magdalene. We have a video of our conversation on her blog as well as a transcript for you to read. We discuss the way she’s been treated by church history, biblical interpretation, how fandom culture can help us with theology, and the way women of the Bible provide a unique perspective on the gospel story.
“These women that have been through hell that are the ones recognizing Him, not just as a man, and not just as a teacher, or as a leader, but as God.”
“The better you understand fandom culture, the better you can engage with theology. And Mary has been mythologized for 2,000 years so there’s an awful lot of fandom culture around Mary Magdalene to deal with. She has been a saint, a prostitute, a wife of Jesus, a preacher, to the feminine side of Christ, there’s all sorts of things that have her in very odd positions in France as a hermit.”
“This is why it’s so vital that we are examining our own biases. We’re examining our own agendas coming into the text, we’re engaging in scripture itself, and we have to question what we’re absorbing from, sermons, podcasts, books, cultural references, music, art, even very old art. Read what’s there and notice what’s not.”
Call me dangerous
Call me wayward
I’m not sorry
for my honesty
/
I am queerly a woman
And I was born set to bold
A persistent problem
To your systems and theology
/
I will not be quiet
Call me threat, call me fire
Let’s burn it down
Call me hurricane
/
I am hurricane
I will blow fear away
Rain down justice
Waters holy
/
We fought too hard
To play power games
There’s too much at stake
To stay silent in grey
/
So call me dangerous
Call me violent
Rainbow light
I split skies wider.
Invisible Cake Society 