Since my teen years, I have found deep satisfaction and purpose in writing. I would journal daily. In college, I believed God wanted to use my writing to encourage other people, so I started this blog. My blogging led to many opportunities doing web design, communication, and marketing in various capacities.

In recent years, my focus has not been on maintaining a blog. However, more and more, I feel a restlessness around the need to share about my life living in Christian community through writing and speaking. This blog post is my attempt to formally say I’m back and hoping, in some capacity, to begin adding my voice and story to a growing conversation.

Community and Relationality

An important aspect of why I have chosen to live in and pursue lifelong community living is my experience with sexuality. A better way of stating this might be “my experience with relationality,” because my choices are more about how I experience and long for holistic relationship than they are about sex.

Community and God

Even more important in my pursuit of community is the reality that God is in loving pursuit of the redemption of all creation, including me. I believe that the signature of God’s heart lies on human relationality and all existence, whether I like that or not. And because this is God’s world, my relationships are more meaningful when they are informed and directed by the character and heart of God.

Labels and Lived Experience

Typically, when bringing up this aspect of my life, I will simply tell people that I experience attraction to the same gender. (At least as importantly, I experience minimal attraction to, or desire to marry, anyone of the opposite gender.) Perhaps most importantly, I have a desire to honor God and His ways in my relationships. For me, this means (1) not pursuing a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman, (2) pursuing holistic relationships with people in community.

Some people would read this and call me gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer (and may include the word “celibate” in that label). Others would not use this language and might use same-sex attracted (or SSA). Others would not want to use any kind of language or labels. Still others would not be comfortable having this conversation at all.

As for me, I hold language and labels with an open hand. Call me what you wish. Whatever you call me, though, understand what I have stated in the paragraph above is what I would hope you know about me. If I use any labels, it is not to claim that the whole of my identity lies within a small piece of my life. I care less about labels and more about communicating a tension that is a reality in my lived experience.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a portion of wisdom and experience in this area that might be of benefit to readers to consider.

What I won’t write about

Only one more point I’d like to add for this post. My area of interest is not theology, policy, or trying to control people – especially those who believe different from me. Moreso, I will be writing about practical, philosophical, and ecclesiological aspects of community. In other words, don’t expect me to defend a traditional view of sexuality, tell you how to vote, or try to police your life or your community. I simply hope my voice will be one of many that you digest critically as you consider what community, sexuality, and/or Christianity might mean for you.

Do, though, expect me to give you a glimpse of how (and why) I, one person, live in community, in my city, with my particular people.