The Sacred Friendships Project

Friendship Manifesto

This is our friendship manifesto for the upcoming Sacred Friendship Gathering in April 27-28. Our website for the event goes public January 2nd.

Friendship Manifesto:

Cross-Gender Friendship: A Single Woman and a Married Man

Susanne Osborne and I have forged an intimate platonic friendship in the last couple of years. For the purpose of moving past so many stereotypes and fears, I think its time to share something of our story. I think we can both affirm the glorious beauty and goodness of loving each other without wanting each other sexually. This doesn't mean embodied sexuality is not present between us.

When I mention sexuality here, I am not referring to genital sexuality but the distinction Marva Dawn makes between genital sexuality and social sexuality.  Social sexuality according to Dawn, "is composed of all aspects of our being that are distinct from specfic feelings, attitudes, or behaviors related to or leading to genital union." We have nurtured a love that is different from the kind you would see in Hollywood.

But it is a also different from the keep-your-distance, and maintain arm's length away love between a single woman and a married man which is the ambivalent kind of love offered up in some evangelical communities. What has emerged between us is something Jean Vanier speaks of when he writes that men and women need to learn in friendship,  a relationship of "communion, gift, tenderness, and service." 

In our friendship, there has been mutual growing trust, deepening conversation, and mutual risk to explore different boundaries than calculated distance. I'll share some highlights. 

3 Cross-Gender Friends and a Wedding

I am cross-posting this with Faith Dance:

"Those who witness a wedding ceremony are privileged to draw near to a concrete, loving union of two Christians--a community of disciples--that gives a taste of the spiritual communion among all Christians united in Christ." Julie Hanlon Rubio, Catholic theologian

"Those of us who have experienced the abundant being that can come from a deep personal relationship with a person of the opposite sex would never speak of our relationship as 'just.' Calling these relationships 'just' friend is not only misleading; it trivializes the relationship in a way that seems sacrilege." John Scudder & Anne Bishop

Three of my closest and dearest cgfs, Jennifer Ould, Susanne Osborne, and Jennifer Roach were all at  my son Jonathan's wedding and reception.  I've been wanting to write on this for a couple of weeks but I've been at a loss of words. 

I was absolutely thrilled that my three closest opposite sex friends were able to share my joy over Jonathan's wedding. This was an amazing wedding and one subpoint to the joyous occasion was my sheer joy of the Jens and Susanne sharing the greater joy with Sheila and I. I dearly love all three and celebrate them in their own unique beauty. Sheila knows and loves all three of them, too.  How do I write of such complex joy? 

I have one wife. One and only one wife. I share my life with Sheila and I am transparent with her in a way that I don't with my other cgfs. My wife Sheila has first and foremost "claims" on me and what we share is the totality of our lives(as I see it, the distinctive, "one flesh"). Even if one of my cgfs lived with us (and Jennifer O. has albeit for seven weeks) for a significant period of time, Sheila and I, because we are married, would still share a totality of our lives together. In friendship, the totality of two lives are not shared together even though friends (same gender or cross gender) may share great spiritual, emotional, and material depth between them, it is never about the totality of their lives.

The friends may take on deep kinship-like ties and intimacy.

In terms of frequent contact, depth, etc. Jennifer O. is my closest friend. We're prayer partners. We have a pretty deep, ongoing prayer intimacy. She lives in Chicago suburbs but she lives an hour from me. But in our current practice of intentional friendship and community, we keep in touch with each other daily and set aside one evening a week to connect f2f.  Jennifer and I are soon approaching ten years of friendship. 

Jennifer R. lives in Seattle, but she is another dear and close friend. I came to know Jennifer several months after Jennifer O. Although she lives in Seattle, we keep in frequent contact and we pray once a week.

Susanne is a relatively "newcomer" onto the scene (compared with the Jens). We've known each other for seven years. We met in seminary class. Our friendship began to ramp up 2 1/2 years ago and is blossoming leaps and bounds. Sus has indeed become a very dear and close friend. 

To share Jonathan's wedding with these friends was joy x joy x joy x joy. I don't know what that equals but it is deep joy.

Then, to have them all sit at the table with Sheila and me after the reception, how do I express the deep sense of gratitude and joy over that? I enjoyed dancing with all three of them! 

This indeed was a public expression of the kinship-like depth of my friendships with these 3 women.

Karen's Story

Karen shares her story about forming a friendship with a woman she calls Amy she met during a Tres Dias weekend:

Gay Men, Friendships, and Intimacy

I've come to admire Andrew Marin (author of Love is an Orientation). He has spent considerable time listening to stories within the LGBT community. He has given the Church a great gift by giving us a glimpse into their culture. If you hang around his blog for any length of time you will see he has earned the respect of gay Christians.

One of my goals in the Sacred Friendships Project is to explore the deep connection of sexuality and friendship via the avenue of stories. Yes, this means cross-gender friendships. When I refer to friendship it is differentiated from marriage or a committed, monogamous sexual relationship. I hope to explore same gender friendships including friendships within the LGBT community. Most, if not all of us, are aware of major differences between evangelicals and the LGBT community. Marin's book reveals his intentions to reach out in friendship building bridges between evangelicals and gays.  In the spirit of those who want to build bridges and listen to those who are different than me I hope that we will hear stories from gay Christians on this blog.

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 8

We come to the end of Hope’s story—at least this current chapter in her life. I love how she closes it with “a friend closer than a brother.” She has a settled acceptance of a marital love—a certain with-ness for over three decades. She also clearly has found life-giving love in a cross-gender transmarital friendship. Her story definitely does not fit into romantic myth formulas for intimacy. I am deeply grateful for the gift she has given us.  

 

Part 8 – A Friend Closer Than A Brother

 

 

I met Lewis at college, in the classroom. We were the only 2 mature age students in that class, so naturally we ended up talking a lot together. I had my guard up, I was tired of being hurt (yeah, some of us are slow learners) and I was preoccupied with Matt, and trying to get my head around what was happening there. I was surprised how much I missed Lewis one week whne he wasn’t there – sometimes his opinions startled me, sometimes they expressed things I had thought but hadn’t been game to say, sometimes they directly challenged my presuppositions. But because I was not in a one down, disempowered position with him, as I had always been with people like Rick and Leo, I felt free to disagree, and enjoyed myself. I hadn’t talked with anyone like that since the discussions I used to have with Paul, years before. But these were better.

 

But I wasn’t going to get emotionally involved, not me! Do you think God was laughing when I made those resolutions? He knew what was coming. So, for the better part of 2 semesters we slowly (and deeply) got to know each other. Then one day towards the end of that second semester I offered to lend him some tapes I had (yes, we still had tapes back in 2004). I didn’t think it was any big deal, but he was so touched that he spontaneously reached out and hugged me. Who was I kidding about that emotion thing?

 

In terms of narrative, there isn’t a lot more to say. Our friendship grew slowly and carefully for the first couple of years, then became a settled thing between us. It hasn’t always been easy – not because of anything difficult between us, but because the exigencies of life have got in the way. He has had to work in jobs well below his capacity to meet his family’s financial needs, and both he and his wife have been in abusive situations both in the workforce and in churches. Sometimes he’s just too busy for us to have the time together we would like to.

 

We have just spent the last two years studying together, doing a Masters degree by distance from a major university. We both finished well, and I really honour him for that, because he did it on top of working 50+ hours a week in a job that wrings him out. But we are a lot more than study-buddies, though we do that very well. We laugh – a lot, usually about things that don’t make a lot of sense to anyone else, like the other day when he said something silly/funny and I told him, laughingly, he was the only person I know who’s a worse idiot than I am. He promptly replied that that was ok, because it meant I was the better idiot! We both found that incredibly funny – most people I know would just look blank.

 

 There is honesty between us, and there are real emotions. And because there is honesty, the emotions can turn up when least expected – like the day when he saw some photos of my children when they were small, and he commented on how beautiful  he thought I looked as a young mum (ok guys, we’re talking 20+ years ago here) and I burst into tears because no man had ever said that to me in my life before. I have no hesitation in saying that I love this man with the same deep, marrow-of-my-bones love that I have for my children.

 

Which doesn’t mean that I live on the brink of crossing some sexual line. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The more we love each other, the more we want to honour each other and do what is best for each other. He has a lovely wife, I strongly believe she’s really good for him, and I don’t want to ever do anything that would come between them. I think attraction between us is possible, but it’s not what either of us is looking for, and neither of us believes that it would do anything other than destroy this beautiful thing we have.

 

And how does all this affect my marriage? Dan has written a lot about cgf and the growing of intimacy in a healthy marriage, but I am going to go out on a limb here and talk about a different scenario. Here the spouse is not threatened by your intimacy with someone else because intimacy is not something they value or even comprehend. As long as you honour them by always giving them priority in any situation where there’s a potential clash for the use of your time and energy, they are perfectly happy. Leo is no longer an abusive spouse, he hasn’t hit me for 17 years – half our marriage. He also treats me a lot more respectfully since I have learned to stand up for myself better. But intimacy? On the surface all is well, but most people are like icebergs, with the largest part of who they are hidden below the waterline. For 34 years I have tried to find the man below the waterline, and I can’t find anyone there. If he exists at all, only God has the power to reach him. And he still has the power to flabbergast me! We are going overseas in a few weeks, and will actually be in separate places for 12 days, before joining up again, the longest we have been apart in over 30 years. Yesterday I suggested that he look into getting Skype on his phone so he could talk to me cheaply on the laptop. “Oh no,” he said, “I don’t think we need to talk to each other. I’ll just send you an occasional text message to let you know I’m ok.”  Like I said, I was flabbergasted.

 

I’m not sure if this analogy will make sense to anyone else, but I feel like my marriage is a narrow canoe which will overturn out in the deep waters unless I have an outrigger to balance it. Conventional evangelical thought would tell me that I should stay in the shallow waters, and make myself small enough to fit within Leo’s expectations. After all, if we tip over, isn’t it because the woman rocked the boat? I am not going back there. Every time I tried to make myself small, I was denying God’s call on my life to grow. I need that outrigger, that attachment to people beyond  the tiny world of Leo-and-me. All love is a risk, but it is what we are made for, and love ultimately requires the engagement of all that we are, and that may require many different kinds of relationships, since different people, with different needs call forth different parts of ourselves. There is no immunity to hurt unless we hermetically seal off our souls, and then they die from lack of oxygen! But there is an enormous difference between being hurt and being destroyed, and I am not afraid of the latter any more, for I know the God who holds me in the hollow of his hand, and no one has the power to pluck me from that place.

 

This morning I sat in church and looked at the dark cross on the white wall at the front while someone was reading 1 Corinthians 13, and it struck me afresh that the cross is the place where the fabric of this material universe has been torn and breached, so that the overwhelming love of God which is there forever, just beyond the reach of our fallen senses can flow through into our broken world. There is the place I can stand.

 

For those of you who have persevered through this mini-marathon of my story, I would like to finish with a poem I wrote in the early days of my wrestling with my multiple abuse issues. This is my aspiration, and my friends are the ones who lift me up:

 

 

 

THE EAGLE

 

They shall rise and fly like eagles,

Their wings subdue the air.

The earth shall hold them down no more,

And, some day, I’ll be there.

 

For these bones shall grow a body,

And the body shall be dressed

With feathers strong and golden,

His fairest and His best.

 

Theses eyes be no more blinkered,

But gaze towards the Son,

And by that gaze be lifted

Towards the Living One.

 

These arms, so peaked and puny,

Shall grow to wings, be strong.

This faltering voice be poured forth

In a fierce triumph song.

 

And the heart that shook in terror,

And sought a place to hide,

Shall joy above the conflict

And on the tempest ride.

 

He makes me for His purpose,

To see and soar and sing.

He makes this battered sparrow

An eagle of the King.

 

 

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 7

As we near the end of Hope's story, she finds friendship and love.  

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 6

The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.  We are all going to encounter abandonment and betrayal in our stories. I know of too many stories when well-intentioned church leaders have appealed to submission and Matthew 18 as power plays over individuals and their voices.  Been there done that. Got the t-shirt as they say. Women though, face extraordinary challenges in such communities. Before Hope's present shalom, which we shall see in the last 2 parts of her story, she encounters her friend, leaders within her community and Matthew 18. 

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 5

"Community" is almost the be-all, end-all for some Christian leaders today, with a heavy emphasis upon surrendering or submitting your self for the sake of community. Some see "community" as important for cross-gender friendship--keeping the cfg healthy--as if the community defines what is good for cross-gender friendship in the kingdom.  Yes, in some cases, community is good for cross-gender friendships. But communities hung up with an emphasis upon submission can also be unhealthy enmeshment for their own evangelical values and identity and miss the kingdom in their midst. "Hope"  continues with part five today. This part of her story is a powerful reminder about the great importance of one's voice, one's unique identity and freedom to honor God as an individual.

 

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 4

"Hope" in part four forms a friendship with "Rick." One of the powerful reasons why this is important is that this story adds the challenge of "intimacy" (not sex) in cross-gender friendship. Intimacy free from sexual behavior may still be unhealthy.