"That's a nice cross...so, are you a Christian?"
Thus was begun a wonderful journey, now entering its second year - a conversation and a co-discovery that has continued to the present day. In some strange, Sola Gratia sense, everything has been a response to that question - what it means for two men (gasp! gays?!?) to enter and form a relationship around and through sharing their faiths. And I don't mean that Christians should only date Christians, or that only Christians can have true relationships, or any other exclusivist crap that too many Christian relationship "writers" perpetuate. Rather, I revel in the fact that - contravening one of the few ideas that fundamentalist Christians and gays agree - Christianity has for Kev and me been a central and formative impulse. And not just some kind of consensus fidelium - we actually have some sharp differences in how we explore and express faith: the true center of gravity is our sharing a sense of vocation, a sense of ministry in the struggle for justice in a broken-yet-redeemed world. Thanks be to God!Ultimately, in true Lutheran fashion, our entire relationship has been a response to that question - for the whole life of faith is a response to God's question, Will you live the life of love in which and for which you were made? As someone who experienced for years that painful disjunction between Christianity and queerness forced by Christian bigots, I had never been able to express that indeed I am a Christian until I could do so as my deimaged [not de-imaged] whole self, in honest acceptance of my way of loving.
