Showing posts tagged Christianity
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Within the Christian story there is the depth and richness of troth in friendship. Dan Allender reminds us that troth is an old term that meant “pledge of fidelity.” Naomi did not disappear into the outer fringes of Ruth and Boaz’s marriage and family life. Friendship fidelity prior to marriage is honored, respected, cherished within marital vows. Enduring friendships were not set in contrast to marital vows. In our modern romantic scripts, ‘She’s just a friend’ conveys a distance from vows, commitments, passion—a peripheral existence to the heart of the family. However, the bond between Naomi and Ruth did not drift away or become marginalized when Ruth married.

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women

This passage doesn’t deal specifically with male/female friendship, obviously, but that is book’s overall theme. There are terrific sections on same-gender friendship and friendship within marriage, too.

I wish I’d picked this book up five or six years ago. (Oh…it wasn’t published until last year.) Brennan keeps confirming so much of what I already knew and believed (or at least suspected and passionately hoped) about the glory and mystery of deep, spiritual friendship - but which I’ve recently begun to doubt, question, re-evaluate, perhaps even abandon. But Brennan’s work isn’t just validating (ha…); it’s also deeply edifying. This book is setting my mind at ease about some issues, convicting and challenging me in others. I’m just over halfway finished, but already I *highly* recommend it.

I could not be who I am today without this woman.

We met in, oh, 2004? - laughed together in 2006, cried together in 2007, became unquestionably real friends by 2008, and - wow. I am kind of crying now, thinking of the strength, courage, generosity, and grace I’ve learned from Stefanie Wheat-Johnson. What I’ve had the privilege to know of her story brings energy, validity, and hope to my own.

Sometimes, as a single Christian woman, I feel like I’m a… a hazard of some sort. Some kind of inadvertent femme fatale. Like if I breathe the wrong way I’m going to wreck a home or break a heart or crush a spirit.

I don’t know how to do this.

A Christian Response to Homosexuality

I am listening.

This spoke to me powerfully. It’s a little long, but please do read it.

If you absolutely cannot read the whole thing, read the poem.

beingblog:

by Luke Hankins, guest contributor

…We have faith; we lose faith. We have times of peace; we have times of great distress. And I have found that God enters life not only through belief but also through unbelief, not only through rejoicing but also through fear and outrage. As the angel says to Caedmon in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, “Nevertheless, you must sing.”

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(Reblogged from beingblog)