“I don’t think I’m over-anxious about the future, though I do quail a bit sometimes before the probability that it will be lonely. When I see you surrounded by family and its problems, I alternate between self-congratulation and bitter envy.”

— W. H. Auden, letter to Ursula Niebuhr, August 1947, quoted in Auden and Christianity by Arthur Kirsch (via unutterablyalone)

“There are days when the knowledge that there will never be a place which I can call home, that there will never be a person with whom I shall be one flesh, seems more than I can bear, and if it wasn’t for you, and a few—how few—like you, I don’t like I could.”

— W. H. Auden, letter to Elizabeth Mayer, 20 February 1943, quoted in Auden and Christianity by Arthur Kirsch (via unutterablyalone)

“There are days when the knowledge that there will never be a place which I can call home, that there will never be a person with whom I shall be one flesh, seems more than I can bear.”

— W. H. Auden

excerpts:

“I am drawn to these haunting confessions of Auden’s because I, too, am a homosexual Christian. Since puberty, I’ve been conscious of an exclusive attraction to persons of my own sex. Though I have never been in a gay relationship as Auden was, I have also never experienced the ‘healing’ or transformation of my sexual orientation that some formerly gay Christians profess to have received. But I remain a Christian, a follower of Jesus. And, like Auden, I accept the Christian teaching that homosexuality is a tragic sign that things are ‘not the way they’re supposed to be.’ Reading New Testament texts like Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 through the lens of time-honored Christian reflection on the meaning and purpose of marriage between a man and a woman, I find myself—much as I might wish things to be otherwise—compelled to abstain from homosexual practice.

As a result, I feel, more often than not, desperately lonely.”

“Perhaps the greatest unresolved question of my life is, How can I give and receive love, how can I experience intimacy and mutual self-giving commitment, if I am not permitted to marry a person of the gender to which I am attracted?

With every year that passes, I realize more and more that I don’t want to live life on my own. More than anything, I would like to have a life partner. But I keep circling back to the conclusion Nouwen arrived at: fulfilling that desire seems impossible, so long as I continue looking to Scripture to guide my moral choices.”

“I know well-meaning Christians who often remind me, ‘God’s love for you is better than any love you might find in a human relationship.’ While I believe this is true in an ultimate and profound sense, putting it this way seems to set up a false dichotomy. A statement more in sync with the drift of the New Testament might go something like this: ‘God’s love for us is expressed and experienced mainly through the medium of human relationships.’”

“I would echo Auden’s sentiment: If it weren’t for other people, I don’t think I’d make it. For me to live faithfully before God as a sexually-abstinent homosexual Christian must be to trust that God in Christ can meet me in my loneliness not simply with God’s own love but with God’s love mediated through the human faces and arms of my fellow believers.”