And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming…

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I’m sharing this bit from our personal lives with you to invite your prayers for my mother-in-law, my beloved wife, and all those fortunate enough to stand in the wide circle of relationships with this good woman, as well as to ask your understanding in what has been and will continue to be some rather sporadic posting on my part in the coming weeks. My intention nearly every day for the past few weeks has been to set aside time to blog but by the time night comes I find the hours have slip away without getting to what I had intended to do upon waking, either because there were too many things that needed to get done or because my concentration on anything beyond the immediate moment in our extended family is as productive as burnt toast.

While new posts may temporarily be infrequent in coming, my blog stats and the comments being left show that new (and no doubt incredibly cool to the point of being off the hook) readers continue to drop in here for a look around and so for that reason I’m going to be occasionally posting an encore post at the top of the blog. That’s right. I’m going to be a good little lesbian and do my part in reducing my digital footprint by going green and re-cycling a few posts from the past.  I hope that in re-posting them it could stir up some fresh insights from you that you would then take the time to share with the rest of us in the comments section.

But before I raise the curtain for an encore, I’m thinking it’s time for a very special giveaway but first I need to put the giveaway post together so go busy yourselves for a few minutes. Update your status on Facebook, twitter your tweets, empty out your spam, or watch this and learn. Then come back and see what what’s under Box Number 1.

This week I unveiled my personal blog,  The Passionate Plate: Savoring Life in Small Bites, which focuses on three areas of interest to me: Food and Health (Savoring), Spirituality and Faith (Saviouring), and Our Adventures at Home and on the Road (Savouring). I hope you stop by sometime. Oh, who am I kidding?! I want you come by all the time! Bookmark me. Tag me in your RSS feed. Plan your days around my posts. Add your comments. Pass the word to your friends. Come and see me. I need you. I’m co-dependent.

But seriously, one of the reasons I’ve gone ahead and created a personal blog where I can yammer away is because I’ve been concerned that I’ve muddied the original purpose of SisterFriends with posting a few too many things from my life that have little to nothing to do with being gay and Christian. The intention of SisterFriends-Together is to provide a place where queer folks can be encouraged in their faith and where those who are struggling with their sexuality can find a place of safety to ask the questions, share their fears or hopes, and have the chance to consider a different voice in the conversation on the Bible and homosexuality than what’s often held up as the only true Christian understanding. SisterFriends is here to witness through the lives of countless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people (I’m only one of them) that yes, you can be GLBTQ and a Christian and you can be assured that God’s love for you is unchanging and unending no matter what your race, gender, sexual orientation, past mistakes,  present circumstances, or whatever. On the day you were born God entered into a full-blown love relationship with you and that relationship will continue on beyond your final breath on this earth. Please take seriously the Word that, “Nothing will ever separate you from the love of God.” Take it seriously and take it to heart. Own it.

Whew. Okay. As I was saying….

Rather than jumping around on SisterFriends between the message of God’s love and reporting on the best bowl of pasta I’ve ever had in my life, my aim is to keep SisterFriends for those conversations that pertain specifically to being queer and being Christian and when I say “queer” I’m not limiting that word to folks of the rainbow persuasion but to anyone, whatever their orientation, who feels in some way different, outcast or on the edges of mainstream Christianity. Those who have been wounded by the church, judged harshly by other Christians, or had their personal faith development move them to reflect on God and what it means to be Christian in the world that doesn’t always square with the status quo.

This doesn’t mean I’m not going to be sharing stories from my life. I’ll continue to do so because just as I suspect it is for you, what happens in my day to day life and all that I encounter among people and experience in those moments when God shows up is what most informs my faith, my hope, and my convictions. I also believe that the best thing, and in the end maybe the only thing that any of us have to give one another is our lives, in hardships and in glory. Please know that you teach, strengthen and encourage me through the simple act of living your life and I only wish to return the same to you. So I’ll share my life as openly as ever but I just want to stay focused on why we’re here instead of holding you a captive audience to my vacation photos. You can come over to The Passionate Plate for that and I hope you will. I hope you will not only because of my desperate need for attention but because I want those of you who have lost so much in coming out or fear losing so much when you do come out, to see through the simple act of living my life that as life has gone on for me, life will go on for you.

You can survive the rough spots of coming out with all the losses and rejection and find incredible joy again. There are churches that will welcome you and your ministry. There are life-long friends who will return to you and new friendships that will come to you. A day may come when you and your family will forge a new relationship made possible by a God who specializes in reconciling hearts to one another. There’s every chance in the world for you to share your life and love with another human being who will cherish you as much as you cherish them. And if you open your heart and your eyes you will see God show up day in and day out in acts of such grace and goodness that your knees will go weak. You might not believe any of this now but let what God has done and is doing in my life and the lives of others witness to you that there is hope for you who are hopeless and joy for you whose joy has been lost or taken captive.

There I go again.

So SisterFriends will always be here and a-n-y-o-n-e looking for a place to explore their faith and how God is calling them to embody that faith in the world is welcome here and it is to their longing to embrace themselves in their wholeness, to experience God’s love in the center of their being, and to learn and grow into a Christian life of faith that is most true for them that SisterFriends is here and will continue to be here until Grace in it’s full glory is revealed and then some.

[My intention for the time being is to add one new post here per week though in time I hope to be posting twice a week once I get a rhythm back to my writing which was shattered this summer.]

• 4 point to where you are right now and that I plan to hold on to indefinitely (christianlesbians.com, christianlesbians.org, sisterfriends-together.org, sisterfriends-together.com).
• 2 point to Grace Unfolding Ministries (grace-unfolding.org, grace-unfolding.com) that I hope to one day develop into an active website but for the time-being contains a simple unchanging message.
• 4 point nowhere and were bought when I was trying to work out a name for this site a couple years ago and that I’ll probably put back out on the market when they expire in 2012 (for-such-a-time-as-this.org, forsuchatimeasthisministries.org, micahministry.org, micahsmandate.org).
• And then there’s my personal and infrequently updated blog (anitasblog.com).

That leads to my latest acquisition. I just added 1ofthe18000.com to my collection. D and I were one of the 18,000 couples legally married in California and so my thoughts are to create a blog snapshot of our regular lives and ordinary marriage with the hope that our story might impact someone who voted yes on prop 8 enough that come the next election they would consider voting in favor of marriage equality. It’s all about changing one heart at a time. Anyway, it will probably be a couple months before the 1ofthe18000.com goes live and you’ll be among the first to know so you can spread the word to any California voters you know personally.

Now that I think about it, there’s another domain name that might fit quite well in my collection…

get-off-the-internet-and-get-some-work-done-around-the-house.org

What say ye?

So trust me, the forum will be back up and running as soon as possible and I’ll update this post as I get more information.

UPDATE: Seven hours later and we’re still a big no-go on the forum.  I don’t know why this kind of stuff ends up always being more complicated than you think it’s going to be but you know how it is, if it’s not one thing it’s your mother.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: As of Wednesday at 11:15 p.m. the forum is nearly ready but not quite. Hopefully by the morning we’ll be back up and running. One thing for sure…I’ll have a new post up tomorrow.

THE TRIFECTA OF UPDATES: It’s Thursday morning, 7:50 a.m. Pacific Coast Time and still we’re in a holding pattern on the forum. All the forum furniture is back in place, the heat is on, and the lights are shining bright. The only problem remaining is that the door seems to be locked and we’re having a hard time locating the key.

FINAL UPDATE OH DON’T WE HOPE?: Dare I announce it but at 1:30 p.m. Pacfic Coast Time, it appears the forum is back up and running. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh keep your fingers crossed!

While I’ve been tending to my scratchy throat my web designer has unleashed her super high-tech powers on the SisterFriends Forum with a much needed update to the software. As of Tuesday evening this is still a work in progress but I expect the forum to be restored to its original grandeur and content sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, please refrain your chatty little selves from posting anything on the forum while we insure that all the security settings are in place and the original database with all the existing posts are re-installed.

And now I must wander off in search of another box of tissue…

Over the past few days the daily hits to this site have jumped from an average of 350-450 a day to nearly 800 a day! That rocks in the most big and grand way. In looking over my WordPress feedback a good chunk of the new traffic is due to people adding SisterFriends to their blog roll and for that kindness I send out a big wink, nod and thank you very much.

At the same time it appears we’ve run into a minor glitch with the email subscriptions that dropped from 300 subscriptions to just under 100 overnight. Unless I blogged on a topic that really peeved a bunch of you off all at the same time, I think the sudden drop is a result of Feedburner switching over to Google. If you’ve reading this via your email subscription then you’re one of the 100 folks who are still hooked in but if you came to the blog to see why SisterFriends had suddenly gone quiet (not a chance!) now you know the reason. If you’re among the 200 who were dropped like a hot potato from the email subscriptions please re-subscribe by inserting your email address in the email subscription form over in the right column and then validate your subscription when you receive a confirmation email from Google Feedburner. Sorry for the inconvenience but such is the nature of the cyber-beast.

And one more note to those of you who follow via email. I often receive such incredible comments from you in email in response to various posts and I appreciate each and every one of them. I realize some of you email me directly rather than posting your comments to the blog due to confidentiality reasons. I respect that and offer you my assurance that everything shared with me in email is kept between you and me. However, if confidentiality isn’t an issue for you then I invite you to post your comments on the blog so your words can be read and enjoyed by others by the larger SisterFriends community. The way to do it is simple. Just click on the title of the blog post in the body of the email window and that will take you directly to that blog post on the website (Be sure you have your email links enabled). Once you’re here just scroll down to the bottom of the post where it reads “Comments” and that’s where you can add yours. Again if confidentiality is an issue you can either use your real name or a pseudo name. The more SisterFriends that add their voice, the better!

For those of you who are new to SisterFriends, welcome girlfriend! If you haven’t already explored the place, peeked in the cupboards and rooted through the medicine cabinet, by all means, please do. You’ll find some basic information located across the top of the page on the navigational bar. Without question the tab that gets clicked the most is The Bible and Homosexuality that will take you to my posts on the six scripture passages most commonly abused misused to condemn homosexuality. Go ahead. Click it. You know you wanna. And then be sure to check out the posts under the categories section to your right. Gifted by Otherness, Sexual Ethics, and Coming Out have been the ones that have attracted the most readership.

Though I’ve been doing this whole internet thang for a number of years, I’m still an amateur on a slow learning curve when it comes to blogging. There are some massively successful bloggers out there busting out posts every day with readership stats in the thousands. Kudos to them! While the whispered longings of my fragile ego would love to have a ginormous following  hanging on each and every word I pounded out on my 14-inch Macbook keyboard I’m more than content to have the small but faithful following of which it would be great to have you join. I don’t know what you’ll take away from reading this blog but my desire would be you’d catch a little bit of God’s love and grace in this place and find a community of queer and queer-friendly folk to accompany you on the journey of faith with a twist of gay on the side. And fun. I hope you have fun here too because goodness knows we all can use a little nonsense now and again. Just be warned. When we have contests with prizes here, the competitive beast comes out among the regular posse. Watch your back!

I’ll be putting up a new post tomorrow but in the meantime here are my regular Weekend Links on Monday. Better late than…

• I’m not wearing mine yet but only because I have fabricstorephobia, a hideous condition that started with I was given a C+ on my eighth grade sewing project. Despite the lousy grade I was looking fine in my white and blue tie-dyed denim vest.
• As long as we’re talking fashion here’s one final shout out to give your support to Bead For Life. I’m typing to the clicking sound of a half dozen bangles around my wrist at this very moment.
• Here’s a quinessentially awesome site recommended by Existential Punk who found it at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, both awesome sites in their own right.
• I’ve just started following My Heart Goes Out by Carol Boltz, former wife of evangelical Christian musician and song writer Ray “Surprise! I’m gay too!” Boltz
• How could I not let you know about The Bilerico Project: Daily Experiments in LGBTQ now that they’re a 2008 Weblog finalist as the best LGBT blog?
• Check out Missiongathering where they have a rich archive of audio sermons. The next time I make a trek to San Diego, that’s where this girl will be worshipping!
• In honor of the start of my liquid fast this Wednesday, please go here, here, and here and then join with me in a moment of silence.