insights from Fr. Bede Griffiths

Here is a link to a wonderful video of Fr. Bede Griffiths and one of his students reflecting on the gifts we might receive through inter-faith conversations, and living with attention to the reality of each moment. Enjoy!

Fr. Bede Griffiths video

An Ash Wednesday prayer

On this Ash Wednesday I am grateful to have come across the following prayer. It is written by Howard Thurman, a wonderful 20th century scholar, theologian, mystic, and human being. May you know the nearness of the Beloved as you begin the Lenten journey.

I surrender to God...

I surrender to God the nerve center of my consent. This is the very core of my will, the mainspring of my desiring, the essence of my conscious thought.

I surrender to God the outlying districts of myself. These are the side streets down which I walk at night, the alleys of my desires, the parts of me that have not been laid out with streets, the wooded area, the swamps and marshlands of my character.

I surrender to God the things in my world to which I am related. These are the work I do, the things I own or that threaten me with their ownership, the points at which I carry social responsibility among my fellows, the money I earn, my delight in clothes and good food.

I surrender to God the hopes, dreams and desires of my heart. These are the things I reserve for my innermost communion; these are the fires that burn on the various altars of my life; these are the outreaches of my spirit enveloping all the hurt, the pain, the injustices and the cruelties of life. These are the things by which I live and carry on.

- Howard Thurman, from Meditations of the Heart

lovemaking

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Body & Soul: Healthy Sexuality and the People of God

Part 3: "Honoring the Gift of Sex"

Texts: Selected verses from the Song of Songs, 1 Corinthians 13:4-13

Eric Massanari

“lovemaking”

[begin with reading of 1 Corinthians 13:4-13]

When I was a child,

I spoke like a child:

I sat in church with my friend

and we flipped through the hymnal

whispering hymn titles to each other

and adding “between the sheets”

to each one.

“Move in our midst” . . . between the sheets

“Oh, how shall I receive thee” . . . between the sheets

“Joyful, joyful we adore thee” . . . between the sheets

When I was a child,

I thought like a child:

Around the time that my father sat me down

to have “the talk,” I thought the idea of sex was gross.

Then, of course, by adolescence it all seemed

quite enticing, exciting and mysterious, and I assumed

that no human being was thinking about it nearly

as much as I was.

When I was a child,

I reasoned like a child:

I reasoned that sexual feelings were something to keep hidden.

Out of guilt, I never told anyone before today

that by age 12 I had discovered that special

section of the Dewey Decimal System

in the public library where all of the books

about sex were shelved.

I learned a lot about speed reading in that section.

I reasoned that the longings I felt in my body

and the wild imaginings of my mind

were dangerous, something to be ashamed of,

something God was not entirely pleased with.

When I became an adult,

I set aside such childish ways.

Or not.

When it comes to those deepest

and most innate parts of our being,

like our sexuality,

we do not easily set aside

“the ways of our childhood.”

When it comes to our sexuality,

the things we learn at a young age,

the experiences we have from

the earliest moments of our lives—

whether those experiences are

ones of great pleasure, great pain, or great confusion—

shape us and leave indelible marks.

Consider for a moment this question:

What and who has had the most influence

on your own sexual awareness and development?

Parents? Peers?

Popular media?

Books? Classes?

Experiences by yourself?

Experience with sexual partners?

The community of faith?

I would have to say that the community of faith,

the church, falls near the bottom of my own list

of what has shaped my own sexual learning and growth.

I would hazard a guess that I'm not alone

in having experienced the church as largely

silent on matters of healthy human sexuality.

Which is probably why it felt strange

and more than a little intimidating this week

to plan a worship service entitled

“Honoring the gift of sex.”

Where exactly does one begin

when so much has gone unspoken?

Can we expect the world

to take the church seriously

if we are only willing to state a few

rules about when and with whom

one can be sexually active,

and then the only other times we

are heard to openly speak about sex is

when we're in one of our raging,

damaging arguments over homosexuality?

Some history...

From the first centuries of the church

it was believed that our human sexuality

and especially its expression through

and between human bodies,

was fundamentally tainted and fallen.

Gregory of Nyssa, a 4^th century church leader,

said that the sexual life was one of the most

disastrous consequences of the fall because

from sexuality “the passions as from a fountainhead

flow over human nature.” (a rather passionate image!)

Gregory was not a great fan of human attractions

and passions, as you might be able to tell.

In the Western church, Augustine stands out as

one of the greatest and most influential early church leaders.

Augustine, like Gregory, did not have a terribly

high view of human sexuality.

Like many of the other male theologians

of those early years of the church

seemed primarily focused on

sexuality in its physical and genital expression.

Augustine was troubled by the fact

that in the act of sexual intercourse

people seemed to lose control of themselves.

Sex couldn't take place without, as he put it,

“a certain amount of bestial movement,”

and “a violent acting of lust.”

For Augustine, these were signs that

sex was inherently shrouded in sin,

with its only redeeming

quality being the fact that it was needed

for the perpetuation of the human race.

Influenced by this view of sex,

it took many centuries before Christian theologians

of the church dared to acknowledge

what human beings had known for eons:

sexual intimacy isn't just for procreation,

it feels really good, too,

and that perhaps this pleasure is actually

something intended by our Creator.

Such views from the early church may seem archaic

to our ears today. However, they shaped

the church for hundreds of years

and continue to shape the shame,

guilt and discomfort in the church today

when it comes to matters of our sexuality.

The church has a great deal of learning

and growing to do to move beyond

some of our “childish ways.”

Though perhaps that is not the most helpful way to put it.

Perhaps we need to be a bit more child-like

in terms of reclaiming a sense of curiosity,

wonder, and awe when we consider our own sexuality.

The church must find its voice in

this world and in this age

where we are literally inundated

each day with sexually charged

images and messages—some of which

may be quite healthy and life-giving,

while many others are undoubtedly

harmful, abusive and exploitative.

For a long time societal norms

mirrored the morays and rules of the church.

That is no longer the case.

What does it mean to be Christian

and sexual in this day and age

where sex has become so casual

and commodified?

What does it mean to be a Christian

in these times when silences

around sexual abuse, rape and incest

are being broken, sometimes

silences that church has been

complicit in keeping?

What does it mean to be a Christian

in this age when we are learning more

about what it means to be sexual and human,

and the rich spectrum of healthy

human sexual expression that exists?

How does our faith inform and impact

our desire for sexual intimacy

when we are alone

and when we are with others?

There are potentially many meaningful

responses to these questions.

This morning I want to

suggest one possibility,

one hopeful word that the church

might speak into this world and our lives

regarding the expression of our sexual selves.

And it can be stated in very simple way.

The Christian faith can offer the world

and understanding of sex as a sacrament.

I realize that I am using the “s-word” here.

Not sex, sacrament.

For Mennonites that is almost

as forbidden a word in worship as sex.

“We're not sacramental!” we're proud to say.

We don't believe in that magical

sort of spiritual stuff.

Perhaps.

We might consider one traditional definition of “sacrament”

which goes something like this:

a sacrament is a visible sign

of the invisible grace of God.

In other words, a sacrament

is a tangible, physical, lived reality

that holds in itself the essence of the Divine;

it not only points the way to God

but it directly connects us with the God

who dwells within us and among us.

Sacramental moments of life are those moments

and experiences that connect us to the

ground of our being, the source of energy

which animates our breath, our heartbeat, our cells.

Sacramental experiences are those experiences

which connect us to the underlying unity of all life,

those glimpses—sometimes all-too-brief glimpses—

the very heart of who we are in God.

I believe it is Christianity's place

to claim that sex is sacramental,

that our yearnings for one another

and the bodily expression of those

yearnings within committed,

mutually loving and affirming relationships,

reveals something to us about

the Love that is God's own love.

When my father told me about sex

when I was a pre-adolescent child,

he said something like this:

Sex is a special way that grownups

show how much they love one another.

And this, we can only hope, is true.

What we might offer the world as the church

is the insight that there is even more than this.

Sexual intimacy is a special way

that we can experience God's love for us.ⁱ

In the middle of our bibles there is

this rather steamy, sultry collection of poetry,

the Song of Songs.

You may or may not be surprised to learn

that for Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine

and many of those early leaders

the Song was a much beloved book of scripture.

They held it in very high esteem, though,

it came with a caveat:

don't take this too literally!

Breasts aren't actually leaping like gazelles here!

This isn't real honey dripping in these verses!

They interpreted this poetry as metaphor.

They read it as figurative speech

about God's passionate love for humanity.

Others have interpreted this book

as a collection of erotic love poems,

focused on the passionate feelings

shared by two human lovers.

In truth, those two interpretations do not necessarily

need to be set in opposition to one another.

In fact, the fullest meaning of the Song of Songs

may be found when we hold them together

and hear these verses as describing

both physical longings and spiritual longings.

As we have been reflecting on for these

last few weeks at church, these are longings

that cannot be fully separated in our beings

as humans created in God's image.

We are body and soul.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

For your love is better than wine,

your name is perfume poured out;

Draw me after you, let us make haste...

Ah, you are beautiful my love;

ah, you are beautiful...

Set me as a seal upon your heart...

for love is strong as death,

passion as fierce as the grave.

Such words can rightly be heard

as both expressions of the passion

that is God's for us, and the passion

we might encounter with another human being.

20th century theologian, Philip Sherrard, puts it this way:

The energy which manifests itself as the sexual energy in man and woman has its source in the deepest strata of their life. It is rooted in the ultimate mystery of their being. It is the source and generator of all human creativeness, whatever form this may take. It is the radiating, magnetizing, vibratory current which courses through the whole living fabric of human life and beyond human life. It is the energy of life itself, divine in its origin and sacred in its nature . . .

- Philip Sherrard, Christianity and Eros, p. 76

The sexual intimacy we share

in human relationships as a channel

for our love, finds its source in the love

that is of God.

This is what makes it sacrament.

It has the power to reveal to us

something true and real about God.

And what do we know and believe

of God's love?

We believe that the love of God bears

the shape of mercy—it heals, forgives and reconciles.

We believe that God's love

seeks justice in relationships.

We believe that God's love

is creative, playful and life-affirming.

We believe that God's love

is faithful and steadfast.

We believe that God's love

is a self-giving, self-offering love.

Healthy human lovemaking,

our expressions of sexual intimacy,

are meant to be channels of this very love—

love that is reconciling, just,

creative, playful, life-affirming,

faithful, steadfast, and self-giving.

To add the Apostle Paul's descriptions:

our expressions of love for one another (including lovemaking)

are to be patient, kind, never boastful, arrogant or rude.

Sexual intimacy, particularly in its

deepest and closest expressions

like genital sex, is meant to be held

in the sanctuary of a trusting,

mutually loving relationship.

For the fullness of this sacrament

to be honored and revealed it must

be held in a vessel of trust and love.

If it is twisted through coercion,

abuse, or manipulation;

if it is put on public display

or made a commodity for the pleasure of others;

if it is exploited for personal pleasure

at the expense of others

then it becomes what the Apostle Paul

called porneia - “pornographic.”

To share with another human being

in sexually intimate ways is one of

the most vulnerable things one can do.

That is one reason why sex is so easily twisted

into unhealthy and abusive forms,

and why it can be so terribly wounding,

because it involves so much vulnerability.

In the depths of sexual intimacy

we offer ourselves,

we lose our own self in the other, for the other,

for a profoundly wonderful and pleasurable moment in time.

We understand, even if only briefly,

what it means to "die to self,"

to let go of our self-involvement

and encounter deep unity with another.

Sex involves this great gift of oneself,

one's whole self—body & soul—to another.

And in that passionate gift,

in that sacramental union,

is the very Passion of God.

iBoulton, Elizabeth Myer and Matthew Myer Boulton. “Sacramental Sex: Divine Love and Human Intimacy,” The Christian Century, march 22, 2011. Page 31.

what the body knows

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Body & Soul Series, Part 1

Our Bodies, God's Image

Texts: Genesis 1:26-31, Psalm 139:1,13-18, John 1:14

Eric Massanari

“what the body knows”

I want to begin this time of reflection

by inviting us to join in a time

of listening to our bodies:

First, I invite you to find a comfortable

position that you can sit in for a few minutes.

I recommend sitting as upright as possible,

not stiff or rigid, but in that position

you might sit in when you are paying

deep attention to someone in conversation.

You might also find it helpful to

rest both of your feet on the floor

rather than crossing your knees –

this is more of a balanced position.

And your hands might simply rest

on your knees, with your palms open

and facing upward, in a position

of receptivity and openness.

For this time of meditation

you might also find it helpful

to either close your eyes

or simply let your gaze rest gently

on the floor in front of you.

Take a few deep breaths.

Instead of lifting your shoulders as you breathe,

feel these breaths arise from deep in your belly.

Now, allow your breathing to find a relaxed rhythm.

Simply notice your body sitting here in this place.

What are the sensations in your body at this moment?

If you notice places of discomfort or tension you might

take a moment to draw your breath into those places,

imagine the breath bringing relaxing, healing energy there.

What labor has your body done recently?

How has your body helped you play?

What pleasure have you known in your body recently?

What pain or discomfort have you known in your body?

This body is your oldest possession.

It has been crafted by God,

and God has called it “very good.”

Offer a silent prayer of gratitude

for your body.

Listen to these words of the poet of the Psalms . . .

You created my inmost self,

knit me together in my mother's womb.

For so many marvels I thank you;

a wonder am I,

and all your works are wonders.

You knew me through and through

my being held no secrets from you,

when I was being formed in secret,

textured in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes could see my embryo.

In your book all my days were inscribed,

every one that was fixed is there.

How hard for me to grasp your thoughts,

how many, God, there are!

If I count them, they are more than the grains of sand;

if I come to an end, I am still with you . . . .

Amen

Psalm 139:13-18 (NJB)

A wonder am I,

and all your works are wonders.

A wonder is our body

and all God's works are wonders.

How did we get from a theology of such wonder

to such wanton disregard for the blessing of embodiment?

How did the people of God get from

such deep insight into the union of spirit and body

to such dismemberment of these integral

parts of the human being?

How did we fall from such connection

with our bodies and the earth,

to such separation from these things that give us life?

We may be terribly advanced as modern people,

proud of where we have come,

yet it seems there is wisdom we must reclaim

so that we can re-member

the fullness of who we are

as beings created in the image of God.

Our modern medicine and sciences of the mind

are telling us what ancient peoples once

knew by experience and intuition:

that body, mind and soul are woven

into an integral whole as we live this human life.

We are wonders!

All God's works are wonders!

Genesis

In the beginning . . .

The ancient Hebrews,

like many other tribes of ancient people,

had their tales of how all things began.

The first two chapters of Genesis

tell two stories of creation.

These are not scientific or historical accounts,

they are mythological stories—

which, we might remember, does not

make them less true.

This story of creation may not be true in the sense of

recounting events that happened in time,

but it is true in the sense that this story

contains the seeds of our being in God.

We learn something of the truth of our

relatedness to God and to all life.

The story suggests that human beings—

created male and female in the image of God—

are the culmination of the creative act of God

and we are, at the same time, very much

interconnected with and dependent upon

everything else that God has made.

And what's more, human beings

are asked to join in God's creative action,

to “be fruitful and multiply.”

God calls all of this “very good.”

The goodness of what has been made

lies not only in the simple fact that it exists,

but also in its potential for relationship and growth.

Our capacity to join God in the creative act

of communion with all that has been made

is part of what is very good in us.

The Psalm

The psalmist speaks of

the intimacy with God that is experienced

through our embodiment.

It is God who “knit us together

in the womb of our mothers.”

The frame of our body and being

has not been hidden from God,

an in fact our relationship with

God is so close that we were

known and beheld by God before

one of our days came into being.

For the psalmist, each one of us,

is a wondrous work of God,

treasured by God in our singularity

and as an integral part of the vast and diverse

expanse of creation.

Your body is treasured by God

the One who wove all your parts together.

When the ancient Hebrews thought of a human being

they did not see parts, as in:

body, soul, spirit, mind...

They understood the human being as a whole,

textured and knit together by God.

The Gospel

John, the writer of the fourth gospel,

lived and wrote in an era when

this more unitive understanding

of the human being was encountering

a much different perspective in

the Greek and Roman cultures.

Greek philosophy was much more

dualistic in its understanding of the human being—

body and the spirit were distinct entities.

In this worldview the spirit within us

is what is considered most god-like and sacred,

and the body is at best a holding vessel

and at worst a trap for the spirit.

The spirit must seek release from physical confines

in order to arrive at full union with the divine realm.

As Keith Graber Miller writes in an essay

on sexuality and the scriptures,

The Hebrew Scriptures had no concept of this division, nor did Jesus, as he is depicted in the New Testament: the person is unified, body and spirit. We are embodied beings, not dismembered ones. The Christian Scriptures more generally fight against this dualism, though the body-spirit split no doubt influenced some of the New Testament writers. However, the fundamental tent of Christian faith—that God became flesh in the incarnation of Jesus Christ—militates against such dualism.

(Sexuality: God's Gift, 2^nd ed., p.43)

A Greek philosopher reading

the first verses of John's gospel might

have been right with him up until verse 14.ⁱ

They would have resonated with

this notion of a “Word of God,” the Logos,

which exists before and beyond the human realm.

They might have also resonated with

John's language of being born

not of “blood or the will of the flesh...but of God.”

But then they would have come to verse 14:

And the Word became flesh

and lived among us . . .

And this would have seemed strange.

Why would the perfection of the Divine

seek out the limitations of embodiment?

Why would that which is heavenly,

desire the muck and mess of the earthly?

And a Greek philosopher reading to the end

of John's gospel would have been all the more

stymied by what happens with the resurrection.

Here at what should be the long-awaited

release of the spirit from the body,

Christ appears once again in fleshy form;

Thomas and the disciples can still touch him.

Even in this more “spiritual” gospel,

as John is sometimes called,

embodiment is blessed,

it remains “very good.”

It is is the channel through which

God's love is revealed and experienced in the world.

In the biblical scriptures we

encounter, overall, perspectives that

are affirming of our embodiment

and our wholeness as beings of body and spirit.

However, Christianity, as it evolved in the West,

was more and more influenced

by the Greek and Roman worldviews.

Classical Western Christian theology

increasingly separated the divine

and human realms, and the incarnation of Christ

came to be seen more as a bridging act of God,

meant to join God's heavenly realm

with the “fallen” earthly realm

in order to raise up all who had fallen.

Therefore, “spiritual things” have been interpreted

to mean non-bodily things and non-earthly things.

We have witnessed the impact of this view

through the centuries, and the way it has contributed

to a sense of separation from the earth,

mistreatment of our bodies,

a devaluation of the life that sustains our own,

the degradation of women

and sometimes people of other races and culture

who this theology has typically associated

more with the “lower” earthly realm

than with the “higher” the heavenly realm.

Gratefully, this is beginning to change.

We are coming to understand that there

are very different ways of seeing

the incarnation and the work of God in the world.

We are coming to remember a very old wisdom.

James B. Nelson, a professor of Christian ethics

puts it in the form of questions that I believe

are worth our reflection:

What if the body isn't merely a subject of concern for theology—theology which emerges from some superior, non-physical vantage point? What if the incarnation is pervasively true? What if God is met bodily if God is met at all in this world?

What if it is through our bodies that we come to understand God's own hunger?

What if it is through our bodies that we experience God's own language?

What if it is through our bodies that we experience God's interrelatedness with all of life?

What if it is through our bodies that we experience God's pleasure and God's pain?

(Nelson, Between Two Gardens, p.30)

We are relearning in these times

what people knew long ago,

that our bodies have wisdom, they know things.

If you've ever learned a musical instrument, or a sport,

or a craft or trade that requires regular use of your body,

you know that there are things the body learns and remembers.

If you've known wounding, or a great loss or grief,

then perhaps you've come to know the way

the body holds these experiences as deep

as the marrow in your bones.

Certainly we all come to know the myriad of ways

our bodies help us interact with our world and one another.

Our bodies are channels of relationship

with one another, with the earth, with life.

Why would this not be true of our relationship with God?

Might we consider the possibility that

our deepest impulses and longings for

relationship with one another,

that our most profound energy for life and communion,

are part of the image of God we bear?

Are we ready to accept these bodies of ours

as channels for our relationship with God?

Are we ready to believe that this is indeed “very good”!

These wondrous bodies

are what allow us to

“taste and see that the Lord is good.”

I want to close with the words of a 14^th century

mystic, Julian of Norwich, who remembered this

wisdom during a season of the church's life

when traditional theology held the body and soul

in distinctly separate categories.

She wrote:

I understood that

our sensuality is grounded

in Nature, in Compassion

and in Grace.

This enables us to receive

gifts that lead to

everlasting life.

For I saw that in our sensuality

God is.

For God is never out of

the soul.

i This image is borrowed from an article written by Leonard Beechy in the Adult Study Guide for the Body & Soul worship and educational materials printed by Menno Media (2011).