Do everything to God's glory.
That's a tough order, especially if that something is altogether exclusive of or separate from your faith life. Do you even think about God outside of your God place? Or have you ever brought God into your sex space?
I guess I am better now than I ever used to be when I was younger at bringing God organically into my life. I don't have to focus as much energy at reframing my life to accommodate God within every facet of it.
The one area of my life in which I worked consciously and persistently to bring God into everything I do was in my sexual experiences with my husband. We would introduce -- no wait! -- we would invite the name of God into our presence by reminding ourselves that these wonderful, creative bodies are a gift from God. And now? Now there is never a sexual time for us that we don't speak of God. The word itself, when spoken, brings in the energy of divinity.
We often listen to love songs and at times we choose to replace the pronoun of the lover or the beloved with "God." Soon it is God's love that cradles and rocks us into the energy of prayer. That "greater love" hold's the space for our sexual connecting.
The result is amazing for its power to transform the body's experience of that single moment -- the pure sense of now. When truly in the now, that which the body can experience is transcendent.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
What Makes Sex Sacred?
What makes anything in our lives sacred? Those of us who belong to a faith practice believe we know what the word means. Actually, the word itself has little or nothing to do with a system of faith or belief.
The english word sacred is derived from the Latin word "sacer" which is translated as "untouchable." The antonym or opposite is "casual." Being devoted exclusively to a single purpose is one definition of sacred. However, for my purpose in writing and teaching about sexuality I prefer the definition of sacred as "being highly valued, deserving of awe and reverence." That which is sacred has the power to transform one's life.
We must practice anything we are just learning to do if we want to do it well. To bring the sacred into our living, one must practice sacred awareness. Seeing the sacred in everything is just such a practice of consciousness. It takes time and space in one's life to become aware. Sacred awareness requires a quiet mind, an opportunity for remembrance and self-forgetfulness. Along with such an awareness, we might also consider that shifting our use of the word "sacred" from an adjective or descriptor to using the word as an adverb allows the word to become a description of doing or being. This brings the practice of sacred awareness into present time all of the time. It allows us to live in harmony in our mental, spiritual and physical lives.
Sacred sexuality means there is nothing profane, common or casual about any sexual encounter. Being with our sexual partner (the one who loves, respects and honors us) is worthy of dedication -- of time, focus, passion, emotion and mutual respect. This dedication must be unassailable and reverent in order to become sacred as well.
I suggest that we stop looking at our lives and the people and things in our lives as common and everyday. Choose to find the time to see the uncommon in everything. See and experience the act of making love with awe and reverence.
The english word sacred is derived from the Latin word "sacer" which is translated as "untouchable." The antonym or opposite is "casual." Being devoted exclusively to a single purpose is one definition of sacred. However, for my purpose in writing and teaching about sexuality I prefer the definition of sacred as "being highly valued, deserving of awe and reverence." That which is sacred has the power to transform one's life.
We must practice anything we are just learning to do if we want to do it well. To bring the sacred into our living, one must practice sacred awareness. Seeing the sacred in everything is just such a practice of consciousness. It takes time and space in one's life to become aware. Sacred awareness requires a quiet mind, an opportunity for remembrance and self-forgetfulness. Along with such an awareness, we might also consider that shifting our use of the word "sacred" from an adjective or descriptor to using the word as an adverb allows the word to become a description of doing or being. This brings the practice of sacred awareness into present time all of the time. It allows us to live in harmony in our mental, spiritual and physical lives.
Sacred sexuality means there is nothing profane, common or casual about any sexual encounter. Being with our sexual partner (the one who loves, respects and honors us) is worthy of dedication -- of time, focus, passion, emotion and mutual respect. This dedication must be unassailable and reverent in order to become sacred as well.
I suggest that we stop looking at our lives and the people and things in our lives as common and everyday. Choose to find the time to see the uncommon in everything. See and experience the act of making love with awe and reverence.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
trustworthy love
Ever wonder when it is each of us begins to trust somebody?
You don't begin to trust because you are "loved enough" by someone. You begin to trust when you both fully respect each other.There is not enough love to make you trust when you are not also respected.
You don't begin to trust because you are "loved enough" by someone. You begin to trust when you both fully respect each other.There is not enough love to make you trust when you are not also respected.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Love and Respect
The main ingredients for a sacred sexual encounter include love and respect. This probably sounds mundane but both of these expressions of any sacred relationship with one's sexual partner are underrated and misunderstood. Love and respect must precede a sacred sexual encounter.
We all believe we know what love is. We read about it in poetry. It is described in great detail in great novels. We observe it as we watch a movie. We hear it described in a love song, be it maudlin or cheerful. It is so much easier to read it or watch or hear it than it is to live it. We believe it to be that flush of desire we feel when we begin a new relationship with that perfect person. (We all know that it's really the hormones, but we simply choose to believe otherwise.)
So who is that perfect person? Does "the one" love you or respect you? You can have respect for someone without being in love with that other. You can never have love without respect. Anything else is a faux love. Respect is the necessary ingredient.
Respect must come first.
I thought long and hard about how I would define respect for another. Here goes. Respect is acknowledging the other. It is:
~ to honor
~ to listen
~ taking care of yourself, not them
~ to stop looking at your life and the people in it (especially your partner) casually
~ to value
There is no such thing as a little bit of respect. (That would be disrespectful!) You either have it or you don't.
For years I "forgot" to look for or, better yet, expect to be given respect from my partners. I started to believe I had to earn it since I didn't receive it. In allowing myself to be disrespected, I sabotaged any chance I had of being loved. I didn't demand respect from my partner and therefore I believed I was unloveable. I do not mean from the point of view that "there is nothing about me to love." What I realized is that I had a belief that I was unable to BE loved.
When you can't be loved you can't know love.
When you respect yourself, then respect flows easily from another person, but only when that someone knows how to respect.
True love is the total acceptance of ourself and our beloved. It is a knowing that we are believed and believed in, just as we are expected to believe equally in our partner. To love is to strive to be the person who can be believed by the other.
We all believe we know what love is. We read about it in poetry. It is described in great detail in great novels. We observe it as we watch a movie. We hear it described in a love song, be it maudlin or cheerful. It is so much easier to read it or watch or hear it than it is to live it. We believe it to be that flush of desire we feel when we begin a new relationship with that perfect person. (We all know that it's really the hormones, but we simply choose to believe otherwise.)
So who is that perfect person? Does "the one" love you or respect you? You can have respect for someone without being in love with that other. You can never have love without respect. Anything else is a faux love. Respect is the necessary ingredient.
Respect must come first.
I thought long and hard about how I would define respect for another. Here goes. Respect is acknowledging the other. It is:
~ to honor
~ to listen
~ taking care of yourself, not them
~ to stop looking at your life and the people in it (especially your partner) casually
~ to value
There is no such thing as a little bit of respect. (That would be disrespectful!) You either have it or you don't.
For years I "forgot" to look for or, better yet, expect to be given respect from my partners. I started to believe I had to earn it since I didn't receive it. In allowing myself to be disrespected, I sabotaged any chance I had of being loved. I didn't demand respect from my partner and therefore I believed I was unloveable. I do not mean from the point of view that "there is nothing about me to love." What I realized is that I had a belief that I was unable to BE loved.
When you can't be loved you can't know love.
When you respect yourself, then respect flows easily from another person, but only when that someone knows how to respect.
True love is the total acceptance of ourself and our beloved. It is a knowing that we are believed and believed in, just as we are expected to believe equally in our partner. To love is to strive to be the person who can be believed by the other.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
What's shame got to do with it?
"The man and his wife were both naked and felt no shame."
Genesis 2.25.
What's shame got to do with it?
Do you remember the song recorded by Tina Turner -- "What's Love Got To Do With It"? While I believe love has everything to do with it, there are many who aren't able to enjoy love with sex because shame gets in the way. I once knew someone who gave up having sex with her partner because (as it was explained to me) she had too much love and respect for her. Sounds like shame to me although I didn't figure it out at the time.
Oh, what's shame got to do with it, got to do with it?
What's shame, but a second hand emotion?
We are not born with any semblance of shame. It is a learned emotion -- "second hand." When do we learn about shame? Is it the first time our mother covers our body to hide our nakedness? Is it when the little girl no longer is allowed to play without a shirt on? Or is it not until we begin to notice that our parents don't want to answer our first innocent questions about babies and where they come from? Is it learned from some religious authority figure who is so uncomfortable with their own sexual urges that they convince themselves that it must be a bad thing? When does this shame about our body and our sexual self start? And what's it about?
When, oh when did females get to be the problem? I wish the generalizations about the "provocative woman seducing the innocent man" were never again used as an excuse for extra-marital affairs or for rape. We don't even get to experience our first chance flush of desire without learning that a girl with sexual yearnings is a "bad" girl. I venture to say that most women are never given the chance to experience their first sexual encounter without feeling shame. I imagine that there are some men who also feel the same way.
Shame changes everything about sex. Shame makes us afraid and keeps us on our guard. How can I ever become truly and completely intimate with my partner if I am guardedly fearful. I can't. I would never be able to be truly authentic. That's true intimacy. I also believe it is shame that leads us to judge others who are sexually different than ourselves. The fear of judgement creates an atmosphere of secrets and we don't feel safe sharing our deepest desires with the one we love.
Ultimately, shame keeps us from being truly intimate both physically and emotionally with our life partner. We focus on hiding instead of revealing, not just our physical selves but our incarnated spirit selves as well. It is then impossible to embrace our wholeness as body and spirit. Our story of Adam and Eve reveals that when we hide from each other in this way, we hide from our own most sacred self.
Genesis 2.25.
What's shame got to do with it?
Do you remember the song recorded by Tina Turner -- "What's Love Got To Do With It"? While I believe love has everything to do with it, there are many who aren't able to enjoy love with sex because shame gets in the way. I once knew someone who gave up having sex with her partner because (as it was explained to me) she had too much love and respect for her. Sounds like shame to me although I didn't figure it out at the time.
Oh, what's shame got to do with it, got to do with it?
What's shame, but a second hand emotion?
We are not born with any semblance of shame. It is a learned emotion -- "second hand." When do we learn about shame? Is it the first time our mother covers our body to hide our nakedness? Is it when the little girl no longer is allowed to play without a shirt on? Or is it not until we begin to notice that our parents don't want to answer our first innocent questions about babies and where they come from? Is it learned from some religious authority figure who is so uncomfortable with their own sexual urges that they convince themselves that it must be a bad thing? When does this shame about our body and our sexual self start? And what's it about?
When, oh when did females get to be the problem? I wish the generalizations about the "provocative woman seducing the innocent man" were never again used as an excuse for extra-marital affairs or for rape. We don't even get to experience our first chance flush of desire without learning that a girl with sexual yearnings is a "bad" girl. I venture to say that most women are never given the chance to experience their first sexual encounter without feeling shame. I imagine that there are some men who also feel the same way.
Shame changes everything about sex. Shame makes us afraid and keeps us on our guard. How can I ever become truly and completely intimate with my partner if I am guardedly fearful. I can't. I would never be able to be truly authentic. That's true intimacy. I also believe it is shame that leads us to judge others who are sexually different than ourselves. The fear of judgement creates an atmosphere of secrets and we don't feel safe sharing our deepest desires with the one we love.
Ultimately, shame keeps us from being truly intimate both physically and emotionally with our life partner. We focus on hiding instead of revealing, not just our physical selves but our incarnated spirit selves as well. It is then impossible to embrace our wholeness as body and spirit. Our story of Adam and Eve reveals that when we hide from each other in this way, we hide from our own most sacred self.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Who are we really?
My husband and I have discovered something truly incredible that we share every time we make love. It is an ecstasy that defies description. Just as trying to define or describe God limits the infinite that God is, any attempt to describe this oneness that we experience only limits the truth of our lovemaking.
In the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah the name which indicates that which is God is Ein Sof, which may be translated as "Infinity" (for it engenders everything) or as "Nothingness," which implies that any definition that is employed in an attempt to delineate God is inadequate because God is beyond definition. All we can describe are the aspects of God/Ein Sof. Likewise, any attempt to put our lovemaking experience into words can only be a description of the aspects of the experience.
There is something that animates our human flesh. It is present while we are alive and absent after we die. As a nurse and a hospice chaplain I have been with many people as they took their last breath. When I was a young RN in ICU I never really noticed the difference in the flesh after a patient died. They were either breathing or not. Even all of those years in the ER did nothing to make me really notice anything but the after effects of resuscitation. There was always a family to talk to or another patient to attend.
It wasn't till I attended my first hospice death that I saw and felt what was so different. After death there is nothing which enervates every little nerve in our body and the flesh is like stone. Quietly witnessing a death without all the activity to save a life changed my whole perspective on the living essence which resides in our body. I held the hand of a young man with AIDs who desperately wanted to live. As he took his last shallow breath, I felt a vibration in my hand that that was holding his. Soon this vibration traveled up my arm, across my shoulder, and through the top of my head. Then it was gone. What could this be but this living energy making its way back to its source?
Most of us spend our entire lives unaware of that energy which is our life force. It makes everything about our physical body work. This is our human infinity as we know not where or whether it begins or ends. We take it for granted because it functions without any assistance from us. It is automatic and life giving. Any definition employed to describe it is inadequate -- a virtual nothingness. It is our own embodied "Ein Sof."
It is my belief that it is this numinous quality that we access when we experience sacred lovemaking.
In the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah the name which indicates that which is God is Ein Sof, which may be translated as "Infinity" (for it engenders everything) or as "Nothingness," which implies that any definition that is employed in an attempt to delineate God is inadequate because God is beyond definition. All we can describe are the aspects of God/Ein Sof. Likewise, any attempt to put our lovemaking experience into words can only be a description of the aspects of the experience.
There is something that animates our human flesh. It is present while we are alive and absent after we die. As a nurse and a hospice chaplain I have been with many people as they took their last breath. When I was a young RN in ICU I never really noticed the difference in the flesh after a patient died. They were either breathing or not. Even all of those years in the ER did nothing to make me really notice anything but the after effects of resuscitation. There was always a family to talk to or another patient to attend.
It wasn't till I attended my first hospice death that I saw and felt what was so different. After death there is nothing which enervates every little nerve in our body and the flesh is like stone. Quietly witnessing a death without all the activity to save a life changed my whole perspective on the living essence which resides in our body. I held the hand of a young man with AIDs who desperately wanted to live. As he took his last shallow breath, I felt a vibration in my hand that that was holding his. Soon this vibration traveled up my arm, across my shoulder, and through the top of my head. Then it was gone. What could this be but this living energy making its way back to its source?
Most of us spend our entire lives unaware of that energy which is our life force. It makes everything about our physical body work. This is our human infinity as we know not where or whether it begins or ends. We take it for granted because it functions without any assistance from us. It is automatic and life giving. Any definition employed to describe it is inadequate -- a virtual nothingness. It is our own embodied "Ein Sof."
It is my belief that it is this numinous quality that we access when we experience sacred lovemaking.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Let us pray
Sexual intimacy as prayer is a prayer for wholeness.
It matters not if you choose to make love with or without God. Just as it matters not whether you believe in a higher power, divine or otherwise. You will have sex. You may even have great sex. However, since I do believe in a transcendent co-creator who is present and active in my life, sex for me has never been as good as it is now. And it just keeps getting better.
Never before in my life have I thought about God or, for that matter, sex as often as I do now. Just ask my husband and my best friend. I recently realized that I never make love without sensing the ever-presence of this mystery of God. Call this mystery what you want, the energy is charged and one's perceptions shift.
This not about religion. Many religions fashion what they choose to acknowledge as revelation into a rule book. Break the rules and one is shamed into submission. Shame and sex don't mix well and the combination precludes the grace of sex as prayer. I choose Divine sex to guilt and sex.
It matters not if you choose to make love with or without God. Just as it matters not whether you believe in a higher power, divine or otherwise. You will have sex. You may even have great sex. However, since I do believe in a transcendent co-creator who is present and active in my life, sex for me has never been as good as it is now. And it just keeps getting better.
Never before in my life have I thought about God or, for that matter, sex as often as I do now. Just ask my husband and my best friend. I recently realized that I never make love without sensing the ever-presence of this mystery of God. Call this mystery what you want, the energy is charged and one's perceptions shift.
This not about religion. Many religions fashion what they choose to acknowledge as revelation into a rule book. Break the rules and one is shamed into submission. Shame and sex don't mix well and the combination precludes the grace of sex as prayer. I choose Divine sex to guilt and sex.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Musings of a Sexual Mystic
There is a sacred element to making love. Certain components must be in place in order to experience this; at least that is true for me. A predilection for this image is probably requisite for such an encounter. A desire to experience a sacred moment during such a fleshy practice seems to be necessary. Obviously, both partners must understand that God is present in every moment of our embodied experience here on earth. As Jung believed -- bidden or unbidden , God is present. It helps to concede that prayer is more than closing your eyes and putting your hands together, asking God for your latest desire.
When I make love, I am waiting for God during most of the moments of passion that I share. (Most, not all -- I'm as human as the next gal.) I see myself as naked before God, not just my partner, and open to that divine and ultimate experience of pure ecstasy. I am humbled by my vincibility as I succumb to that transcendent source of life. And I am not afraid of the total exposure of myself to my partner and my God. Maybe the theology of God being present when two or more are gathered applies here.
Why didn't I learn this when I first learned about the sexual act? Why wasn't I taught about the goodness of sex more than the badness of sex? I don't blame my parents. I remember them as being very straight forward. Somehow the church's puritan conceit about sex informed my earliest understanding.
I remember the very first time I had intercourse with my then steady boyfriend. Despite the seedy surroundings (the sheets were clean) I was consumed by the beauty of the instant of penetration. We held that moment and were both still. Maybe there were no heavenly choirs, but my heart sang with that intimate expression of love. I was blessed that "the first time" was so beautiful and grace filled. I'm not sure that I fully grasped that until many years later. It was a lot to take in for a young woman experiencing all of those sensations for the first time.
What a difficult moment to replicate.
Immediately after, as we lay there holding each other, a sense of astonishment and fear overcame me. All of those bad girl images flooded my brain and I immediately tried to dissemble what I had just experienced. The beauty of the moment became a shadow to my need to reframe what happened. How could I have been a good girl in one instant, a bad girl the next? I can look back and see the absurdity of allowing the presumed judgement of others to propel my sacred self to deconstruct that timeless moment.
It has taken almost a lifetime to recover.
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