SOULFUL SEX I

                         FRIENDS

  THIS IS THE FIRST OF A SIX PART SERIES

                            ON

                      SOULFUL SEX.


        THIS SERIES IS OFFERED HUMBLY.

                    IT DRAWS FROM

                PERSONAL EXPERIENCE,

                     PASTORAL CARE,

                          STUDY -  

                 MUCH OF ALL THREE.

   

            IT IS OFFERED BECAUSE OF

                 THE INTIMATE BOND

                     BETWEEN OUR

                       SEXUALITY

                        AND OUR

                  SPIRITUAL LIVES.

             EACH EFFECTS THE OTHER

            MILES MORE THAN A LITTLE.

    

WHAT FOLLOWS IS

                  OBSERVATION

                           ANALYSIS

                                 REFLECTION

                                         INTERPRETATION.

                   LIKE ME, IT IS LIMITED.

       NO DOUBT IT IS INCOMPLETE AND FLAWED.

                 HOPEFULLY ELEMENTS OF IT 

                WILL CLARIFY AND SUPPORT.

                 IF IT HELPS, PLEASE LET IT.

           IF IT DOES NOT, PLEASE DISCOUNT IT.

                  IN EITHER OR BOTH CASES

                     PLEASE ASK YOURSELF

                             "WHY?"


                            THANKS

                         JOHN FRANK

                             *****

                   

                                     

                                                  
Dear All Of Us,

So, I sure hope you're having
a great sex life!
I really mean it.
Pretty sassy, right ?
Well, not really.
Sad to say, for far too long,
far too many have come up far too short
when it comes to having a great sexual life.
Yes, yes, I read the papers, watch the news,
go to parties, walk the streets of right now.
There's a lot going on sexually for sure,
but it does not all translate 
to a great sexual life
for too,too many.
In sad fact, it's just the opposite.



Our sexual life and our spiritual life
are profoundly interwoven.
They are deep down dynamics
of an under-girding whole.
Each profoundly effects the other.
All is not well there.
That negatively impacts self and society,
the spiritual life of both.



This series tries to sort out
just what is sex at its core,
and its interface with soul.
To do that it is important to see 
our current sexual situation,
for what it is and for what it isn't,
and how it got the way it is,
and certainly its effects on soulful sex.
The goal here is to clarify 
and work to an appreciation of
the beautiful, the pure potential of

        
           SOULFUL SEX.
 
                      ****




                PART I

           REPRESSION




 For starters, let's use the word
                      "sex"
as it is currently and commonly
understood and used.
Hopefully as we progress,
we will see sex is a lot more,
and way better than
the going thing in our culture right now.
Regrettably, so too has it been throughout  
much of our history.
Yes and for sure,  
there have been persons
and peoples throughout western history,
as there are many today,
who have experienced a positive,
"whole"some, sexual/spiritual synthesis.
It has meant a freeing fullness,
         a divine oneness.
They are, sadly, the exceptions
that prove the rule of sexual
       repression/obsession
     and their consequent,
         deleterious effect
                 on life,
         that of the self
                  and
that shared as a society, 
and the very core of both,
                 SOUL.


For the most part, the "going thing"
ever since we humans went agrarian 
and needed offspring
to work and protect the family farm,
has meant a sexuality of
genitals and genital activity,
procreation and pleasure
            - workers for land holdings,
            - pleasure for some sometimes,
male dominated and dominating.
Land rights were passed
by procreation through blood lines.
There has always been 
more of a pleasure focus
for men than for women.


This sense and experience of sexuality
has been analyzed, described, codified,
regulated, ritualized, restricted,
celebrated, in all sorts of ways
by every western culture and religion.
That's where most of us come from and
where most of us are right now as we seek to live
our sexual/spiritual lives out here
on the street of everyday living.
We are effected!!
And we effect!!


Going way back,
and consistently over the centuries,
people have been led down
a road of sexual repression.
Sex is energy.
When energy is repressed,
it builds up stress 
and eventually finds some sort
of explosive release.
In the case of western sexuality,
repression has lead to
a lot less and worse
than was in nature's original blueprints
for natural, healthy sexuality.
The ensuing sexual stress and repression
are now exploding in a sexual obsession. 


Centuries of sexual repression
can be traced back to

    - ancient Greek philosophers,
      - economic needs,
      - civil rulers,
      - and leading the pack,
         so, so sad to say,
         the Christian church.
This repression and stress runs
throughout western history
to our right now, right here.
A few of too many horrible examples:
           - Aristotle, and later Augustine,
              insisted that intercourse
              was only permissible and natural
              for married couples attempting 
          to get pregnant
              ( offspring to work and protect
              the family farm ).
              Any other sexual communion
              was deemed unnatural, a perversion,
              and for Augustine, sinful. 
          Imagine what that did to
              a naturalness and ease
          in marital sharing,
              much less as a door
              to divine ecstasy.
              What about couples
              that just could not
          raise more children?
              What about older couples 
          past child bearing years?
              What about
                        "Male and female
                          he created them...
                   It is not good that
                   the man should be alone...
                          a man ... clings to his wife,
                          and they become one flesh."
                                 Genesis 1 and 2
                                           ???
                           That sure as heaven 
                   does not sound like
                           you can only "cling" 
                   and "one flesh" it
                           to make a baby !!            
                 Seems there were no clocks, calendars,
                 timers or baby counts 
            in the original Genesis blueprints !!!
                 Talk about  "perversion" !
                 Throughout western history
                 coupes didn't have
                 stressful work commutes to deal with,
                 but Aristotle, Augustine and so sadly many 
            made sure that couples  had to deal with
                 stressful sexual commuting/communion.
            The church got into excluding
                 from  communion early on.
            If a couple had relations simply for a pure, loving,
            "clinging," "one fleshing" it a la Genesis 1 and 2,
            and used a contraceptive,
            they were deemed ( dammed ) to be 
            in mortal sin and were exclude from Holy Communion
                How God denying !!
                 Imagine all the marital stress,
                 promiscuity and infidelity
                 all this
                             engendered
                  ( pun and punch intended !).

                            REPRESSION!

           - Some of those Greek philosophers
             considered women slightly to decidedly 
             less than fully human.
             For them,
                  women came nowhere close
                  to the rationality
                  and thus superiority of men.

          - Basically women were
            for the pleasure of men and
                 incubators for the male seed,
            which by the way,
                 contained the whole child
                 to be developed and born.

          - Women were basically domestics
                  to look after house and children,
             and to provide comfort in bed for men.
              - The Romans, with their patriarchal
                 social sense and structure,
                 furthered the subjugation of women.
             - With some exceptions, 
            this attitude toward and treatment of women
                 continued right up to recent times.
                 When my mother was born (1912)
                 women here in the states could not vote.
                 Often to own property, or get a bank loan, 
            a male relative had to cosign for a woman.

                          REPRESSION!

         - The Puritans have negatively effected us 
            and our culture. They were so tainted by
                sexual "dis - ease" and shame.
           They  spun sex negative.
           Read
                  The Scarlet Letter
               and blush deeply in rage at what
           we have inherited and still suffer,
               directly or in reaction.

                         REPRESSION!

        - Daniel A. Lord, S.J.:
              he and a host of other
              Roman Catholic writers 
              authored pamphlets
              on sexuality 
          in my youth ( the 1950's )
              for Catholic pubescent boys.
             They unequivocally taught that
             masturbation was a mortal sin.
             Unconfessed, it meant
             being sent to hell after death
         for all eternity.
            That was "the" official teaching of
             the Roman Church.
             Well, let me tell you
            there were long, long lines
            of pubescent boys
            at the confessionals
            every Saturday night!!
            I was one of them
            beginning in 1951
            when I was eleven
         ( got an early start! ).
            We didn't go to confess
         mass murder or highway robbery!
            We grew up feeling dirty,
            sinful and shameful.
            It had a life long, negative and
         terribly detrimental effect
            on generations of Catholic men.
            And yet, we were expected
            to have a close,
            loving relationship
            with God our Father -
            a father who would reject us
            and send us to horrid,
            hellish torture forever
           if just once we did
           what every boy
        in the world does
          a lot more than once
          as  he tries to develop
          his sexual sea legs.
          This ranks as one
          of the worst types
          of sexual abuse
          in the Roman Church.

    - Protestant boys
        didn't fair any better.
        There were all sorts of
        pamphlets and youth manuals
        condemning them as unnatural,
        unmanly, unscriptural  and sinful
        when they fell into the "perversion" of
        pubescent masturbation.
        Again, consider what all this has meant
       for faith in God as Father,
       what it has meant
       for a sense of healthy sexuality
       for millions upon millions of men.
     
     Ever wonder why worldwide,
     so many men don't go to church very much?.

  - Sexual intimacy,
    or even a vigorous
     desire for/imagining of it,
     were considered
     morally evil and punishable 
    by excruciating pain
     in hell for all of eternity
     in miles more cases than not.


  According to church leaders,
              God and sex
   were not on cordial terms!!
   To have the more common 
  desires/experiences of sex
   outside a narrow corridor
  of marital permissibility
   pretty much cut the legs out from under
   any kind of pure, calm,
   natural sexual spirituality.

        REPRESSION!


This first part of our series
isn't a bit cheery.
But, hopefully it
and what follows
next week will give
context and clarity
to what ruptured into the
pervasive sexual
obsession and chaos
current in western culture.
It is the obverse of repression,
but equally detrimental to
pure, free, health, holy

       SOULFUL SEX.


Next week a bit more on repression
and a long look at obsession.
            "Not Nice,"
but necessary to sort our way through 
how things got he way they did.
Again, that is critical given
the intimate interface of
soul and sex.

After that a look at
what sex is at its core,
sex as creative and wonder filled,
the difference between
sex and gender,
gender fluidity
as we are experiencing it today


          PLUS

the creativity and bliss,
the freedom and fullness,
the spirituality,
the sacredness

            of

    SOULFUL SEX


Let's wrap up with a
     PONDERABLE:

 " Sex is a flame
      which uncontrolled
      may scorch;
      properly guided,
      it will light
      the torch of eternity."

              Joseph Fetterman


See you next week.

Holding one and all in

God's Dear Love,

   John Frank

        *****


PS

   If you will, please invite others 

   to join in as we explore

        SOULFUL SEX

   in this six part series.

           Thanks!



Warm Welcome to those new to

       "frankly speaking"


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   THANK YOU!

        

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