Friday, May 31, 2019
SOULFUL SEX VI
Sisters and Brothers,
A personal note and joy.
Please share my happiness
and gratitude to God.
Fifty years ago today
I was ordained.
Deo Gratias!!
John Frank
*****
SOULFUL SEX VI
HELLO !
THIS IS THE CONCLUSION
OF OUR SIX PART SERIES.
FOR THOSE JUST JOINING US,
IT WOULD BE OPTIMAL -
AND TAKE A FAIR SHAKE
OF TIME FOR SURE -
TO READ THE PRECEDING
FIVE POSTINGS PRIOR
TO DELVING INTO THIS ONE.
PLEASE CONSIDER IT
AND GO TO BLOG ARCHIVE,
RIGHT COLUMN ONLINE:
.
THANKS !
JOHN FRANK
*****
HI There !
So, sex and soul
it's been for these six segments.
A lot of time and attention for sure.
Given the significant cultural shifts
occurring in both
understandings
and
experiences
in matters sexual/gender,
Soul Health
very definitely calls for
their careful consideration,
and, pardon the play on words,
and very definitely calls for
naked honesty -
no cover over of convenience
or tries at selfish justifications,
whatever one's sense and persuasion.
.
Soul and sex are zones for Love.
Doesn't get more pivotal than that.
Our spiritual life and health
are in play and at issue.
In this series we've seen
some of the confusions
and conflicts clouding
SOULFUL SEX.
There's more and better
for sure.
Spiritually
seeking and speaking,
there are a host
of truly beautiful,
expansive elements to
this flux and evolution.
Some are renewals,
some are quite new.
- A new found joy that our
human bodies are
sacred images,
incarnations of God,
gender and sexuality
very much included.
"In the image of God
they were created,
male and female
God created them."
Genesis 1:27
- Jesus is God
"bodied,"
and
we are too!!
"In his body lives
the fullness
of divinity,
and in him
you too find
your own
fulfillment."
Colossians 2:9
- The divine indwells,
animating
soul, mind, and body.
Sense the divine passion
of all that in the
erotic, biblical poetry of
The Song of Songs.
- Mystics, well know ones
like Teresa of Avila,
and little known ones
like my mother,
experienced a love movement
from separation to divine union
through all sorts of happenings,
happenings way wider than conjugal.
Sex from the Latin means separation.
It is understood here in its widest sense.
So is its resolution in union.
The mystics give us a vast field
of reference and hope.
In it we can see the more specific
sexual/gender matter
of separation and union
worked out beautifully.
The mystery is that separations
of all sorts between:
- people,
- elements of matter
- segments of society,
- ideologies,
- artistic expressions,
- religions,
- earth care,
- scientific understandings,
- any and all separations
are transformed into loving union
through the dynamic
of ongoing creation working wonder.
That wonder is the working of all to
ALL
COSMIC UNITY
and that in splendid,
UNIFIED DIVERSITY.
Mystery it is,
marvelous mystery.
A simple and simply lovable example:
My mother used to go
for 5:30 AM summer walks
around our neighborhood.
She would filch a flower
every few days
from some neighbor's yard
( never the same neighbor,
never caught either -
we kids used to tease
the living heck out of Mom,
but assured her that if arrested,
we would indeed bail her out!!!).
Coming home, Mom would put
the flower in a vase on
the kitchen windowsill.
She would get lost
in the beauty of it
during the day,
finding God in it
and
being found in God
through it.
Creative union.
Separation overcome,
a divine unity right there
in the kitchen
on Park Street,
Montclair, NJ
It's so freeing to see sex as
love wanting to be together,
person to person for sure,
and just as sure and widely
that there is no limit to it
in ongoing creation.
In other words, we are discovering
that what we call sex is part
of a vast dynamic of creation
working separation to loving union.
That goes for people.
It goes for all and everything
as well, and well it sure is!
- The passion of divine love
becomes wildly free in us.
Many of us these days are
warming open to the intensity of
human/divine love
as so powerfully,
so wildly worded for us
by the Sufi mystic and poet,
Hafiz:
You Left a Thousand Woman Crazy
" Beloved,
Last time,
When you walked through the city
So beautiful and so naked,
You left a thousand women crazy
And impossible to live with.
You left a thousand married men
confused about their gender.
Children ran from their classrooms,
And teachers were glad you came.
And the sun tried to break out
Of its royal cage in the sky
And at last, and at last,
Lay its Ancient Love at Your feet."
What passion.
What a beautiful balance,
integration there of
masculine and feminine.
Hafiz knew what we are learning,
that gender matters are
" ...fluid concepts that exist along a
spectrum, rather than as
fixed binaries determined
by biology or genetic imprinting."
Incarnation: The New Evolutionary Threshold,
Diarmuid O'Marchu, Orbis 2017, pages 126-127
This is a zone of greatest change
and challenge today.
We are sorting out changes
in our understandings of
gender
and changes in how
those understandings
are lived out.
All sorts of traditional things,
and quite new ones as well,
are sensed and experienced
in evolving ways.
SEX
GENDER
CREATION
MYSTICISM
words meaning the beautiful tones
and touches, hues and intensities,
energy and mystery of
DIVINE LIFE
alive in us,
moving us all from
separation to union,
and that in a cascade
of combinations,
often varying
over time and expression.
For example,
strength and tenderness
are not seen and sensed as
the reserve of
one gender or another
Rather they are understood
as moving across
a freeing and fluid spectrum
not limited by one's sex/gender.
Other examples/instances:
- caring for a baby
- challenging injustice,
- being rational
- feeling deeply,
- expressing
our intuitions
and imagination,
- nurturing
- defending,
- penetrating/being penetrated
in all sorts of loving,
unitive bondings;
- letting a child's love
really get into us,
- intervening to save
a drug addict
- lovers getting
into each other
body and soul,
- joyous abandon
to God's enfoldment
in mystical union,
- leading and following
- freely passive, freely active
to note so few of so many
that ebb and flow
in us over time and growth.
Another way to see and sense
the sea change in
gender
and
sexuality
as understood
and lived,
is to lightly touch
the sense and expression
of the masculine and feminine
as found in mythologies
and in archetypal psychology,
and to realize that
they are no longer
the exclusive purview
of one sex or gender:
" ...the feminine principle
has greater interest
in the inner, the soul, the formless,
intuition, connection, harmony,
beauty, and relationality in general...
The masculine principle...
is more interested in
the outer, the mental, exterior form, idea,
the movement or action of things,
the naming and differentiation of things
one from another; solar clarity
of individual things as it were,
as opposed to the relationship
of one thing to another...It often moves
toward "agency" and action
before relationship or intimacy."
Richard Rohr, daily email,
Center for Action and Contemplation,
Sunday, April 22, 2018
"...Even as we acknowledge
the sacredness
of gender and sex, we also need
to realize there's something deeper
than our gender, anatomy,
or physical passion:
our ontological self,
who we are
forever in Christ.
As Paul courageously puts it,
"There is neither male nor female;
for you all are one in Christ Jesus"
(Galatians 3:28)...
Both sexuality and gender are mysteries
much broader than genitality
and intercourse. It is the inner drive
toward the other and beyond
the small self, which some call eros."
Richard Rohr, daily email,
Center for Action and Contemplation,
Monday, April 23,2018
Eros is divine love creatively uniting,
energizing separation into union.
That's the core of our spiritual lives.
Our spiritual lives are always full of
surprise and mystery.
These days we are in the midst of
surprising and mysterious evolutions
of gender as channels of eros.
It helps me to see that as I see the sunrise.
Masculinity and Femininity are like a
palate of rich colorations in the vast sky
blending in ever various beauty
as they morning move.
Our core self, our spirit,
is embodied in
a male or female manner
for the majority of us.
Our core self, our spirit,
lives and loves
in a gendered manner.
That is culturally specific.
Our culture is split and contentious
about a lot of that just now.
Whatever our gender understanding
and experience, authentic spirituality
is the flow of Love through us.
It is essentially the same
and specifically unique be we
single, married/partnered,
widow/widower, celibate,
LBGTQA.
We honestly face the separation
that is all through and about us.
That's sex, "secare."
We joyfully let the Love Who Is God
course through us bringing all into One
through our living/loving.
Not only us, but all matter and spirit
are evolving forward into the mystery of
Divine Diversity in Unity.
That's what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
highlighted as the evolution
of our universe to the
Omega Point
That's creation, and it is sure is
simply divine!!
So, two people wrapped in love
are wrapped in God,
because "God is Love."
So, in soul stillness God possesses us
in the Limitless, Cosmic Love
that is Very God.
Mystical rapture.
So, our partners in being, elements and energies,
move and merge in the paradox and mystery of
Cosmic and Diversified
Unity.
Every blessing for
SOULFUL SEX
as we face separation
and
embrace creation
unto
ONE.
In God's Dear, Creative Unifying Love,
John Frank
*****
Thanks to all who hung together here
the six weeks of this series.
Cake it was not.
Protein - I hope so!!
If you wish a fuller consideration
of the interfacing of sex and soul,
please see;
- Richard Rohr's daily email, free,
Center for Action and Contemplation,
( Meditations@cac.org ),
"Gender and Sexuality,"
April 15 - 27, 2018
- Incarnation A New Evolutionary Threshold,
Diamuid O'Murhu, Orbis Books, 2017,
chapter seven, Sex and Gender
- Sex God, Rob Bell, Zondervan, 2007
*****
Welcome to all joining in here for the first time.
*****
Please share the news about
"frankly speaking"
- It is posted mid-day,
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each Friday online at
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please see the sign up at
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THANK YOU!
*****
-
Friday, May 24, 2019
SOULFUL SEX V
HELLO!
JUST A REMINDER:
"FRANKLY SPEAKING"
IS POSTED EACH FRIDAY
BY MIDDAY
EAST COAST USA TIME.
THANKS!
*****
SOULFUL SEX V
FRIENDS
THIS IS THE FIFTH
OF OUR SIX PART SERIES.
IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME WITH US,
WELCOME !
I ENCOURAGE A READING OF
THE PRECEDING INSTALLMENTS
BEFORE DELVING INTO HIS ONE.
YES, THAT'S A BIT OF READING
FOR SURE. HOPE YOU CAN DO IT.
JUST GO TO BLOG ARCHIVE -
RIGHT COLUMN ONLINE.
ALL THE BEST.
JOHN FRANK
*****
Hi There !
So, at the actual moment of birth
things go pretty fast,
vital things.
Once it's obvious
that the baby is alive,
it is immediately labelled
as to how it will live that life.
It is not at all an "it."
Rather,
"It's a boy !"
"It's a girl !"
How wonderful.
How challenging.
Even before the Apgar Test,
the baby is assessed as
male or female.
It's just that primary.
That primal and
sexual assessment
is based solely on
one of two
specific body parts.
The baby is to be raised
in terms of
that sexual specific
according to
the values and manner
of its society.
Sex specific rearing
is determined
by place, time in history,
tradition, religion -
in short, its culture.
That varies from
time to time,
place to place,
people to people.
It does so a lot more
than most of us know,
or want to know.
Cultural construction of gender
emphasizes that different cultures
have distinctive ideas
about males and females
and use those ideas to define
manhood/masculinity and
womanhood/femininity.
Humanity: An Introduction to
Cultural Anthropology,
Peoples and Bailey
Vavenda and Schultz in
Anthropology What Does
It Mean to Be Human?
reference "sex"
as genital capacity for procreation and
"gender" they say
...refers to a way of talking about
all those expectations and beliefs
we load onto people with certain
physical (genital) characteristics.
Sex is physical - genitals.
Gender is cultural,
how a sexed person
is raised and expected
to live out that sexed life.
The former does not necessarily translate
to binary absolutes for the latter, though.
Of course, cultures do
very much factor
physical, sexual capacities
into their constructs of
masculinity and femininity.
Most cultures will only permit
opposite sex intimacy.
There are obviously people
whose nature and manner do not fit
the gender expectations and demands
of their cultures.
Yes, the vast majority of people
are drawn to sexual love and union
with people of the opposite sex.
There are, however, those people
whose nature and make up
is such that they can only enter into
intimate union with another of the same sex.
There are yet other people who are
by nature and make up
drawn to both sexes.
Across history and globe various cultures
have and do respond to the above
with all sorts of tones and touches.
By the way, it is important
to remember that
what a culture publicly requires
and privately accepts
are often not the same,
yet both are culturally condoned.
Leonardo Di Vinci and his young male lover
are a clear example.
It was a Renaissance version of
"Don't ask, don't tell."
So we have
- physical make up-
male/female (sex),
- cultural patterns/norms
assigned for each sex (gender),
- individual nature and make up
( an actual and unique person).
It's not as simple and singular
as Archie Bunker had it:
"When a man was a man
and a woman was a woman"!!
For example, some cultures
have openly accepted
same sex intimacy.
The Greek warriors
and their youthful lovers
are yet another example
as are the relaxed
same/opposite sex relations
in many of the South Sea Islands
that Margaret Mead canvassed.
In the spirituality of
the Original Americans,
this was recognized,
accepted and experienced.
They named it
The Two Spirits.
That meant that
over a lifetime
people might love
and make love
with people of
the opposite sex
and with people
of the same sex,
or with both.
It is an example
of gender fluidity
and a recognition of
individual make up.
It is an example
of what is understood,
described and lived out
as gendered,
as masculine or feminine,
is culturally based,
with more than
a nod to physicality
and one's unique nature
and manner for sure.
In the current cultures of
North America and Europe,
and to a lesser degree
in other lands and ways,
we are now experiencing changes
in the understanding
and expression
of masculine and feminine.
That certainly impacts
our spiritual lives,
our way of living
centered in God's Love.
Hormones and genetics
enter into play here as well.
Physically based,
they determine
secondary, physical,
sexual characteristics,
things such as: body mass,
strength, hirsute, voice,
ambulation, skin texture.
These vary person to person
and span a wide spectrum
as do gender characteristics.
They are sexually based.
Popular culture recognizes them
as proper to one or other
sex and gender.
There are variants here
in how life is lived out, though.
I have counseled and
heard the confessions
of many, many
beautiful, soft women
and big, burly men
who have been in love with,
and made love to,
often partnering with,
persons of the same sex.
Predominance is just that,
but not exclusive.
Sex, culture,
personal nature and
make up are not
always in sync.
That's a critical distinction.
It factors into our self sense
and our shared, social sense
and the living out of those
in our spiritual lives.
I hope all this isn't
getting to be
too much like a term paper.
But, quite frankly and really,
much of our living out
of who and how we are
comes from our culture.
My simple, home grown
definition is that
Culture is how
a given group of people
understand and do life.
Culture is communal consciousness.
It's how a society sizes up
life and meaning .
Society puts that consciousness
into play and practice.
Values, morals, clothing, hygiene,
work ethic, art and music, family,
eating practices, governance,
science, architecture, religion,
treatment of children and the elderly -
literally every attitude, custom,
arrangement, activity are
culturally based and conditioned.
Culture is how
a given group of people
understand and do life.
That varies from people to people,
from time to time.
It's doing that right now and here,
just as it has over the eons
and everywhere always
and variously.
That variation is certainly
the case with the conjunction of
sex/gender and spirituality.
An example or more.
Polygamy was practiced by
the people of the Old Testament,
and most likely
by some in the early days of
the New Testament
"...let a bishop be
a man of one wife."
I Timothy 3: 1-2
Divorce was allowed among
the Chosen People of Israel.
Jesus and Paul, however,
allowed for it in only
a very, very limited way.
( Matthew19:9 and I Corinthians 7: 10-16)
Today polygamy is not allowed
among Jewish people or
in Christian churches at all.
Divorce and remarriage, however,
are widely accepted
among many Jewish communities
and in Christian churches,
way more than Jesus and Paul allowed.
In fact, the strictures
on divorce and remarriage
that Jesus required ( Matthew 19 )
are over ridden in most
Protestant churches today.
As a pastor I had
to work through that.
I came to understand that
sometimes marriages die
before the parties do.
Death frees for remarriage.
In other cases,
the marriage didn't die,
but one or both the parties
abandoned the marriage
and killed it.
Death frees for remarriage.
Understandings and
consequent practices
are indeed culturally conditioned
and both change -
gender and spirituality included.
We are living in the midst of
a seismic cultural change.
One sector of us
is working with that.
Another is vigorously
digging in its heals
in opposition to it.
Check out politics and governance,
family life, education, athletics,
finance, social justice, religion,
environmental matters,
politeness and civility,
treatment of the needy,
social media, fake news...
Be sure to add to the list
all sorts of sex/gender
understandings and practices.
It is in the midst of these
changes in understandings
and the practices
that come from such changes
that we live our spiritual lives
on the street of everyday experience.
These changes call for
rethinking, reevaluating
as we seek to authentically live out
our spiritual lives.
Some of the questions
before us in today's
changing cultural setting are :
- casual, recreational sex
- co-habitation
- same sex love and marriage
- "sexually explicit" content
in mainstream media
- the role of women in business, military,
church and government -
formerly the exclusive domains of men
- the role of men in child rearing,
house holding, nursing -
formerly the exclusive domains of women
- transgender matters
- #Me Too
- what is sexual abuse
and what is consensual sex
- divorce and remarriage
- these and ever so many more.
A particularly telling
sexual/gender/cultural shift
that calls for careful evaluation is
a largely silent,
but extremely pervasive one.
It certainly effects
the spiritual living
of way many more
than we care to see and say:
Pornography.
There's always been pornography,
although I'm admittedly not clear
as to whether Cain and Abel
had copes of Playboy,
or was it Playgirl,
hidden under their mattresses?
I am sure, though,
that pornography is
a whole lot more pervasive
now than ever before in history.
Today it is estimated to be a
$ 97 billion dollar business.
That's enough to feed
4.8 billion people a day.
Hollywood produces
about 600 movies
a year at a profit of
$11 billion dollars.
By comparison,
the Porn Industry produces
13,000 movies (videos) a year
at a profit of $15 billion annually.
In 2017 Pornhub had
28.5 billion visits.
The Porn Industry makes more than
Major League Baseball, the NFL,
and the NBA combined.
Money talks in our culture.
Hear what it says
about sex/gender/spirituality
as it is today
in the world where
we must walk and work
our way to wholeness (holiness).
I am not making a moral call
one way or another at the moment,
but simply putting a spot light
on a current cultural condition
that is both somewhat
in the shade of popular notice/admission
and yet involves large numbers of us
and effects our spiritual lives more than a little.
Why is pornography so prevalent?
Is it a symptom or substitute,
and if so, of what??
What effect does it have
on the spiritual lives of so many millions?
Discounting predatory, violent pornography
are there enhancing or stunting elements, or both,
coming to cultural awareness and acceptance?
Sources:
- "Fight the New Drug," April 2,1018
- "How Big is the Porn Industry?"
Strange But True - Medium, Feb. 19, 2017
- "Porn industry's billion dollar new frontier,"
Market Watch
Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, in an interview with
Johnny Walsh, does offer a moral evaluation,
one that certainly bears on Soulful Sex:
Noting and rejecting exploitation
in some forms of pornography, she sees
a natural goodness at play in yet other forms.
"People have viewed erotic imagery since
we could scratch it on the inside of caves...
Our bodies are wired to have
empathic responses to others,
and it includes erotic ones. To say you should
have shame for that is problematic. If we took
shame out of the fact that people like to view
erotic imagery, the compulsive behavior around
consuming pornography would decrease. We have
a perverted relationship to pleasure."
How does what she says correlate with erotic/nude art
considered classical and on display
in museums, art books and such,
and our experience of it, our pleasure in it?
The interview is in the November/December 2018 issue of
Out In Jersey, "Nadia Bolz-Weber", written by Johnny Walsh.
For sure what it means to be a
sexual/gendered person,
and one of integrity,
is very, very much,
part of the cultural flux
referenced in all of the above.
Our spirituality is
certainly in play here.
Given the tremendous shift
in break through understandings,
and I would say sometimes
"mis"understandings,
and consequent behaviors
in the realm of sex/gender,
both openness and caution
are the order of the day.
As we conclude here,
let's take time and honesty
to assess just where
we personally are
in this mix.
Shutting down and out
is not the answer.
Being indiscriminately open
to any and all new understandings
and practices is not the answer.
Honesty, study, prayerful reflection,
and often good solid counsel
are essential to a healthy
sexual/gendered spiritual life, to
SOULFUL SEX.
Does the old bromide factor here:
"Be not the first by whom
the new is tried,
nor yet the last by whom
the old is laid aside"?
What does factor here for sure
are the simple norms of
of honesty and love.
Am I growing in
realness and expansiveness
or am I taking a step into
dishonest self indulgence?
Am I living and growing in
the Love that is God?
Is what I am doing centered in
and animated by love of
God, neighbor and self
as we really, honestly are?
Am I ready for sex sinner Augustine
become loving Saint Augustine's
radical honesty on divine love:
"Love God and do what you will"?
There's a lot of sexual/gender energy
loose and active in our culture right now.
What energy is destructive?
What energy is creative?
Yes, our spiritual living requires
honesty and love.
PHEW!!! We sure got a work out
here this week!!!
Thanks for hanging on!!!
As noted at the beginning of this series,
there is no claim that
what is presented here
is without limit and flaw.
It comes from a man
limited and flawed
offering the best I know
for the best possible spiritual living.
If this material helps, let it.
If it fails you, leave it.
But in either or both cases,
let's be sure to ask why.
See you next week.
By the way.
Given the length and intensity
of this series, I just want
to let you know that a lighter,
even a bit playful posting
will follow this series.
It is scheduled to go online
Friday, June 7th. through
Friday, June 14th.
It's entitled "Kidding Around."
Time to lighten up a bit,
for sure!!.
In God's Dear Love,
John Frank
*****
A grateful welcome to all
newly joining us.
This past week we had
first time participation
from Cameroon.
That is wonderful!
Over the weeks and months
as we gather here
we now come from
seventy countries
plus my homeland here
in the USA.
In our own way we are
overcoming separation,
working to a unity
of inmost to inmost.
It's a wonderful
Holy Communion.
Let's continue to invite others
to join in here at
"frankly speaking"
-It is posted online
by mid-day east coast time
USA each Friday at
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
and can be bookmarked
for ready access
-It is available for automatic delivery
each Saturday - Sign Up is at the top
of the online presentation
-Past Postings are available at
Blog Archive, right column,
online version.
THANK YOU !
*****************************************************************************