Beauty/Spirituality

The Bible’s “Sex Issue”

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Vue Weekly’s "sex issue" which my wife and I read, ahem, discreetly, over lunch at Sherlock Holmes last Sunday got me thinking about the Bible’s "sex issue". That is, the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. It’s the one book in the Bible we Christians have long been embarrassed by. Not too embarrassed by the mayhem in say, Judges, just the erotic poetry of the Song. And apparently there was, over the years, efforts to remove it from the Bible.

But taking the Song of Songs out of the Bible would be like plucking the cherry of the sundae, like scraping the meringue of the lemon meringue pie, like going to a comedy club where they ban all laughter and well…you get the picture… like taking sex out of marriage.

God bless our ancient Hebrew mentors who loved to live in their bodies, understood that denying our sensuality and sexuality would be denying the very thing that draws us and links us to God. Our spirituality has everything to do with our desire, our passion, our energy.

The Song, taken on its own as a celebration of sexuality already earns its place in Holy Scripture. But seen as well as imagery of God’s love for us and our potential love for God it becomes possibly one of the "holiest books" in scripture. It becomes a burning fire. That’s hot.

Yes, God’s love for us is paternal, maternal and fraternal but perhaps until we understand that his love for us, her desire for us, is ravishing, is all consuming, is penetrating, out of control to the point where we commingle, as the NT says live inside one another, we will only be able to love in a truncated way.

In the act(s) of sexual love we are most free, vulnerable, open, we give and receive in ways that go beyond concepts and thought, in ways that even halt time. In the sexual act we gain an existential understanding of love. (By the way I do believe that this kind of existential understanding of love can be gained by our celibate brothers and sisters which only serves to strengthen the notion that celibacy is a unique gift.)

The eroticism in the Song is not a fallen form of love. It is who we are, sensual, erotic, passionate.

The preaching I heard growing up made me feel guilty about desires and pleasures. And of course the Song of Songs was avoided. It was hardly ever referred to and when it was it was always spiritualized so as to sterilize it beyond recognition. This I think was a Platonist attempt to regain for it a purity it certainly didn’t need because it already was pure. It was thought, I suppose, that this way of treating the Song would keep our passions in check, keep them underground so that we would be kept safe from pleasure which equalled sin.

Sebastian Moore, a Benedictine priest turns this conventional view of sin on its ear when he says, “Sin stems from a lack of desire for pleasure.”

Before dismissing Dom Moore we need to think about what he is saying. The Song of Songs is passionate, erotic, full of life and love and desire. It not only frees us, but beckons us to become participants and partaker’s of a love life with God.

When life beckons to us like a lover do we embrace it or do we retreat? Or do we even allow life to beckon to us this way?

We fear the Song’s passion and its eroticism because we see it through the squandered sexuality of the blue screen. The Song, if read aright, is an antidote to trivialized, loveless, passionless, (essentially inhuman) sexuality. It is capable of reorienting our desire for another, therefore of God. Our desires and yes, our desire for pleasure is God’s calling card.

Jesus came so that we could have life abundantly. He came not as an ethereal presence but robed with flesh and longing.

When we see our sexuality as apart from and inferior to our spirituality, we are setting up a distinction that God doesn’t make. When we see procreation as apart from and inferior to prayer we fall into the Gnostic heresy that says the (pure) spirit needs to be freed from flesh which is the house of evil. Perhaps in this case we are still in need of emancipation from the debilitating dualism of a Greek/Western world view.

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Politics

Ralph Klein Interview

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Unfortunately I had to miss Ralph Klein’s parting interview last night on Global but I did get my wife and daughter to watch it for me. The reason for my curiosity was because our Premier was going to talk about his rather unbalanced late night visit to Hope Mission’s shelter for men.

If you recall it was around Christmas time back in 2001. Our Premier was drunk, got his driver to stop at the shelter, went in, looked around, got in a verbal altercation with a homeless person, threw some money on the floor in the man’s direction and left…with the help of his chauffer.

While it must be a bit daunting to interview the leader of a province Linda Steele apparently moderated more than interviewed. Her questions answered themselves and real engagement was suspended. For Ralph Klein’s part, what could have been a moment of genuine reflection, turned out to be a-wave-of-the-hand.

When asked why he went to the Hope Mission’s shelter, he answered that he was curious. (Reasonable enough.) When asked about his conduct, he replied that he thought "he was quite nice" and that he had been told by others that "he was quite kind". And when asked what he learned about the incident he said "he learned that there are snitches".

Just my opinion but perhaps Mr. Klein would benefit from some Enneagram.

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Politics/Poverty/Spirituality

Orphans Freegans Missions and God

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. (Psalm 68)

There is a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise across the street from where I work. Beside it is a dumpster enclosed by a high wooden fence with a gate that is locked, occasionally. Across from the dumpster on a concrete riser sat a young man, reasonably clean and seemingly composed. He had thick features and a brush-cut. He smiled slightly when he talked, revealing even teeth.

He said he was waiting for someone to throw away some drumsticks or a chicken burger. Said it happens all the time. I told him where he could get a better meal, healthy, not left-over. He thought about it and frowned. Said he might do that later. But the suggestion threw him off.

I thought about the Freegans that I discovered when the little dust-up over brochures about dumpster etiquette was in the news. (See earlier post.) The Freegans are a community that have totally boycotted the "economic system". Instead of boycotting one bad company to support another they try, as far as possible, to live by not buying anything. They have dumpster banquets. They live off of what we throw away. They’re picky in their own way, they clean it up and discard what can’t be eaten.

Well, Mission’s have been doing that for years with the difference that we intercept the too-old-for-retail food from the back of donut shops and grocery stores before it hits the dumpster. We have our regular pick-ups where certain stores hang on to their better stuff until we retrieve it.

Freegans also have there favorite spots where the selections and the throwaways are better. Our KFC has no doubt been one of those. Perhaps that’s why they put the fence up. But Freegans wouldn’t collect here. The other part of Free, is Vegan.

The young man was obviously not a Freegan, he liked chicken, was not much interested in a "movement" or a "philosophy". And he had been here before; and now, having just been released from jail, was back. I asked him about work and he said he’s tried the temp-agencies but finds it hard getting through a day. He said that he has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

As I was leaving he called to me, I turned and he said that he had had a very good dream last night. I walked back and asked him what the dream was about. He thought for moment. I waited. He screwed up his face. I saw him struggle to lift something out that just wouldn’t surface. I waited…I said dreams are hard to explain sometimes. He finally asserted, "Well, it was spiritual." That seemed to satisfy him.

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Christianity/Peace/Politics/Religion/Violence

Pseudo Events and Meekness

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Not long after 9/11 something grim came onto my inner horizon. It was like this: When I saw a person who I assumed to be Muslim, the thought that crept in was whether or not this Muslim was an extremist and therefore a terrorist. Almost unconsciously I began to conduct a sort of interior racial profiling. What fueled this was fear, the fear came from all the hyperbolic-meaning that was invested into the 9/11 event.

And I do mean hyperbolic. Nine/eleven is what Thomas Merton would have called a "pseudo event". Not at all to underestimate all the human loss and genuine grief and emotion and the miserable depth of all that. And not at all to undermine all the genuine outpouring of care and concern for families of victims and then, in some quarters at least, care for Muslim neighbours who were targets of the inevitable backlash. All that was beauty from ashes, genuine and human.

No, what Merton would have been referring to was how the world became suddenly transfixed by an event that at its base has nothing creative about it at all. The instant camaraderie, the suddenly new interest in faith, people flocking back to churches, the declarations by world leaders from pulpits of cathedrals of a new war to make the world safe. And the irresistible upsweep we all felt in the wake of all that fire-works. Merton would have asked us, while in that state of fascination, while we poured over our newspapers and absorbed all those images of flame and falling concrete, to take with us a page from the gospels.

He would have shown us how Jesus asks us to look away; to not be seduced by the power of bombs, of suicide planes, and the pronouncements of powerful people. Not to be alarmed by wars and rumours of wars. Not to be sucked in by the concentration of "meaning", all of it false. He would have shown through the gospel that our fear and "meaning-making" unwittingly gives credence to false-power, that is, satanic power.

The world is addicted to this false power. We line up around it like iron filings around a magnet. While the real power, as Alison has said, is so powerful that it can afford to lose to this power, in order to expose it. The real power has already been unleashed in this world, waiting to be further appropriated by imitating Christ, by growing a mind of Christ, by desiring the desires of Christ. The real power is discreet, open, full of love and beauty, and profoundly, not at all tethered to death.

Real power, unlike ersatz power, is not controlled by death. All false power of the pseudo events ritually dance around death. And death masquerades as the big show. The extent that my own fear, my "profiling" control my thoughts and movements is the extent to which I am ensnared by the big show. My freedom, our freedom, as always, is only through learning to see through the eyes of Jesus. How else to understand Jesus’ words that, "The meek shall inherit the earth."

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