I recall a remarkable sermon in church from at least ten years ago when an ancient visiting priest stood up before the congregation and gave an impassioned speech about something he must have known little about - sex. Much to everyone's shock, he gave the old Catholic party line, propelled by righteous fury, about sex - that is should be primarily for procreation, only between married couples, and done only in a certain way. He deftly let us know that certain orifices were never to be used, nor almost any other positions besides the old standard. About half the congregation was raising its eyebrows, while the other half was lowering its head to hide anger, mirth, disbelief, anything but agreement. Hadn't we gotten over that nonsense? We had, but surprisingly, the Church hadn't, at least according to this ancient Father.
I was one of those wracked with a bad case of the chuckles, and I didn't bother to hide my head either, but the truth remains - sex in religion, in spirituality, in witchcraft and sorcery remains a powerful force, and for most, the force is negative. It is seen as anti-spiritual, as a block or an impediment or a crutch or a vampire-like energy sucker. Few have anything good to say about it, from the traditional Plains Indians of America to Buddhists in Japan. Biochemists have linked sex to primal animal aggression and dominance, and we certainly see that in the world - for instance, until the drug wars began in the late 1960's, most murders were performed during passionate fits of jealousy. And it's seamy, sick and usurious side is all too well known and apparently eternal and cross-cultural.
So, although it was consistent with the overall theme, it seemed unusual then that Sister Ilia Delio (in her book "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being) should expound on Father Teilhard de Chardin's downright jubilant view of sex. The word "sex," we learn, comes from the Greek "to shear or sever" - that is, that the differentiation of animals by sex is a splitting apart, a cleaving of a whole in two. And it is exactly in the coming together of the "sexed" animals that the meaning of the world, and of God, comes through so clearly, as does evolution. We are pulled, as it is, towards union; the very nature of the animal kingdom flies in the face of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy), its line going instead towards more division, more species, greater complexity - and greater union. Thus we begin to see the nature of God - not as a prime mover, not as a watch-maker who stands apart, but as the whole that is both greater than the sum of the parts, and a part of the parts themselves. God is in the motion and is behind the motivation of all things, living or inert - a movement towards more, and in the "more", a movement towards greater Union. Existence, then, is not a distant creation of a creator god, but a work set in time to express the very nature of God, who is both imminent, in everything and action and thought, and transcendent - NOT the thing itself, but encompassing and being and moving and living in everything. And sex - that we are "severed" from one another as a move towards complexity, so that we might be drawn together in equally greater union - is God in both being and action.
For all I know, this might be one of the major reasons why Fr Teilhard's books were forbidden by the Vatican to go into print until the Church was loosened up by Vatican II in the early 1960's - because Teilhard took the view that the act of sex was one of the greatest displays of the reality of God. This comes as no surprise to those of us who have loved and have had children from our love, but the Church and most of the worlds spiritual practices - how could they have missed this understanding? It is well known that St Paul preached to a civilized world that was awash in thoughtless and abusive and financial sex, and as such, gave the Catholic Church much of its austerity, but what of the others? Certainly there must be some truth to the anti-spiritual nature of sex.
Certainly there is. For Teilhard de Chardin, everything is an exposition of God, yet few actions show it more greatly than sex. And this, perhaps, gives us the clue. Given that we have come to treat everything in a profane manner, what greater blasphemy towards the sacred could there be than in treating a central truth of the cosmos so casually? As we often while away our ordinary time so blankly, so devoid of wonder and awe, how much worse that we should while away something so obviously spiritual in equal fashion? When treated so, sexual activity can also become a vice because of its obvious attraction, riveting us even more firmly to profanity. It is then that the aggression and dominance that is an occasional instinct in other animals can become so twisted and sordid. While other animals act with a certainty that is beyond the profane, it is our very conceptualization of the profane that creates the profane; it is the very gift of thought, that which can bring about the highest union, that can turn the greatest natural gifts into the worst.
Then again, how best to ensure an obsession with certain types of sexual activity than to ban it? It only shows how religion can take a spiritual idea of cosmic proportions and overly humanize it to the point that the idea itself becomes profane. Religion is there to help us understand the nearly incomprehensible - but sometimes the dumbing down dumbs down the religion itself. As the marauding fanatics in the Middle East show us, this has not happened with sex alone. FK
I was one of those wracked with a bad case of the chuckles, and I didn't bother to hide my head either, but the truth remains - sex in religion, in spirituality, in witchcraft and sorcery remains a powerful force, and for most, the force is negative. It is seen as anti-spiritual, as a block or an impediment or a crutch or a vampire-like energy sucker. Few have anything good to say about it, from the traditional Plains Indians of America to Buddhists in Japan. Biochemists have linked sex to primal animal aggression and dominance, and we certainly see that in the world - for instance, until the drug wars began in the late 1960's, most murders were performed during passionate fits of jealousy. And it's seamy, sick and usurious side is all too well known and apparently eternal and cross-cultural.
So, although it was consistent with the overall theme, it seemed unusual then that Sister Ilia Delio (in her book "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being) should expound on Father Teilhard de Chardin's downright jubilant view of sex. The word "sex," we learn, comes from the Greek "to shear or sever" - that is, that the differentiation of animals by sex is a splitting apart, a cleaving of a whole in two. And it is exactly in the coming together of the "sexed" animals that the meaning of the world, and of God, comes through so clearly, as does evolution. We are pulled, as it is, towards union; the very nature of the animal kingdom flies in the face of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy), its line going instead towards more division, more species, greater complexity - and greater union. Thus we begin to see the nature of God - not as a prime mover, not as a watch-maker who stands apart, but as the whole that is both greater than the sum of the parts, and a part of the parts themselves. God is in the motion and is behind the motivation of all things, living or inert - a movement towards more, and in the "more", a movement towards greater Union. Existence, then, is not a distant creation of a creator god, but a work set in time to express the very nature of God, who is both imminent, in everything and action and thought, and transcendent - NOT the thing itself, but encompassing and being and moving and living in everything. And sex - that we are "severed" from one another as a move towards complexity, so that we might be drawn together in equally greater union - is God in both being and action.
For all I know, this might be one of the major reasons why Fr Teilhard's books were forbidden by the Vatican to go into print until the Church was loosened up by Vatican II in the early 1960's - because Teilhard took the view that the act of sex was one of the greatest displays of the reality of God. This comes as no surprise to those of us who have loved and have had children from our love, but the Church and most of the worlds spiritual practices - how could they have missed this understanding? It is well known that St Paul preached to a civilized world that was awash in thoughtless and abusive and financial sex, and as such, gave the Catholic Church much of its austerity, but what of the others? Certainly there must be some truth to the anti-spiritual nature of sex.
Certainly there is. For Teilhard de Chardin, everything is an exposition of God, yet few actions show it more greatly than sex. And this, perhaps, gives us the clue. Given that we have come to treat everything in a profane manner, what greater blasphemy towards the sacred could there be than in treating a central truth of the cosmos so casually? As we often while away our ordinary time so blankly, so devoid of wonder and awe, how much worse that we should while away something so obviously spiritual in equal fashion? When treated so, sexual activity can also become a vice because of its obvious attraction, riveting us even more firmly to profanity. It is then that the aggression and dominance that is an occasional instinct in other animals can become so twisted and sordid. While other animals act with a certainty that is beyond the profane, it is our very conceptualization of the profane that creates the profane; it is the very gift of thought, that which can bring about the highest union, that can turn the greatest natural gifts into the worst.
Then again, how best to ensure an obsession with certain types of sexual activity than to ban it? It only shows how religion can take a spiritual idea of cosmic proportions and overly humanize it to the point that the idea itself becomes profane. Religion is there to help us understand the nearly incomprehensible - but sometimes the dumbing down dumbs down the religion itself. As the marauding fanatics in the Middle East show us, this has not happened with sex alone. FK
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