So this frog hops into this bar...

I've been thinking about sex way too much recently. Being a TA for a professor who's teaching Sociology of Sexuality might do that for you.

I'm beginning to think that we do not know how to order our sexuality. Christians, Americans, young, old. How we teach sexuality to the young, how we think (or fail to think) about it in our own lives. We err either by licentiousness or by denigrating the body. In truth, God gave us bodies, with all of its emotions, desires, faults, and beauty. We order our sexuality out of honor for God. Our bodies are good, created by God. We are to bring glory to God with our whole lives, by moderation in our pleasures and chastity in regards to our sexuality (both married and unmarried)

Related to sex and sexuality is the simple fact of embodiment. I have a physical body that has needs, desires, problems, issues. I am never disembodied. I sit and study and my body causes me discomfort. I can forget about it for a time, but it doesn't let me ignore it for long. I have to pee or I'm hungry. Prosaic reality after reading Shakespeare or Paul.

What happens when we fail to use our bodies rightly? Related to sex, yes, but related to everything else that our bodies do? Is it wrong to not take care of our bodies? And then, what does "not taking care of our bodies" mean? We will all decay and our bodies will lose their strength, so to what level should we attempt to maintain health, and when do we gracefully let our bodies age?

Right now I kind of like my body. I'm young, spry, etc. It doesn't cause me too many problems. As I grow older I want to give my body grace and have patience with it. But what if I get arthritis? What if I get cancer? What if my body ages in a way that is painful?

I think that God gave us bodies for a purpose. We will never be disembodied spirits but will exist in resurrected bodies. they are not to be hated, as some soiled cloth that we must live with for a time but will eventually discard. We will be renewed but still embodied. Recently I wondered if we will still have internal organs in our resurrected bodies. It's odd to think of myself having a liver. I've never seen it, but I guess it's pretty important.

Paul says that he beats his body and makes it his slave, and as I struggle between these dichotomies of making the body everything or of nothing, there are many verses (such as this) that I am not sure how to understand rightly.

It's probably right for us to think seriously about embodiment and sexuality, especially as we live in a culture inculcated with sex and obsessed with a young, firm, trim, body. But there are other aspects of life that are also important. So many things to think about.

I should only tell funny stories on this blog. Thanks for reading.

The only way out is through

Lent is difficult for me. I have too much of the Protestant in my theological blood. I prefer the Resurrected Christ, without problems. Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed. For this reason, my cross is empty - there is no suffering, emaciated figure hanging there to bring me discomfort (or is it comfort in disguise?).

At Lenten services I know the priest won't dismiss us with a "Go in peace." We are meant to leave troubled by our sin and the great sacrifice it precipitated. I don't want to dwell on suffering. I don't like thinking of myself as a vile sinner, saved through the grace of God but still struggling.
And I don't know what to do with the God-man. Behold, the Creator, stooped in dust, bloody.

I feel like Prince Humperdinck, muttering out of the side of my mouth "skip to the end."

But the only way out is through.

Do I cheat the Resurrection of its power when I neglect what it defeats? If I don't understand death, how do I know true life? How do I know how to feast, unless I first experience the fast.

Reading ahead

I really need to pay more attention to what the exact reading assignment is for each day. Twice now I have read information that is not needed for several days while neglecting the immediate assignment. It's all good stuff though; good stuff. I was reading a Catholic theologian talking about the need for racial reconciliation, and his treatment of the subject is quite good. He goes beyond mere insights or principles and seeks after concrete practices we can follow that emphasize, theologically, that we are the chosen people of God and part of that community. There were some aspects of the article that I was confused about and will continue to muse on those. Hopefully the class discussion in several days contributes to the elucidation. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, Slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

But now I have no time to read Monday's stuff because it's Groundhog Day, believe it or not, and things are about to get hopping around here. I know everyone is really excited about this day, even though the hog saw his shadow again, of course. But despite the prediction here tonight we will bask in each others warm hearts and hearths.