"Sexuality and Spirituality "

We lack a holistic sense of sexuality because of poor sexuality education, whether in our schools, our families of origin, or our religious upbringing. We all have experiences, both positive and negative, which have so deeply shaped our core identity as sexual persons. We have those parent tapes. My mother always said: “Every generation thinks they are the ones who invented sex.” You can guess what I said to my kids. The same message! I can hear you playing your tapes of what your parents said to you. We have such unresolved feelings – fear, confusion, anger, regret, and yearning about the topic of sexuality.

We don’t talk much about sex, except maybe in our jokes.

You may have heard about a couple who go to a marriage counselor after 15 years of marriage. The counselor asks them what the problem is and the woman goes into a tirade listing every problem they have ever had in the 15 years they've been married. She goes on and on and on. Finally, the counselor gets up, goes around the desk, embraces the woman, kisses her passionately, and makes mad passionate love to her. Needless to say, afterwards, the woman sits quietly with a very satisfied daze. The counselor turns to the husband and says "that is what your wife needs at least three times a week. Can you do that?" The husband thinks for a moment and replies, "Well, I can get her here Monday and Wednesday, but Friday I play golf."

A little laughter helps relieve tension. Even though jokes about sex abound, I had trouble finding one I could repeat in a sermon. Often, the jokes about sex aren’t about sexuality. Most are heterosexist. Jokes are usually made at someone’s expense. Women’s and men’s liberation movements gave us some sensitivity and called attention to the fact that all genders suffer from unresolved feelings toward a holistic sense of sexuality and spirituality.

Let’s make sure we understand what sexuality and spirituality are. Sexuality is not only our gender. Gender is biological. Men and women and two spirit people, as they say in the Plains where I come from – also known as third gender, are the categories that define sexual beings by their genitals. James Nelson, a pioneer in the field of sexuality and the sacred, says this in his book, Embodiment:

While sexuality is always rooted in our bodily realities, it is much larger than these, always involving our minds, our feelings, our wills, our memories, indeed our self-understandings and powers as embodied persons. Sexuality in sum is the physiological and emotional grounding of our capacities to love.

Sexuality is more than gender; more than sexual orientation, more than sexual activity.

According to Nelson, spirituality in its broadest sense is:

the ways and patterns by which persons relate to that which is ultimately real and worthful to them. With this term we signify the response of the whole person – mind and body, feelings and relationships - to the presence of whatever
is held to be sacred, of ultimate worth. (Sexuality and the Sacred, 71)

We are in the midst of a period of re-integrating sexuality and spirituality. French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur delineates three historical stages in western understanding. In his book, Sexuality and Identity, he observes:

First, the earliest stage, at the dawn of human history, closely identified the two realms, with sexuality intimately incorporated into the whole view of the cosmos through religious myth and ritual. The second stage, coming with the rise of the great world religions, brought separation. The sacred became increasingly transcendent and separate, while sexuality was demythologized and confined to a small part of earthly life: procreation within institutionalized marriage. Sexuality’s power was feared, restrained, and disciplined. A third period emerging in the modern world, is marked by the desire to unite sexuality once more with the experience of the sacred – a period prompted by more holistic understandings of the person and of ways in which sexuality is present in all of human experience.

Two historical understandings, embedded in human consciousness, create our present reality where we experience two strong, competing, and conflicting messages -one is dualistic, the other holistic.

We have been and still are deeply harmed by dualism, an oppressive “-ism,” which permeates our world. Dualism is the philosophy inherited from the ancient Greek world and Christian Church, which splits body and spirit, matter and mind, while assigning the first as bad and the other good.

I have noticed some Unitarian Universalists criticize Christians rather than critique our own foundations in humanism. Classical Greek humanism, the scientific mechanistic universe, and rational humanism have greatly affected our faith tradition. Professor Nelson summarizes it well when he says:
“Humanists have contributed (to dualism) by their emphasis on the radical uniqueness of the human mind. A pervasive dualistic thinking is a result.”

Our loyalties are split between a narrowly intellectual religion versus an embodied one. Like Christianity, we Unitarian Universalists have two strong and competing streams of understanding the relationship of sexuality and spirituality

A holistic approach, on the other hand integrates the faculties of the person. Where once there was a reductionistic view of the human person where we were separated into categories of spirit, mind, body, sex, gender, and emotions, in a hierarchical relationship, now we view the human in all its mysterious interrelated totality. A meaningful integration of all dimensions of selfhood is essential to the wholeness of life. James Nelson writes this in his book, The Intimate Connection, Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality:

“To know myself as profoundly relational is to know myself as body. All of our relationships are mediated through our bodies. In our sexual, sensuous selves our sense of relatedness is grounded.”

We are embodied creatures. In a holistic view then, we are embodied – fully body, mind, and spirit selves. We are creatures. Creatures are mortal, dependent, and interdependent. We can only exist in relationship. This is spirituality. Spirituality is connection – connection to self, to others, and to that which is greater than ourselves. The integration of spirituality and sexuality is a call to wholeness. We are whole persons who defy definition and analysis.

We are embodied creatures. Christian feminist theologian, Sallie McFague titled her ground-breaking book, The Body of God. The Body of God is a metaphor, an image, that helps us put in plain words the idea of an ecological sexual community. McFague writes about the universe and all its inhabitants as the embodiment of the sacred. She says: “the body is not a discardable garment cloaking the real self.”

I attended a United Seminary, a Christian institution though the student population was interfaith – Jewish, Buddhist, Wiccan, along with Methodists and Presbyterians and those from the United Church of Christ. There were 24 Unitarian Universalists so we were well represented in the student body. Those five seminary years transformed my understanding of sexuality and spirituality in three ways.

First, I reconciled with one aspect of my Christian heritage because I encountered a contemporary liberal Christian faith. I am not exhorting any of you to accept any of the ways in which the Christian Church was destructive to your personhood. I am only saying that there are liberal Christians who endeavor to make their faith life-affirming and healing.

Our Christian heritage is not monolithic. It is a complex manifestation of those two concurrent forces of dualism and a holistic world. The ancient book, The Song of Songs, is one of the most erotic pieces of literature ever written. Its inclusion in the Sacred Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity was controversial because no where in the song is god mentioned. Yet, it remains a beautiful lyrical poem of human sexual love and a testament to the wisdom inherent in the Hebrew Scriptures. The following verses summarize its central meaning:

Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm,
for love is strong as death,
passion as relentless as the grave
its flashes are flashes of fire,
a most vehement flame. (8:6-7)

Second, I enrolled in a course offered in conjunction with the University of Minnesota’s Institute on human sexuality, adult sex education. We listened to speaker after speaker, viewed film after film, and met in small groups for personal growth. I learned about sexuality first hand from people who were different from me – newlyweds in their 80’s, those differently able, quadriplegic, single, celibate or not, those of lifestyles different from mine – whether gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender. When the Seminary Dean of Students, a Protestant minister, talked with candor about pleasuring himself, I have to admit that’s when my sensibilities were pushed. It felt a bit too much like my parents telling me about their sex life – always uncomfortable for a child to hear or as my adult son says: “Yewww! Too much information.” However, my attitude changed. My values and knowledge expanded. I left convinced that everyone, including clergy, needed a quality sex education class in order to live with integrity and to help others to do so.

The third and final gift I have received from seminary formation is an appreciation for interfaith cooperation. Some things are done better together, especially in areas where there is a need for justice work. OWL, the acronym for Our Whole Lives, is a cooperative effort between the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. We both recognize faith communities are sexual communities, which seek just human relationships.

Unitarian Universalism was the first to offer an integrated and comprehensive approach in its sexuality education. Originally published in 1970, the curriculum called AYS, About Your Sexuality, was specifically targeted for teens. OWL is an improved curriculum, a life-span formation program for kindergarten through adults, soundly rooted in human development, innovative education, and theological grounding. It reflects the fact that all throughout our lives, right until death; we are coming to know ourselves as sexual beings. It is an essential component of the human journey to integrate our sexuality and spirituality. We can be proud of our comprehensive sexuality education, OWL.

Not everyone is fortunate to have access to comprehensive sex education. Over the past decade, the US government allocated over $1.3 billion for ineffective abstinence-only sex education programs that provide students with incomplete, medically inaccurate information that focuses solely on abstinence and provides little or no information about contraception. A 2007 evaluation funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services showed that youth enrolled in abstinence-only education programs were no more likely than other youth to delay sexual initiation, have fewer sexual partners or abstain entirely from sex. The current administration said it supports comprehensive sex education programs that both promote abstinence and provide information on contraception.

The Rev. Debra Haffner, Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing says this about the need for comprehensive sexuality education:

As religious leaders, we believe there are strong moral foundations for giving young people the information they need to delay sexual intimacy, develop their capacity for moral discernment, and make mature, responsible decisions. Teaching and preaching abstinence alone is not enough. We pray that the President, and the Congress, will create the first national, comprehensive sexuality education program that puts the well-being of our young people first. Our moral obligation to our young people requires nothing less.

Both sexuality and spirituality are about authentic living. I was listening to a colleague last week. She said that her teenage niece was talking at the dinner table and in the conversation, she just mentioned about being a lesbian. My colleague said she talked so openly about her sexuality that it was just like saying she had brown eyes. This is the goal - to speak about sexuality matter-of-factly and appropriately.

Past President of the UUA, John Buehrens, urges us to comprehend the “lifelong-long commitment to dealing with our sexuality, not only under the heading of morality, but as an issue of spiritual wholeness.” During his leadership, Buehrens signed the noteworthy “Interfaith Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing.” The Declaration ends with a call for lifelong, age appropriate sexuality education. These are the ideals to which we aspire:

Sexuality is a life-giving and life-fulfilling gift.
Our faith traditions celebrate the goodness of creation, including our bodies and our sexuality.
Our culture needs a sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sex acts.
Faith communities must be truth seeking, courageous, and just.
Faith communities must also advocate for sexual and spiritual wholeness in society, especially for comprehensive sexuality education.

May we work to establish these ideals so that we may become whole sexual and spiritual persons and communities. May it be so.

SOURCES:

Interfaith Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing
Deborah Haffner, blog
Sallie McFague, The Body of God
James Nelson, Embodiment
James Nelson, The Intimate Connection
James Nelson, Sexuality and the Sacred
Paul Ricoeur, Sexuality and Identity