Gladness

I’m glad for everything, this life is precious, no time to waste in fretting. I’m especially glad that no one reads this blog any more. If no one comes I can say what to want to say on my own account.

The marital bed is the Tabernacle of the Most High. This isn’t a quote from anywhere else, it just came to me. There are sacred rituals in all of human culture. Christianity is unique, I imagine, in its concept of Eucharist, or Holy Communion. I’m fascinated by the notion that a celibate Catholic priest* can praise marital intercourse as equivalent to the Eucharist, in which the worshipper consumes the body and blood of Christ. But it makes sense if the celibate praises the Eucharist as equivalent to marital intercourse. If he’s a priest he gets a daily dose of the former and none of the latter. It is not for me to speculate on what physical excitement a communicant gets from consuming the bread and wine, or whether it can be compared to orgasm.

. . . for Nelson embodiment is another word for incarnation, the essential Christian mystery that God and world, spirit and flesh, divine and human are made one in Christ. However, it is the particular strength of this word that it helps one focus on the “bodiliness” of Christianity. As Nelson States: Sexuality is a sign, a symbol, and a means of our call to communication and communion. This is most apparent in regard to other human beings, other body-selves. The mystery of our sexuality is the mystery of our need to reach out to embrace others both physically and spiritually. Sexuality thus expresses God’s intention that we find our authentic humanness in relationship. But such humanizing relationship cannot occur on the human dimension alone. Sexuality, we must also say, is intrinsic to our relationship with God.

(Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology by James B. Nelson)

* See especially Sex as Sacrament

I shall publish this draft now though it remains incomplete . . . . . But then, the same could be said for anything on this site.