On Sunday, Rev. Lola Wright kicked off our February series, “Sexual Healing,” with her message, “An Unlearning of Sexual Shame.”
Listen
Message Notes
An Unlearning Of Sexual Shame
Opening:
I have recently heard my young children say “Donald Trump is a very BAD man.” And to that I say “he is not bad. He is hurt. And we can pray for him. We all make choices that aren’t from our best selves. He is not ‘bad.’ AND, I do not agree with his values or his choices.”
What Donald Trump represents is a Sexual Healing that is being called forward. An integration of the masculine and feminine principles which live in ALL of us. Theologically and culturally we continue to recover from the propaganda of Original Sin as we wake up to the reclamation of Original Blessing. AND our work is not complete.
This series intends to open us to Sexual Healing – our own Sexual Maturation and Integration. Please understand this is not a month of how you may have the best sex of your life, although you may get some insights there too. This is a month to do the inner work of reconciling the parts of us that lay dormant, the parts of us that have been crucified and the parts of us that have been denied so that we may experience greater harmony on this planet. This is a month of spiritual awakening…a time to look at the places we’ve hidden.
SLIDE: The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects – born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.
There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual. Because of these attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psychic and emotional) from the political, to see them as contradictory or antithetical…In the same way, we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic – the sensual – those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.
In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.
The erotic cannot be felt secondhand – it’s personal, never impersonal. – Uses Of The Erotic by Audre Lorde
Objectives:
Become aware of the ways the X’d out parts of ourselves are causing great destruction and despair
See our sexual nature as part of our spiritual nature
Begin to liberate our creative and sexual nature
Keywords/Points/Stories:
Western Tradition: Sexual OR Sacred?
SLIDE: Our culture has lost the understanding that sexual energy is a physical expression of spiritual power. In truth, the desire to unite sexually with another human being is a reflection of an underlying spiritual need to experience wholeness and complete intimacy, transcending the individual’s sense of separateness and isolation. It is a need to return to the original source of creation, to the oneness we experienced in our mother’s womb and, beyond that, to a oneness within the self. Sexual union without this sacred element, carried out only for the sake of pleasure, is commonly thought to be enough to satisfy our needs. But it rarely does, and then only fleetingly. With the sacred element added, it is possible for us to experience a connection with life force itself, and with our deepest creative impulses. – The Art of Sexual Ecstasy by Margo Anand
Shame’s enemy is to be spoken. What is your conscious and unconscious sexual shame?
SLIDE: Because I suffered in silence all the day long, my bones waxed old during my deep slumber. Psalm 32.3
We identify as male/female or gay/straight and as such we compartmentalize into rigid dualistic frameworks when in fact there is an infinite spectrum that captures the many aspects of our being
SLIDE: It is highly probable that sexual activity, indeed the frenetic preoccupation with sex that characterizes Western culture, is in many cases not the expression of a sexual interest at all, but rather a search for the satisfaction of the need for contact. – Touching by Ashley Montagu
The balance of Feminine & Masculine
SLIDE: Patriarchal philosophies have left Eros out of justice. We need an erotic justice. A justice that moves people. Justice moves us first because injustice moves us. An erotic justice means first of all getting in touch with our feelings about injustice. Injustice is not an abstraction: it is about the draining away of Eros and joy from people’s lives. – Original Blessing by Matthew Fox
Your sexual nature IS your spiritual nature – GOD is all there is! How could your sexual nature be outside of your spiritual nature IF who you are is a spiritual being?! Dualistic or Unitive consciousness?
SLIDE: Joy beyond measure is part of everyone’s potential experience. It is part of recovering an erotic God who plays, takes pleasure, births, celebrates, and feels passion. Eros and hope are part of the blessings of existence. – Original Blessing by Matthew Fox
Summary:
I am here to celebrate and liberate.
My visit to Donald Trump and the Oval Office.
Not just an unhealed part in him but an unhealed part in ALL of us!
SLIDE: Eros has the power to wake us up, to see passion happen again, feeling return, hope and transcendence come alive. It makes compassion possible, returning it from what I have called its “lonely exile.” – “Original Blessing” by Matthew Fox
Closing:
Here’s what I know, I have hardly scratched the surface of my sexual nature…for it is infinite. I can’t wait to see what God expresses through me in my most alive, self expressed, sensual, magnetic way…and the same is true for you!
SLIDE: If we allowed ourselves to feel our full aliveness we would stand next to a eucalyptus bush and be aroused. – Gay Hendricks
Additional Resources
