Well, not really, but the Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and Real Sex was at the Covenant Seminary campus last night giving a talk about chastity and premarital sex. I missed the first little bit, but from what I gathered and from an article in the Spring 2005 issue of Leadership, her three central points are that there are 3 lies the church believes about sex:
1) Premarital sex makes you feel lousy: “Insisting that premarital sex will make you feel bad missates the nature of sin. When we consider decption, or sloth, or gluttony, or any other sin, we know darn well that these don’t always makes us feel bad….This is the way sin works–it tells that something not good is very good indeed. Our feelings are not always reliable–before or after sinning. This is precisely why we need the witness of Scripture and the Church to help us know what to do.”
2)Women don’t really want to have sex: “Okay, I admit it: this is a fib that really ticks me off.” She said that this was not always the case historically, but that in earlier times it was women who were perceived to be temptresses luring men. She noted that in about 25% of marriages it is men who want more sex, in 25% women, and in the other 50% it is about even. Her central point, though, was that to believe and act on this assertion does nothing for women to prepare them for sexual desire and temptation if or when it does arrive.
3)Premarital sex leaves permanent scars: This perhaps was her most interesting point. She said that evangelical Christian literature centers on two metaphors regarding premarital sexual sin: ghost and scars i.e. the ghost of previous lovers will never leave ones mind and the scars of premarital sex will permanently affect a marriage. She was not diminishing the far reaching consequences of premarital sex (and she made clear that this encompasses not just the actual sex act but also activities that fall short of that but are equally intimate). In fact, she provided the helpful analogy of credit card debt (and another I don’t remember just now), in which it is true that towering credit card debt casts a long shadow, that it takes a long time to pay it off and to learn good spending habits, but she insisted that this can be done. She said it is the same with sexual sin. Moreover, she noted that to claim that sexual sin was in some way outside of the redeeming and healing power of the Gospel is also simply a gross falsehood.
Overall, her talk was very good and I am looking forward to reading her other books, perhaps most specifically Mudhouse Sabbath.
This morning Ms. Winner gave a seminar on spiritual writing which I attended. It was also very good, particularly her thoughts on the writing of memoirs and creative nonfiction. What follows is a writing exercise in which we were to write, in the space of about 15 minutes, a piece defining an abstract concept without using the word itself. Here, with only one word changed, is my piece on “xxxxxxx.” OK, I had told you the word, but I think I won’t, and hence I went back and x-ed it out. If you are inclined, guess it in a comment, and lets see if I did my job. Oh, and this was off the top of my head and from my impressions i.e. I did not really check out my assertions.
The Monty Python skits mock it because that’s never how it is. At least not how it is in my experience. There is never the clarity of the ray of light beaming down from above, with me gazing up, finally seeing it. The light that is, that old proverbial light. Nor is there a sound of angelic voices in growing crescendo as the light of comprehension reaches its almost orgasmic peak.
No, my reality is not like that. There are places, friends, music, words, desires, and pain. David, longing, “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Service, Scotland all ensconced in grey matter and synapses, the synapses themselves arranged, no one knows, how in amazing sequences.
No, what it is is when structure emerges from the chaos. Not the structure of everthing, of course. The Theory of Everything I have not nailed down. The string theorists can rest easy. No, but a piece at least becomes aligned, connected, and I can see the connection all the way up to God.
Perhaps that how it was then. The confusion of Kings with their entourage descending on a dusty Judean village. They, perhaps, puzzled themselves at their end point. The neighbors confused. There was no flock of angels as before, however many years before, just a young mother, a baby in peasant rags, kneeling, gifting, and a direct connection to God.