One of the first things we discussed in on my philosophy classes (an ethics class) was that custom is king. What we might see as common place and accepted, another culture might not. And vice versa.
I have always been fairly open-minded, and accepting, but I admit there are some things that I just can't find a way to understand.
I might not agree with it, but I can see where the idea of "no sex before marriage" would be beneficial in some ways, at some times. Having had my child (with my husband) six months before we married, I can safely say that I broke that rule. But then again, I have never felt it applied to me, because it is not part of my custom. I can accept that others view it as sacrosanct, and I can respect them for it. Even if I just don't understand it.
A young lady I used to work with dated her boyfriend for years, and never slept with him. He held off propsing to her, despite them loving each other so much it was obvious to anyone who saw them together, or even apart. She shined with love for him. But he had cancer, the kind that required a bone marow transplant, and he didn't want to be selfish and marry her, then die leaving her with only bills for comfort. So he held off proposing until he got the all clear.
The day he popped the question, there are truly no words to describe her appearence. She glowed. Her happiness was shimmering from the inside out. Unfortunatly, he fell ill again. Though it all, they never slept together. And sadly, he passed away a few months later. She refused to give up, refused to let him break off their engagement.
I tried not to judge. Goodness knows I tried. I bit my tongue when she mentioned wanting to be one with him, but knowing it would be a sin if she did. I bie my tongue when he fell ill again, to keep from telling her to grab what happiness she could, with what time they had. I bite my tongue to keep from yelling at him that his act of selflessness was the most selfish thing I had ever seen, because he denied her YEARS worth of possible good memories. Denied her so much.
They never had sex, and she will never know what it would have been like with him, because it was sinful in their eyes. I just don't understand that. I try, and I respect their belief, but I just can't wrap my mind around it. If something had happened to my husband before we got married, I would still have had the memories and the child we made together to cherish.
Another part of religion I can't understand is one that calls for female circumcision. I do not mean to start a flame war here, just express my own cluelessness. How can something so beautiful, the joy to be found in a spouse's arms as he is sliding into you, and holding you pressed tight against him, be denied to a woman? I understand wanting to remove temptation. If I could, I would ask every single attractive woman in the area to not wear skin tight jeans and belly shirts. Especially the redheads. Hubby loves redheads. But removing a woman's clit, and sentencing her to a lifetime of not just joyless, but in many cases painful sex, for something she MIGHT be tempted to do just doesn't make sense to me.
There are so many other instances where I truly want someone to make it make sense to me, that I could spend all day typing this post. But I am sure you don't want to read a novel on my cluelessness.
Just to make it clear, I have no problem with religon. I wasn't raised with one, but hubby is very faithful to his chosen path, we have many wiccan, other forms of pagan, christian, muslim, and even a few buddhist friends. I respect them all for their beliefs, and I respect their beliefs. Our daughter is currently seeking her path, and I am supportive of her questions, and respectful of her ideas as she searches for what feels right to her.
I just don't understand many religions. Especially when it comes to sex.
Showing posts with label sex as sin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex as sin. Show all posts
Friday, August 6, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Holy Lust
By Lisabet Sarai
Warning: this post may offend some people with strong, traditional religious beliefs.
He set up his curtain in an alcove of the chapel. I tiptoed into the sanctuary an hour after Matins, hoping to find him available. Cold winter light poured through the arched windows. I could see his feet behind the drapery; I knelt on the floor before him.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been forty days since my last confession.”
“I know your sins, Sister Ursula. You need not recite them.”
I was shocked. “Father...”
“Be silent, Sister. I will tell you your sins. You are proud and vain, knowing that you are gifted with beauty and intelligence beyond those of your sisters. You are rebellious against the discipline of the Order, wishing another, worldly life for yourself. Do I speak truly?”
I bowed my head in shame. “Yes, Father.”
“Furthermore, you have unclean thoughts and desires. Your young body burns with need. You dream of many hands, stroking and caressing your flesh.”
I never recalled my dreams, but as he spoke, I remembered, or imagined, the scenes he described. I felt dampness on my thighs beneath my habit. The ache there was a hundred times stronger than I had ever felt before.
“You feel that you have been abandoned here in the abbey, left to languish here, unnoticed and ultimately alone, for all your days. That is the worst, is it not?”
His perceptiveness astonished me. I had not consciously realized how much I missed the feeling of belonging that I had enjoyed when I was younger.
“Yes, Father. Can you forgive me, Father? Can you give me absolution and peace?”
“I can, but only after you have done penance. Meet me at sixth hour in the stables.”
“I will be there, Father. Thank you. Should I say any prayers?”
I could swear that he laughed to himself. “I will teach you to pray this afternoon.”
The air in the stables was cold, but ripe with animal and vegetable smells. Father Jerome was waiting for me. In his hand was a whip of braided leather. He ran his palm over its length as he watched me approach.
“Kneel before me, Sister Ursula.”
Puzzled but strangely pliant, I followed his instructions, my eyes cast down. The straw tickled my nostrils.
“Sister, the heart of sin is the feeling of separation from God. The remedy is total surrender to His will and a return to communion with Him. Do you understand?”
I nodded, though I hardly grasped what he was saying.
“No, you do not, not yet. But you will. Remove your habit.”
Once again, he shocked me. I looked up, into those azure eyes of his. “Surely, Father, this is not proper...”
“We are all born naked. The flesh is glorious, not shameful. Do as I say.”
He spoke with such authority that I could only believe and obey. Unknotting the cords around my waist, I pulled the bulky wool robe over my head, then folded it neatly and placed it beside me. Now I wore only my rough linen shift, my crucifix, and my wimple and veil. I shivered in the February chill. Yet at the same time my cheeks, my earlobes, my fingers and toes, all grew warm, pulsing with some inner heat. My breasts felt heavy; my tightening nipples scraped against the homespun fabric.
Father Jerome paced a circle around me. “How do you feel?” he asked me.
“Embarrassed,” I replied. “And strangely free.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “I will beat you now. Not as punishment for your sins, but to teach you to surrender. When you surrender, your sins will evaporate like dew in the morning sun.”
– From “Communion” by Lisabet Sarai
Sex frequently gets a bad rap from religion. In the Catholic tradition, lust or fornication is a “mortal sin”-- a deed so offensive to the Diety that it carries the threat of eternal damnation. In Islam, lust is considered so spiritually dangerous that women are required to cover themselves to avoid becoming objects of temptation and men are forbidden to be in the company of females who are not wives or family members. Judaism takes a more favorable view of sexual pleasure, but only when it is experienced within marriage and supports the continuation of the race.
Obviously the question of what is sinful could generate volumes of opinion, commentary and debate (and has). I'm more interested in the issue of sex as sin from my perspective of an erotic author. I'm quite sure that legions of fundamentalists in the U.S. wouldn't hesitate to label me as damned—evil, corrupt, disgusting, deserving of the worst punishment. I find this extremely non-intuitive since I feel that sex has brought me closer to the Divine—both sex in my writing and in my life.
As I've shared in other posts, I was what many people would consider extremely active, sexually, in my mid to late twenties. When I reread my journal from that period, it seems as though I was constantly involved in new adventures. I had several lovers concurrently (not literally at the same time, but interleaved) and was in love with them all. I could hardly walk down the street without striking up a new relationship. Flirtations quickly flowered into full-scale affairs. After years of being an ugly duckling, it appeared that I had quite suddenly become a pheromone-broadcasting swan.
One fascinating thing about that heady time, also confirmed by my diary, is that fact that I was simultaneously undergoing a kind of spiritual awakening. I'm not talking about a mystical sense of oneness with God...well, not exactly. But the ecstasy I felt in my lovers' arms, the soul-to-soul connection I experienced, seemed to confirm my relatively recent conclusion that there was some sort of Higher (or maybe Deeper) Power, some reality beyond the material. Serendipity, synchronicity, lucid dreams, mind melding—sex and love (which I couldn't really separate) were my gateway into a world of Spirit. My occasional anguished journal entries questioning the wisdom or even the sanity of my behavior were followed by confident, faith-filled conviction that this path of pleasure I was traveling was a spiritual path as much as a carnal one.
My best stories, I think, the ones that people remember, capture the sense of reverence I felt during those years. I'm drawn to D/s scenarios partly because the perfect, trusting release of one's self to the Master comes so tantalizingly close to being a religious experience. When S.F. Mayfair and I edited Sacred Exchange: Stories of Transcendence and Spirituality in Dominance and Submission, we were trying to express this shared vision of sex (and specifically sex that involves power exchange) as ecstatic, transformational, even mystical.
Spirituality doesn't necessarily sell. Sacred Exchange was a commercial flop, though it contains some of the finest literary erotica I've ever encountered. And a lot of my work—these days, in particular, when I'm writing a lot of romance—sidesteps the deeper questions that concerned me back then in favor of titillation and entertainment. This still hasn't altered my underlying belief that, far from being a sin, sex can be a mode of worship.
There have been Christian and Muslim mystics who understood this—who experienced their intense desire for union with the Divine in a sexual manner. And of course sexuality is prominent in the iconography of many non-Western religions. It seems to be mostly the monotheistic religions that arose in what is now the Middle East that loudly condemn sex as sinful.
I have a theory about this. Lust has power. It can be so extreme, so overwhelming, that it distracts from the contemplation and consciousness of God. To live a spiritual life, to walk a spiritual path, means keeping one's focus on the immaterial world of the Eternal Mind. The pleasures of the flesh can blind one to the reality of Spirit. This is the justification for religious celibacy, and I think it makes some sense.
But the monotheistic religions seem to demonize sex out of a kind of jealousy. “Thou shalt have no other God but Me,” it says in the Old Testament. Sex is viewed as sin because it's a sort of competition for people's attention—and a pretty potent one at that.
I admire people who embrace celibacy as a spiritual discipline. However, this is not the only way to approach the Divine. I'm quite certain of this. Purity in lust, total surrender, can work equally well for some people. I have a suspicion that I'm one of them.
Warning: this post may offend some people with strong, traditional religious beliefs.
He set up his curtain in an alcove of the chapel. I tiptoed into the sanctuary an hour after Matins, hoping to find him available. Cold winter light poured through the arched windows. I could see his feet behind the drapery; I knelt on the floor before him.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been forty days since my last confession.”
“I know your sins, Sister Ursula. You need not recite them.”
I was shocked. “Father...”
“Be silent, Sister. I will tell you your sins. You are proud and vain, knowing that you are gifted with beauty and intelligence beyond those of your sisters. You are rebellious against the discipline of the Order, wishing another, worldly life for yourself. Do I speak truly?”
I bowed my head in shame. “Yes, Father.”
“Furthermore, you have unclean thoughts and desires. Your young body burns with need. You dream of many hands, stroking and caressing your flesh.”
I never recalled my dreams, but as he spoke, I remembered, or imagined, the scenes he described. I felt dampness on my thighs beneath my habit. The ache there was a hundred times stronger than I had ever felt before.
“You feel that you have been abandoned here in the abbey, left to languish here, unnoticed and ultimately alone, for all your days. That is the worst, is it not?”
His perceptiveness astonished me. I had not consciously realized how much I missed the feeling of belonging that I had enjoyed when I was younger.
“Yes, Father. Can you forgive me, Father? Can you give me absolution and peace?”
“I can, but only after you have done penance. Meet me at sixth hour in the stables.”
“I will be there, Father. Thank you. Should I say any prayers?”
I could swear that he laughed to himself. “I will teach you to pray this afternoon.”
The air in the stables was cold, but ripe with animal and vegetable smells. Father Jerome was waiting for me. In his hand was a whip of braided leather. He ran his palm over its length as he watched me approach.
“Kneel before me, Sister Ursula.”
Puzzled but strangely pliant, I followed his instructions, my eyes cast down. The straw tickled my nostrils.
“Sister, the heart of sin is the feeling of separation from God. The remedy is total surrender to His will and a return to communion with Him. Do you understand?”
I nodded, though I hardly grasped what he was saying.
“No, you do not, not yet. But you will. Remove your habit.”
Once again, he shocked me. I looked up, into those azure eyes of his. “Surely, Father, this is not proper...”
“We are all born naked. The flesh is glorious, not shameful. Do as I say.”
He spoke with such authority that I could only believe and obey. Unknotting the cords around my waist, I pulled the bulky wool robe over my head, then folded it neatly and placed it beside me. Now I wore only my rough linen shift, my crucifix, and my wimple and veil. I shivered in the February chill. Yet at the same time my cheeks, my earlobes, my fingers and toes, all grew warm, pulsing with some inner heat. My breasts felt heavy; my tightening nipples scraped against the homespun fabric.
Father Jerome paced a circle around me. “How do you feel?” he asked me.
“Embarrassed,” I replied. “And strangely free.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “I will beat you now. Not as punishment for your sins, but to teach you to surrender. When you surrender, your sins will evaporate like dew in the morning sun.”
– From “Communion” by Lisabet Sarai
Sex frequently gets a bad rap from religion. In the Catholic tradition, lust or fornication is a “mortal sin”-- a deed so offensive to the Diety that it carries the threat of eternal damnation. In Islam, lust is considered so spiritually dangerous that women are required to cover themselves to avoid becoming objects of temptation and men are forbidden to be in the company of females who are not wives or family members. Judaism takes a more favorable view of sexual pleasure, but only when it is experienced within marriage and supports the continuation of the race.
Obviously the question of what is sinful could generate volumes of opinion, commentary and debate (and has). I'm more interested in the issue of sex as sin from my perspective of an erotic author. I'm quite sure that legions of fundamentalists in the U.S. wouldn't hesitate to label me as damned—evil, corrupt, disgusting, deserving of the worst punishment. I find this extremely non-intuitive since I feel that sex has brought me closer to the Divine—both sex in my writing and in my life.
As I've shared in other posts, I was what many people would consider extremely active, sexually, in my mid to late twenties. When I reread my journal from that period, it seems as though I was constantly involved in new adventures. I had several lovers concurrently (not literally at the same time, but interleaved) and was in love with them all. I could hardly walk down the street without striking up a new relationship. Flirtations quickly flowered into full-scale affairs. After years of being an ugly duckling, it appeared that I had quite suddenly become a pheromone-broadcasting swan.
One fascinating thing about that heady time, also confirmed by my diary, is that fact that I was simultaneously undergoing a kind of spiritual awakening. I'm not talking about a mystical sense of oneness with God...well, not exactly. But the ecstasy I felt in my lovers' arms, the soul-to-soul connection I experienced, seemed to confirm my relatively recent conclusion that there was some sort of Higher (or maybe Deeper) Power, some reality beyond the material. Serendipity, synchronicity, lucid dreams, mind melding—sex and love (which I couldn't really separate) were my gateway into a world of Spirit. My occasional anguished journal entries questioning the wisdom or even the sanity of my behavior were followed by confident, faith-filled conviction that this path of pleasure I was traveling was a spiritual path as much as a carnal one.
My best stories, I think, the ones that people remember, capture the sense of reverence I felt during those years. I'm drawn to D/s scenarios partly because the perfect, trusting release of one's self to the Master comes so tantalizingly close to being a religious experience. When S.F. Mayfair and I edited Sacred Exchange: Stories of Transcendence and Spirituality in Dominance and Submission, we were trying to express this shared vision of sex (and specifically sex that involves power exchange) as ecstatic, transformational, even mystical.
Spirituality doesn't necessarily sell. Sacred Exchange was a commercial flop, though it contains some of the finest literary erotica I've ever encountered. And a lot of my work—these days, in particular, when I'm writing a lot of romance—sidesteps the deeper questions that concerned me back then in favor of titillation and entertainment. This still hasn't altered my underlying belief that, far from being a sin, sex can be a mode of worship.
There have been Christian and Muslim mystics who understood this—who experienced their intense desire for union with the Divine in a sexual manner. And of course sexuality is prominent in the iconography of many non-Western religions. It seems to be mostly the monotheistic religions that arose in what is now the Middle East that loudly condemn sex as sinful.
I have a theory about this. Lust has power. It can be so extreme, so overwhelming, that it distracts from the contemplation and consciousness of God. To live a spiritual life, to walk a spiritual path, means keeping one's focus on the immaterial world of the Eternal Mind. The pleasures of the flesh can blind one to the reality of Spirit. This is the justification for religious celibacy, and I think it makes some sense.
But the monotheistic religions seem to demonize sex out of a kind of jealousy. “Thou shalt have no other God but Me,” it says in the Old Testament. Sex is viewed as sin because it's a sort of competition for people's attention—and a pretty potent one at that.
I admire people who embrace celibacy as a spiritual discipline. However, this is not the only way to approach the Divine. I'm quite certain of this. Purity in lust, total surrender, can work equally well for some people. I have a suspicion that I'm one of them.
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