Sexuality and Spirituality – OK this is the deal

 

The situation seems to be like this. Imagine that we are on a road and are starving hungry and tired. We know that the road leads to a paradise where we can eat and rest for ever in peace. As a child I remember having visited a part of this paradise, but the memory is vague and it was a long time ago. I wonder even whether this memory is just a dream, but I know that many speak of this paradise in all tongues and in all ways, although like hearing the many versions of an urban myth this itself can cause doubt. As we walk we come to a road side burger bar and motel. The issue for our road weary self is do we stop and rest here or do we continue over the mountains toward what is incomparably better.

An obvious answer is that we stop and rest. This is a good idea but it turns out that we have stopped and rested so many times that we haven’t made much progress. Each time we stop and rest we risk forgetting the goal all together.

This is what I have realised about my friends. They speak of sexuality and marriage as they do because they really don’t know of anything else. The burger bar and motel really is the best lot in Life. Maybe there is a squabble for the best rooms in the Motel, or to get the money to buy the biggest burger – but beyond this they have forgotten that there is anything else in Life.

Heaven we say in scorn. This is the dream of those who have lost in Life and turn their attention instead to hopes of what comes after life. God we say in scorn, what proof is there – we have science now which can provide the answers for everything. Tomorrow we say in scorn, who cares about tomorrow we have today. And, so we feast on burgers and sleep at the Motel and put off ideas that there could be anything better.

Well I know for sure that this doesn’t add up. I don’t know about God or Heaven (save that one experience a quarter century ago) but I have always known that “this” whatever that is that we are supposed to be satisfied with doesn’t add up.

So the choice is maybe more realistically between so I setting for rest time in the world of senses and finite things, or do I have the strength and desire to keep pushing along the road? One must realise that maybe I can’t complete the journey this life and it would actually be counter productive to exhaust myself on the road. A rest and continue next life (as a friend has done) is actually the wiser route. At the same time however how can we be happy with the minute confines of a worldly life, and be satisfied with its miniscule pleasures when we know that the infinite awaits all of us just over the mountains?