At the risk of getting all spiritual...

...I was proud of my church this weekend. The Cincy Vineyard took an entire celebration to invite people to be healed from any destruction in their lives relating to sex. That is to say, sexual abuse, sexual infidelity, lack of marital sex, fear of sex, abortion, homosexuality and pain related to the persecution of homosexuals, sexual addiction, pornographic addiction, etc. If you'd like to see it, check out vccproductions.com, and click on this weekend's date.

Sexuality is a tricky thing. Forgive the strange request...but try this: take your hand and put it flat on the computer desk in front of you. It's OK, lift the mousepad out of the way and put your dominant hand in the dustless rounded rectangle it leaves behind. Now, lift only your index finger. Put it back down. Now, while your mom's not looking, lift only your middle finger. Put it down, and try your thumb...then your pinky. Now...with all fingers down flat against the desk, lift your ring finger as high as you can. Weird, huh? It's not going to move much...I don't know why, in all of His infinite silliness, God chose to link that one to your hand more securely than the others...I don't know why He decided these metacarpals should be the ones most firmly connected to the carpals, but, man, they are. For whatever reason, and I'm not sure that I know what that reason is, it seems like God inexorably linked our sexuality to our souls in a similar way. Sex moves your soul, for better or for worse, in a way that your dreams do not...that your music, no matter how powerful it may be, does not...in a way that all of your possessions and your favorite wishes do not. Sex can elate you, it can drive you, it can ruin you. Sexual feelings prompt frenzy, murder, love, creativity, spite, shame, physical energy, superhuman endurance, art of all kinds; all the things that make being human so freaking human. At times, I wonder if it is our primary motivator...above religion, politics and money. All I know is that I've seen evidence of incredible sexual content in the greatest religious art I studied in college, and that even the most transcendental of Eastern religions we studied was ripe with human sexuality. It shows up in architecture, in academic scholarship, in the shape of our shampoo bottles, in the greatest books ever written, and in the papers every morning. Sex moves us, and I think it moves us because it's built to move us. Our souls are designed to be heavily shaped by sex, I think, and to shape sex in return.

That's where the problem comes. We tell each other that, with certain exceptions of age and mental capacity, it is our basic right to have sexual interaction whenever and however, as long as it is between consenting humans and does not adversely impact non-consentors nearby. (And, as far as government intervention is concerned, I agree). But, when you come down to it, your soul comes into play. I'm not talking about eternal damnation or the "condition of your soul" as Brother Jed at the corner of Patterson and Spring in Oxford might concern himself with...but rather, the health and well being of your very essence. If, indeed, there is a Sculptor who carved each of us out with a certain design, and if, indeed He designed our sexuality to be an intensely powerful means of uniting souls, then it behooves us to put one simple parameter on our sexuality: are we doing with it what the Sculptor designed it to do?

I can't answer that for others very well...I don't think I understand it well enough yet. But I know it well enough for myself. I know when I'm approaching my own sexuality wrong...it hurts, and it grinds menacingly at my soul like a clutch dropped on over-reved engine. Even better, I know when I'm doing it right...I know because nothing makes me feel more connected to Stacy. Nothing feels more right and nothing feels more powerful. That uniting of souls feels like everything I've ever loved in one perfect moment..sounds idyllic and silly, I guess...but I think there's something to the concept that enlightenment is acheived fleetingly at the moment of sexual climax...at least, when it's achieved by the design of the Sculptor.

I hope some folks were able to get some healing at VCC this weekend. I really hope so, in fact. I've been thinking about it for four days now...praying that those souls that still ache profoundly from some sexual wound would begin to feel relief. This stuff matters too much. It's too good; too powerful to be wrong for a lifetime.

Peace,
Justin