Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out; therefore the maidens love you. Draw me after you, let us make haste. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you. (Song of Songs 1:2-4)
Psalm 38:9 “O Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you.”
Grace: To deepen our sense of a God-given sexuality that draws us into communion with all of creation.
Use the grace and the suggested scripture above to create your own prayer, or use CLC Opening Prayer.
Note: Ask for a volunteer to lead opening and closing prayers for the next meeting.
What were some of your high and low points of the week?
Materials Needed: CLC supply box (CLC journal booklets, papers, pens, etc.).
Begin, “When was a time this week when you felt very aware of your body?” Then, invite three different readers to read the below writings on sexuality. Encourage them to read slowly in order to allow all the parts to be grasped by the group.
From Ronald Rolheiser’s Holy Longing, 3-11
It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would see, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction. Put more simply, there is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul…
Spirituality concerns what we do with desire. It takes its roots in the Eros inside of us and it is all about how we shape and discipline that Eros… to offer a striking example of how spirituality is about how one handles his or her Eros, let us compare the lives of three famous women: Mother Teresa, Janis Joplin, and Princess Diana.
We begin with Mother Teresa. Few of us would, I suspect, consider Mother Teresa an erotic woman. We think of her rather as a spiritual woman… Yet she was erotic because she was a dynamo of energy… She was a human bulldozer, an erotically driven woman. She was, however, a very disciplined woman, dedicated to God and the poor.
Everyone considered her a saint… A saint is someone who can, precisely, channel powerful eros in a creative, life-giving way…Nobody disputes that Mother Teresa did just that, willed the one thing – God and the poor. She had a powerful energy, but it was a very disciplined one. Her fiery eros was poured out for God and the poor. That – total dedication to everything to God and poor – was her signature, her spirituality. It made her what she was.
Looking at Janis Joplin, the rock start who died from an overdose of life at age twenty-seven, few would consider her a very spiritual woman. Yet, she was one. People think of her as the opposite of Mother Teresa, erotic, but not spiritual. Yet Janis Joplin was not so different from Mother Teresa, at least not in the raw makeup and character. She was also an exceptional woman, a person of fiery Eros, a great lover, a person with a rare energy. Unlike Mother Teresa, however, Janis Joplin could not will the one thing. She willed many things. Her great energy went out in all directions and eventually created an excess and a tiredness that led to an early death. But those activities – a total giving over to creativity, performance, drugs, booze, sex, coupled with the neglect of normal rest – were her spirituality. It was her signature. It was how she channeled her Eros…
Most of us, I suspect, are a bit like Princess Diana – half-Mother Teresa, half Janis Joplin… Princess Diana is held up as a person who is both, erotic and spiritual. That is rare, given how spirituality is commonly understood. Usually we see a person as one or the other, but not as both, erotic and spiritual… Spirituality is about how we channel our Eros. In Princess Diana’s attempts to do this, we see something most of us can identify with, a tremendous complexity, a painful struggle for choice and commitment, and an oh-so-human combination of sins and virtues. Spirituality is what we do with the spirit that is within us. So, for Princess Diana, her spirituality was both the commitment to the poor and the Mediterranean vacations… Hers, we can see, was a mixed road… she chose some things that left her more integrated in body and soul and others which tore at her body and soul. Such is spirituality. It is about integration and disintegration, about making the choices that Princess Diana had to make and living with what that does to us.”
Discussion
Invite them in silence to reflect on the following questions in light of their own understanding of sexuality and then discuss the following.
What stands out from the reading?
What resonates with you in your own experience of sexuality?
What challenges you?
Any new ideas or themes present?
Where does God seem to be emerging?
Invite members to write on a larger piece of poster paper at the center of the circle. Invite them to write down one or more of the following:
Words, phrases, or images that remain with them after their reflection
Emerging questions about sexuality
Additional themes or images that delineate sexuality for them
Discussion
Invite the group to look upon the group’s compilation. The conversation may be elicited in various ways:
Ask members to identify what they see. What is being spoken about sexuality?
If there are commonalities, it may be helpful to highlight these as the beginning of the conversation and ask members why they chose to articulate these themes
Go around the group and have members describe what they wrote or drew and what moved them to do so.
Ask, “How might a spiritually rooted understanding of sexuality re-shape a purely moralistic view?”
Suggested questions to deepen awareness of inner movements and further conversation
Where have you seen God active in or revealed through relationships in your life?
Some relationships help us grow closer to God while others pull us away from God. Are there any relationships or aspects of your relationship that pull you away from God?
Are there other relationships missing in your life? Where might you be called to be more expansive in your circle of relationships?
How do we share or apply our CLC values to other relationship in our lives?
Action:
Pray with your body (e.g. Yoga, Tai Chi, Labyrinth, Breathing, etc.)
Share with your prayer partner
Announcements:
Topic for next meeting and upcoming CLC events
If members want to learn more about Spirituality and Sexuality, refer them to the Caminos Resource
Pray for each other or use the CLC Closing Prayer.