Sex Winter 1988

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I remember the precise moment I was jarred by the strange interplay between sexuality and spirituality.

Ten of us fifth-grade boys were having devotions at church camp, sitting on tree stumps, surrounded by the pines of the Colorado Rockies. Our counselor was Bob Frederich, my home church pastor. We were reading about God's covenant with Abraham.

I was puzzled. One key word was completely foreign to me.

"Pastor, what's 'circumcision'?"

He gulped, smiled, and said, "I'm glad it's just us guys here." Then he proceeded to offer a clear, accurate explanation.

We were shocked. Why that part of the anatomy?

My lasting impression, however, was not the shock of the definition's physical details. It was the calm way Pastor Frederich let us know that all of life, including every part of our bodies, is to be a part of our relationship with God.

Years later, as I read the classic devotional literature, I was confronted with another fascinating linkage of sexuality and spirituality.

In the 1500s, pious writers such as Teresa of Avila described in graphic language the "consummation of spiritual nuptials" with Christ.

In her book The Interior Castle, she reports one such vision: "I saw a long spear in his hand and there seemed to be a little flame at the tip of it. This he seemed to plunge into my heart repeatedly, until it reached my very entrails. When he drew it out … it left me utterly afire with a great love for God. The pain was so great that it made me moan over and over, and the sweet delight into which that pain threw me was so intense that one could not want it to stop, or the soul be contented with anything but God."

Reading the mystics, at times it's hard to distinguish sexual and spiritual ecstasy.

Later in church history, the ...

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