[Inspired by conversations on some of the blogs I read about heterosexuality, homosexuality, and the Christian tradition.]

In addition to so much else, bodies are sexual things.  At least for most of us, for a majority of our lives.  And there is something about our sexualness that’s close to our core, I think, something that makes sexual wounds run deep.  Deeper than bodies, even.  To be sexualized before we’re ready, or by the wrong people, to be molested or raped, to have unfulfilled longing, to have sexual parts that don’t look or work like we’d wish, to be thought undesirable by those we want desiring us, to be called, because of our desires, less than God’s ideal, or willfully depraved:  these are wounds that hit our core.  They hit the soft, impressionable places that tell us fundamental things about ourselves, the places where marks don’t quickly fade, where words, or even looks on people’s faces, are branding irons, and the flanks of our identities, our self-appraisals, unhelpably exposed.

And shame, in one form or another, is what I think the brands all say.  And shame is such an awful, awful thing, because it keeps us hiding, and therefore lonely—hiding sometimes literally, our body or our parts, hiding sometimes figuratively, our self-thoughts, our memories, expressions of our sexual beingness.  It keeps our wounds private.  It keeps us silent when we need to talk and urges us to silence those who do.  “Don’t bring that up,” we say.  It’s too hard to think about.  Too hard to see or deal with each other’s wounds, let alone our own.

I’m not a Christian right now in the ways many might define it, but my roots are there, and so is a lot of education, and it seems like the Christian Scriptures have a lot to say about related things.  In broad strokes, the Bible is a story of opening, I think.  A story of people opening, over time, and not in any straight or orderly fashion, to fuller understandings of love.  Or Love, rather.  And it’s Love that can unbrand our shame, I think.  It’s Love that can soften that marked up place inside of us, and impress it gently, tenderly, with something new.

I want to talk about this opening. 

I have a busy next few days, but when I get a chance to think after that, I want to put more words about this here.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 9:59 am and is filed under Bodies, Healing, Psychology, Religion/Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.