Villagersonline : blogs : derek : Journal: The Heart of a Clown

From: derek
Date: Mon Feb  2 22:45:27 MST 2004
Subject: Journal: The Heart of a Clown

Responses
Karen: Another stage, another point of view (2/3/04)

derek: In Response to Karen (2/5/04)

Karen: Singleness, version VI (2/8/04)

derek: Final Thoughts Before I Step Back (2/9/04)

mike: singleness (2/7/04)
clrclady: Singleness Response (2/7/04)

Boojeee: Abstinence (2/9/04)

Karen: Conversation stopper? (2/12/04)

keibru: whu? (2/13/04)

Responses (sorted by date)
keibru: whu? (2/13/04)
Karen: Conversation stopper? (2/12/04)
mike: singleness (2/7/04)

The Heart of a Clown
Subtitled- My Sexual Feelings Regarding Henri Nouwen
by Derek Hugen, written on 1-28-04 at Coffee Exchange
I have decided that I'm all like pointy and Greek, and that I'm staring at a sheet in front of a cave stupidly thinking in the second dimension. Beyond that, I'm ADD and don't get that whole time/space thing anyway. I'm trying to discipline another dimension into my head without my usual stoic countenance being revealed. Or whatever.
I was reading the book "Clowning in Rome" by Henri Nouwen and my head exploded. Figuratively, of course. Anyway, his writing style and content are what one would refer to as "all bouncy bouncy" if that one is me, which it happens to be. If it were Susan it would perhaps be "all boingy boingy," but it isn't Susan writing, and so he is not boingy boingy. He is bouncy bouncy. In the book, he uses the analogy of a clown to describe ministery. Yeah. So that's really good.
Anyway, Nouwen is talking about solitude as a necessary foundation of community and states:
This explains why solitude affects our sexual needs. Solitude prevents us from relating to our sexuality as a way to prove that we can love and thus liberates it from its compulsive quality. It allows us to experience our sexual feelings as a manifestation of God's unconditional love.
Basically, what he is saying is that when we get too wrapped up in community and put our focus too long on it, we become keenly aware of ourselves and how we affect others. Therefore, we become self-conscious, and eventually, become terrified about not pleasing those around us. When we take moments away from others we can begin to discover our own unique understanding of God's love and bring it back into the community. I can more or less agree with this. (The "less" is because I have a tendency to hide myself from community and avoid sharing anything of my life. Nouwen's point becomes a very nice excuse to disappear for a while, and I should be cautious. Even though my desire is to balance out the pendulum, my initial push must still be in the opposed direction. In all things balance!).
My problem is this: I have no understanding at all of my own sexual feelings as a "manifestation of God's unconditional love." But I managed to work my way from a confused meandering of thought into an impending sense of dread. So, that's progress! My sense of dread comes from the fact that despite the postmodern landscape of my own emotional intellect, I realize that I still believe my body and sexual feelings as innately bad instead of as being an additional way of praising God. I didn't realize I still believed this about myself.
"Back in the day," the Greeks introduced the concept of the separation of the body and soul. Soul equals good. Body equals bad. There is more too it than this, but I'm not sure if it matters. Anyway, I think modern Christianity has problems with believing this, that our bodies are completely wretched, and that our souls are just longing for an eventual freedom. Therefore, they do not have a proper understanding of worship. And now, I should probably change my pronoun. I'll need to go back down to first person. I still believe that my sexuality is bad. Therefore, I am all pointy and Greek.
A lot of this, I am sure, stems from trying to hit my "power down" button during puberty to avoid the ever-maturing female population at school. Not so much to devoutly avoid temptation as much as to avoid the actual women themselves. They can be very intimidating to a frightened an awkward young boy who has enough trouble formulating a comprehensible sentence to anyone, let alone toward someone who also happens to be cute. Therefore, I did not pursue them. Yes, I am a coward. I am still, at 22, a coward, wrestling with the lack of courage to even ask a girl out (which I finally did, then wrestled with her rejection), let alone needing to be able to provide the strength and the, uh, provision . . . that I should. My only outlet for trying to walk into a relationship through my masculinity has been through my fantasy life. Usually, there I am thwarted too. Either by my own self-hatred or by an overly-developed sense of irony, I'm not sure which. So, I am, beyond all else, a coward. And at some point, I guess I would rather be a coward than a man.
Therefore, I pursue the intellectual . . . pursuits. I read more Kierkegaard and Dostoevski than anyone really ought to read. I study philosophy, theology, religion, art, and poetry. I intellectualize the process. I'm not very good at it though. The only reason I convince even myself is because I am too afraid to confront myself about it.
Anyway, all that to say, I have the sexual maturity of a lima bean. Not one of those suave and handsome lima beans, either, but one of the painfully ordinary and slightly ugly ones that you know isn't exactly going to end up dating the head lima bean cheerleader. . . But that is neither here nor there. My point (if in fact I was actually making a point) is that I realized I have closed myself off to the sexual desires of my heart, and have been struggling to step into maturity in that aspect of my life. I recently went back into college and discovered something very strange. There are actually women my age there! They exist! I'm serious! One of them even talked to me! So, now I'm walking out of, "oh yeah, I guess women do exist!" directly into "(Solitude) allows us to experience our sexual feelings as a manifestation of God's unconditional love." It really sucks.
Benji says God is a jerk. But he also says God should technically be referred to as God++. So I am content in the balance. God is a jerk. Yet I know that this is critical to my walk with God, and that I must come to an understanding of my redeemed sexuality as opposed to my "illusionary magic through process of misdirection" approach to sexuality which hasn't served me too well except to get me where I am.
My mantra must no longer be "Look! Over there! It's . . . uh . . . philosophy?" Instead, I need to step out of my fear and self-loathing and step into an understanding of God's love through the same sexuality that I have either ignored, despised, or feared. Which kind of sucks. I don't want to. Look! The Goodyear Blimp! (I run quickly from my journal toward coffee, which makes everything better.)
____________________________________________________________________________________
And Now For Something Semi-Rational . . . .
Alright, where were we? . . . So what does a sexual feeling as a manifestation of God's love look like? I'll venture a few guesses as I step blindly and stupidly into this. My initial answer will of course be, how the heck should I know? I don't even know what it looks like to allow my solitude and sexual feelings even arise in a good and God-pleasing manner. It something I need to grow into, and to provide the answers now would be ludicrous. Therefore, here are the answers. Or at least a few things God has been leading me into lately. I don't know how much they actually relate.
1.
First of all, I think God is showing me how to walk into more fully becoming like Christ. Jesus steps out in love and offers himself to us regardless of our response. He continually offers himself even through the pain of rejection. He is not destroyed by our rejection of him because he knows who he is. He has strength enough to understand his role. He is confident as our lover and as our savior even as we nail him to a cross. So, am I able to offer myself without letting another persons response have control over me? Am I confident enough within my purpose and my strength to walk into my role as a lover?
2.
Secondly, I'm beginning to understand marriage as an analogy. Not only as an analogy, though, because there is also sex. But still. Thinking about the possible roles of marriage. Husband equals Jesus. Wife equals Holy Spirit. And God is sort of like, um, God I guess. Anyway, the best understanding we have of the relationship between the Trinity is carried out in marriage. My dad said at my friend Amber's wedding that true love doesn't exist at a wedding. True love is when you are walking hand-in-hand sixty years from now, old and gray, but able to know each others every thought (which may be quite a scary concept for my future bride). To truly understand God's love for us, we must walk into marriage. To truly understand the concept of oneness, we must walk into marriage. I think I told Keith once that I didn't think I could really know anything about myself and my sin unless I was married. He smiled and nodded profusely. I wonder how deep the power of marriage really is.
3.
In the end, I think I am just left in the mystery. God keeps bringing me to a place of confusion with Him. Anything I have believed about him, he has uprooted. I've been reading Matthew and have been scared to death of it. I've been raised in the Christian Reformed Church, gone to Christian schools all of my life (except for the last half-semester of my senior year, but that is for my next blog). I've helped plant two churches, and have even been in leadership in the church. Yet I have no idea who Jesus is. Every time I read the gospels I am shocked at him. I read them over and over, and everything he says surprises and confuses me. His parables are either deep wells or nothing at all. I don't know. I can't decipher them. Maybe its an ADD thing, I don't know. I just can't understand anything of what Christianity was always supposed to mean. All I can say is that God is good. I believe in Him. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Who they are, I don't have any idea. What that means, I have no clue. What they offer, however, has been healing, forgiveness, and love which has slowly overwhelmed my life. Beyond that, I will put this new idea of sexuality in the same place that all my other ideas have gone: God is confusing and big, but He is really good. He finds me sitting here like a wounded dog trapped in by own pain, and he works to heal me even as I bite moronically at his hands. So, basically, what I'm saying is that I'm a clown. I'm stupid and clumsy and I keep messing up, but I'll sit in the confusion and let everyone see my faults, and perhaps I'll entertain some of you by showing you yourself in me. Worth a shot, anyway. It is my own unique understanding of God's love built through solitude that I am bringing back to my community. May God have mercy on your souls. And now for the circus music. . .

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	From: Karen Date: Tue Feb 3 14:01:53 MST 2004 Subject: Another stage, another point of view To quote from Derek...(I hope he doesn't mind)..."To truly understand God's love for us, we must walk into marriage. To truly understand the concept of oneness, we must walk into marriage. I think I told Keith once that I didn't think I could really know anything about myself and my sin unless I was married. He smiled and nodded profusely. I wonder how deep the power of marriage really is." Without contradicting the truth of this statement, I would also have to say, to truly understand God's love for us, we must walk into singleness. To truly understand the concept of oneness, we must walk into singleness (rather than try to hide in it, or attempt to hide from it). I know God would have used any circumstance in my life to teach me what I needed to know, but I've learned a heck of a lot about myself (my sin but also my courage and my faith, too) from being still unmarried in my thirties. I wonder how deep the power of singleness really is?? Edit this response Write a response Email the author From: derek Date: Wed Feb 4 23:42:10 MST 2004 Subject: In Response to Karen In Response to Karen by Derek Hugen, 2-4-04 Uggh. How is it that my response to you is almost longer than my initial posting about this? It isn't even like you are really contradicting me that I would have to defend myself. Actually, you are adding on to something I probably either didn't state or else had stated quite poorly. Anyway, yes, I very much agree with your statement. Actually, later on his book, Nouwen talks about celibacy, I dare to say that celibacy is, first of all, a witness to all those who are married. I wonder if we have explored enough the very important relationship between marriage and celibacy. You also said, To truly understand the concept of oneness, we must walk into singleness (rather than try to hide in it, or attempt to hide from it). First of all, I'm going to put singleness out there as a form of celibacy. It's not a horrible leap aside from the duration of practice. I much prefer the thought of a celibate life to the "abstinent" life. Celibacy is a concept that entails much more than simply "abstaining" until the right time for sex. So, I would really like to take a look at these statements. Of course, they are a great argument against the "graduation" from the singles group at church and proceeding into the young couples group (I think that's what it is, I never got that far though), even though I know you are quite fond of the practice of splitting up friendships based on life stage (and please note that this statement is dripping with ironic tension). It also raises the bar for those who are single from simply "killing time" until marriage (when all life begins), to having to be single "well" as a witness to those around us, especially to those who are married. I think it goes back to the previous quote of our sexual desires being a "manifestation of God's unconditional love." As I said before, I am still uncomfortable with these two things being so closely intertwined, but I am trying to walk into it. Nouwen talks about the relationship between celibacy and marriage. I wonder at the absence of being single "well" and the stereotypes regarding the single life. Freedom. A different sexual partner every night. The ability to sit in front of the Playstation 2 all night eating Cheetos and drinking Pepsi (although this may not be as potent a draw for women, it is actually the dream life of many men). This starts to trivialize the institution of marriage as well. Why be sanctified, pure, and disciplined in marriage when those around you who are single have no responsibilities at all? Even within the church, I can just go out for coffee after church and hang out with my friends, whereas Russ must get a special dispensation from Emily to do such a thing. Being married comes with slightly narrowed options and the inability to be "carefree." It takes a lot of discipline to walk into marriage successfully, as opposed to being single, which is sort of just there. Of course, all of this works the other way as well. There is no point in being celibate, as opposed to a carefree bachelor, if the marriage bed has been corrupted and is meaningless. But there is nothing I can do about marriage from my end, other than to learn to respect it and see God in it. I can, however, choose to walk into singleness with true purity and honor, separating myself for God in this period of my life. I think part of my struggle in having never pursued dating is that I have a skewed perspective of what dating and marriage look like. At some point it becomes an over-idealized Camelot to my mind, and singleness starts to look trivial in comparison. Like reading a Home and Garden magazine while you are living in a cardboard box in an alleyway. So what does it look like for singleness to receive a place of honor in our hearts? How do we be single well and invite others into that understanding? Well, first of all, we must cut back on the Cheetos and the Playstation 2, I suppose. The good news is that I'm on Atkins, and that my old Playstation broke a few months ago, and I can't afford the Playstation 2. So, the absence of temptation is kind of like a victory over sin, except without the victory over sin. Beyond that, I guess God (as well as Sheri, my counselor) has told me to start praying for the single women in our community. Take the picture that men should become the spiritual head of their household and should begin to fight in prayer for their wives and children. Then if celibacy is marriage to God, we begin to understand our own family in a much broader view. I need to begin to pray for those in my family who do not necessarily have someone who prays for them regularly. It has been difficult to walk into this every day, mainly because it is hard for me to dedicate a daily block of time to do it in. I have, however, been trying to dedicate my Sundays to God and to prayer, especially for the community. I'm trying to show up early for church to pray for the service and for the people who will come to it. Last week I went hiking for several hours, spending time praying, meditating, and contemplating rocks (which I know I said I would never do, but there happened to be a devastating shortage of napkins in the vicinity (see my archived poetry for this reference)). Anyway, that is one thing I've been trying to do that has little to do with Cheetos or with "killing time" until marriage. So what does it look like to walk into singleness or into a "brief stint with celibacy" as a witness to Christ's love for those around us? How do we be single well? What does that look like? With a contemplative gaze I hold out my imaginary microphone. . . "Karen, your thoughts?" "Anyone else care to comment?" Then what is the true power of singleness and of marriage? Edit this response Write a response Email the author From: Karen Date: Sun Feb 8 01:17:32 MST 2004 Subject: Singleness, version VI I like your distinctions between singleness, celibacy, abstinence. When I use the term "single" to describe myself, of course I mean that in a very broad way, as opposed to our cultural, not-legally-married-or-living-with-someone idea. So I guess you're suggesting the use of "celibate" as a way of referring to purposeful, God-focused singleness, as opposed to a "default" condition? I think that so-called freedom of singleness is a stereotype, largely an illusion. Someone living that stereotypical shallow, unattached, self-centered single life (think Playboy's Hugh Heffner, for an irritating extreme) is not truly free, because they are bound by the desires of the moment, the impulse. "Slaves to sin," as Paul called it. I believe that God created us for responsibilities, commitment to one another, that beautiful, creative oneness that Cheryl alluded to. If you're living for self, then you may very well be enjoying the salty air on the open seas, but at the expense of being ever led to a destination. But I have seen people make a long-life pattern of living for self within a marriage, too. The difference of course is that they don't just wreck their own ships, but they may very well capsize their partners', too. Conversely, when I'm in the middle of the Pacific, it's a good thing to develop my sea legs and fight the urge to drop anchor when the water's a mile deep just because I've been "out here" long enough, I could have sailed to the end of the earth by now... Like any married person at the Village, I have the freedom to make choices, choices that honor myself and the way God has made me, or not. Choices that honor my relationships with God and with others, or not. Choices that value relationships and creativity over ephemeral "stuff," or not. Choices that value long term values over short term goodies, or not. Choices that make sense to the Holy Spirit, but not necessarily to anyone around me, even my fellow Christ-followers. Sometimes I must also choose to be misunderstood. ANYONE'S choices are limited; it's all a matter of perspective, really. I'd much rather that my default be having someone I needed to go home to, rather than the default be going to a coffeehouse full of strangers and acquaintances that I have to really work at getting to know. Bottom line: are the choices you have, choices that you value having? Like in Sheryl Crow's pop song: "I don't have digital, I don't have diddly squat!...It's not having what you want; it's wanting what you've got." Can you find it in yourself to value the choices you are offered? If not, can you pray without ceasing for God to change your heart so that you don't "do the ostrich thing" or otherwise shrink back into bitterness? My "freedom" to have coffee with others may also entail a increased responsibility to be more available to people and opportunities. But I don't want my availability and opportunities to be defined in stereotypical ways. I want to be seen for myself, not for being a member of a life stage club. Edit this response Write a response Email the author From: derek Date: Mon Feb 9 00:44:21 MST 2004 Subject: Final Thoughts Before I Step Back Two can play at this game, Karen. Coming home from church I was listening to Ani Difranco. She had a lyric that was something to the affect of "And what about all those letters that I wrote to myself I never sent because I didn't have the address." I think God has been leading me into three places with regard to my sexual desires and singleness. I'll try, like my dad, to be concise. (Insert bored chuckle here). First, here are the things we came up with at dinner that we don't think have worked well for various reasons: 1. Video Games. 2. Cheetos 3. Haagen-Daas. 4. Dancing. 5. Closing off all emotion. 6. Intellectualizing the process. 7. Sleeping. These things can, perhaps, stave off our desires for a time. But I'm not sure that they are very healthy. Here are three new things I have been trying to step into. 1. Knowing myself- I think this is kinda what Ani Difranco is talking about in her song. It is also what most of you are talking about. What address do we send our letter to if we are writing ourselves? Often, I think we get into relationships because we are too afraid to be alone. We have no concept of who we are outside of relationship. But it is easier to understand my longings when I begin to know who I am. For instance, who I am is very much insane. I've been coming to grips with this. I don't think the way other people do. I am, at my roots, creative in a way where I do not feel valued by the Church. Therefore, I go out of my way to be meaningful and wise in everything I do. It is the only way other people find me valuable. Yet, I am horribly abstract and sometimes without point. I feel worthless because of this. I can't contribute "nice" poetry or art. It will always be weird and outside of the norms. On the homepage on the website, Sue asks the question, what do we want? I want to find value in who I am because I have never truly felt that before. I realize I have tried to "take my question to the woman" as Eldridge says in Wild at Heart. I always hoped to find a woman who truly valued me as I am. So, knowing myself consists in finding worth and value in God instead of a white knight on a stead who makes everything better (or whatever the masculine equivalent of that would be. Not a princess in a tower because that requires me stepping out in my shame. I want to be rescued too. It's more convenient for my sin pattern.). So, if I understand relationship with God as the thing I am missing, I am left with less of a demand for fantasy or the need for a woman who can truly understand me. A woman cannot tell me who I am. Taken into relationship, this means I will no longer make an unfair and pointless demand on my future wife. That's a good thing. 2. Knowing my affect on others. Our community has single people who wrestle with being single. Who knew? Two things were really awesome for me tonight. First, someone brought up this subject, and we began to talk. Everybody from the other side of the table stopped their conversation and started wandering slowly over to us to listen. Apparently, It isn't just me who wonders about these things. A blind leap of faith (being spurred by Benji) in posting my shame and fear about this area of life has brought us into discussion over it. I am not alone in my frustration. Other people exist. Second, during dinner, Karen thanked me for my prayer for her and told me about its affect on her. Really, after that, all I could do was to finish my salad (sorry, Karen). I was just blown away that my actions had affected her and that she found strength in my actions. I have no idea how to react to that. Is the correct response "You're welcome?" Knowing that my interaction with sexuality and singleness has an affect my community is an awesome thing. It means that walking into my strength has meaning outside of my own person moral health. Just talking through these things in community has helped me to understand where I am and that I am not simply insane and screwed up without hope. 3. Silence and meditation with God. This goes back to point #1 as well. I am controlled by video games, television and radio. Over dinner we discussed the possibility that these things are "cowardly relationships." I need relationship to exist and with these forms I run no risk of being exposed. When am I ever truly alone and without distraction? My hikes and my prayer times are where I am currently trying to walk into this. Just being alone in those moments. I am fairly contemplative by nature, yet I still am scared to death of silence. Usually when I am in my room, I am playing a video game, listening to my stereo and watching television all at once. I need distractions. It's an ADD thing. I am easily distracted no matter what the situation, so I plan out my distractions well. I will bounce from video game over to TV over to radio and back in random sequences. Yet there is no silence in my life, only constant movement. Taking time away for prayer, meditation, and silence before God helps me to redefine myself as his child. It forces me away from false and cowardly relationships into true communion with God and knowledge of my identity in him. Therefore, I can separate myself from the rest of the world and understand myself outside of the constant desire for relationship. These are the basics of my thoughts, with a few examples of how it plays out in my life. I'm not going any longer than this (though believe me, I could) because I've already got about seven pages of my own thoughts already, and I'm overpowering the discussion and don't want to. So, what are everyone else's experiences with these things? How does it play out in practice? What are other ways to understand sexual desires and singleness in a healthy manner? Tell me your own stories. Edit this response Write a response Email the author
	From: mike Date: Fri Feb 6 20:16:24 MST 2004 Subject: singleness I have just finished reading the Autobiography of General of the Army Omar Bradley. It is an impressive life he led. He was a christian, and his life's story bears that out. From growing up in poverty to retiring General of the Army, (5 stars, only a handful of men in the history of the Army have ever been honered with that fifth star)he was respected by friends and enemies alike as a man of integrity. He had no desire to lead men in battle. He came to hate war and until the day he died he carried the guilt of sending young men into battle. In effect, he was ordering men in thier late teens and early twenties to die. He did his job, and lived his life in a way that honored God. It is easy to see that reading his life story. It was not so easy for the one living it to see. Corrie Ten Boom was a believer that saw nothing special about herself. She simply lived her life, and did the best she could, desiring to honor God. Her life included being a prisoner in a NAZI concentration camp for the "crime" of hiding Jews. My point is....Perhaps I have a different perspective because I am 44, and never married. I realize how short life is, how short our lives really are. I would like to marry, but if I do not, that is alright. What matters to me is Serving God. I know Karen and Derek feel the same way about living for the Lord. I guess What I am trying to say is, I do not know what tomorrow, or next week, or next year holds. I am content to pray I make good choices, and let the Lord guide those decisions. Edit this response Write a response Email the author
	From: clrclady Date: Sat Feb 7 10:46:07 MST 2004 Subject: Singleness Response I am hesitant to respond to this singleness discussion because I don't know if I know how to be single well. However, I am learning a great deal. I believe singleness is about being alive with all the longings and desires of your heart awake while learning to have them filled by God and the community around you. Being dead to the longings and desires, is not being single well. I think there is much to learn while being single. Although, God will probably teach me much if it is in His plan to marry, He has done amazing things to develop me in my singleness. There is another type of oneness that the Bible talks about other than the oneness of marriage. It is the oneness of the body. Ephesians 4 talks about the fact that we are one body and have one spirit as believes. To be honest, open, trusting, valnerable and weak with each other to the point that I can say that I am one with them can be a scary, challenging, growth experience in and of itself. I think this is what the call is to everyone, whether married or single. I believe the need is to live life, alive and to its fullness while being single without the constent thought that life does not start until one is married. Life is now!!! Life begins where each person is and God is there molding and teaching along the way. However, if you hide your head in the ground like a good ostrich and feel nothing and share nothing, you are not living well whether single or married. I know this from experience on the single part. I have lived with my head tucked safely away for years, trying not to feel or acknowledge anything. It is truly death, although it feels much safer then life most of the time. So, the conclusion to all this rambling. To live well single is to cherish the relationships that you have around you and to pour into other's lives as they pour into you, feeling the fear, the pain, and the joy that it all brings. Edit this response Write a response From: Boojeee Date: Mon Feb 9 07:18:00 MST 2004 Subject: Abstinence I dare to enter this discussion on singleness and abstinence, though I married at 21. Not all of us Villagers were given the gift of abstinence in our pre-puberty experience. I among others were sexually abused as children and this played itself out into my older years in the form of what felt like uncontrollable promiscuous behavior and other self-destructive paths, followed by a time of �spiritualized� shutting down of all sexual desire [you know, after I �came to Jesus�]. Confusingly, then when I was married and the opportunity for making love presented itself, I was still shut down and wounded and struggled in this area of married bliss� I have greatly appreciated my husband�s offerings of abstinence within the confines of marriage during times when I needed that respite for healing. So I guess I offer this to broaden the value of abstinence as a discipline. To my mind, abstinence is the choice to not have sex when the opportunity to make love is unavailable. The discipline requires that we offer to God the focal person of our sexual desire if there is one, confess any sinful parts that may be present in that desire, and acknowledge any temptations that are presenting themselves in the midst of our desire. Abstinence is a great value to those who practice it because sexual endeavors when making love is not possible is damaging to us, married or not. Learning to abstain before God without shutting down, disengaging from people, or avoiding our own inner struggle seems to me to be what Nouwen was trying to get at in the quote from Derek�s blog: �This explains why solitude affects our sexual needs. Solitude prevents us from relating to our sexuality as a way to prove that we can love and thus liberates it from its compulsive quality. It allows us to experience our sexual feelings as a manifestation of God's unconditional love.� When we are called to abstinence, we in some way are connected to what God experiences when he loves us and we are unavailable to him. When our sexual desires have a person attached to them, we have the opportunity to love that person without the fulfillment of our perceived need. In marriage, this applies when our desires are rightly focused on our spouse and when the desire for someone else emerges. I don�t know what it means when the sexual desires are more generalized frustrations� Anyways, there are my two bits or so� Edit this response Write a response Email the author
	From: Karen Date: Thu Feb 12 15:34:09 MST 2004 Subject: Conversation stopper? Julie playfully suggested last night that no one wanted to write anything after she posted her blog. I think everyone's distracted by the "what-movie-are-you" thread, which seems a lot more fun :-) I'm not into airing the whole airing-my-singleness-laundry-on-the-Internet thing. Without getting too painfully specific, my struggles could be lumped into several categories: 1) the pain of overt rejection and "rejection lite" (being overlooked, ignored, and/or misconstrued)...not just by guys, but by those who were uncomfortable with someone not in the "couples club" 2) the death that has come, gone, and come again from not feeling free to grieve these things or to allow hopes to be raised 3) the pain of grieving dreams gone by, i.e., having a few (or any) kids in my thirties like "normal" Christian women 4) a path of ambivalent acceptance of my unique destiny in life (or do I mean "density"??) 5) In the words of Kurt Cobain, "A mosquito, my libido." In surviving the above, let's just say Cheetos have had nothing to do with my ability to "pick up my cross and follow him." Edit this response Write a response Email the author From: keibru Date: Fri Feb 13 14:23:01 MST 2004 Subject: whu? i don't get this cheetos fettish. that's not all i don't get. but i'm apparently some kind of hitler according to that pop-psych questionnaire so i guess i shouldn't be EXPECTED to understand much more than threat assessment and worst-case scenarios anyway. like i have this undertow-of-a-suspicion (hey, call it paranoia if you want) that all this talk about sex is gonna end up causing a '60's style micro-revolution and i'll be forced to turn unexpectedly against my allies in justified vengeance. i may be wrong. kb Edit this response Write a response

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