Notes from a seminar on Spirituality and Sexuality.
Feel free to reproduce for discussion purposes…

Exercise: Write short prayers about ‘Sex’, and put
‘m’ or ‘f’ (but no name) on them. Summarize them on, say, a whiteboard.
Notice any difference between males and females?

‘Our society offers sex without guilt. The church
has usually offered guilt without sex.’

Sex is a joyful, ecstatic, powerful, celebrated,
awful, confusing sometimes dangerous part of our lives…

Sex can be fun, or deadly. But it can be fun – even
funny. I heard a story at a pastor’s conference in New Zealand
about God and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God took Adam
aside and said ‘Go forth and multiply!’ Adam asked quizzically,
‘What does that mean?’ ‘Well,’ God said, ‘take Eve, this woman
I’ve made for you and…’ ‘OK, I’ll try,’ promised Adam. So they
went behind the bushes – no they didn’t do that because they weren’t
embarrassed about all this yet – and later Adam came back to God
with a question. ‘What’s the problem?’ God asked him. ‘Well,’
said Adam, ‘I want you to explain something to me: what’s a "migraine"?’

If you think that’s a sexist story – not politically
correct – perhaps I can redeem that with another one. A man had
a wife who never stopped talking. So they went to a counselor,
who, when they were seated, turned and asked ‘So what’s the problem?’
And she started talking… Nothing the counselor could do stopped
her: she went on and on… Then at last, the counselor got up,
moved to where she was sitting, and kissed her – on the lips.
And she stopped! The counselor turned to the husband and said,
‘I think we’ve got a solution here. She needs to be kissed!’ The
husband had an ‘aha’ experience and said ‘I wish I’d thought of
that!’ Then after pondering for a moment (still not another word
from his wife), he asked, ‘How often does she need to be kissed?’
‘Oh, I would think at least three times a week,’ replied the counselor.
‘Well,’ the husband said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll bring
her in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday…!’

Or, if it’s safe to be a little more risque, who
was the actress to greeted a male friend with the famous line,
‘Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?’

…..

SPIRITUALITY is all about God enlivening, enlightening
and empowering all things by his Spirit, so that they ultimately
conform to his will which is their eternal wholeness…

My credentials to give a talk on sexuality? I am
a sexual person – as is everyone here – and within a very strong
and committed marriage I confess to being a *practising* sexual
person. I’m also a counselor (13,000 hours) and I suppose every
second person brings up a sexually-related subject to talk about.

Writers and preachers about sex make the subject
either too simple or too complicated. In terms of ethics, the
simple preachers say ‘Be monogamous’; ‘practise celibacy in singleness,
fidelity in marriage.’ Now I basically agree – but it’s sometimes
not as simple as that. And some ‘situation ethicists’ tell us
it doesn’t matter how or with whom we have sex so long as we feel
some mutual ‘love’ for that person…

…..

Let me give a few examples from my recent counseling
about the complexity of sexual issues. (For many people what happens
to or with their sexuality is all about either/or promise and
pain, ecstasy and heartbreak, joyful anticipation and awful confusion.
I wonder how many who commit suicide have a major sexual component
in their history of depression?) I’ll disguise some details to
preserve confidentiality.

# People come and live in our home regularly for
extended counseling, and share our family life – that’s part of
the therapy. Now we’re a hugging family. Everyone hugs everyone
else – discretely/appropriately – some time during every day we’re
there. So the people who stay with us sometimes get hugs too.
But one woman who told us she was a hugger (not everyone is, by
the way, and we respect that) told me after a few days that whenever
I gave her a quick hug did I notice she left the room soon after?
She couldn’t cope; it turned her on sexually; she hadn’t been
hugged by a man for ten years, and was starving for a tactile
expression of affection. By the way, every time I offered to make
her a cup of tea she said ‘yes’. Later I asked, ‘Do you usually
drink that much tea?’ ‘No,’ she answered, ‘but you’re the first
male ever to offer to do something like that for me, so I’ll always
accept!’ (Like the Samaritan woman she’d had several previous
‘husbands’).

# A single woman, in her forties, who actually was
a counselor, came, referred by her pastor. The pastor didn’t know
her problem, and she didn’t want to tell him, but she said she
‘needed to talk to someone about something…’ She sat nervously
on the edge of the chair, briefly sketched some aspects of her
history, and then paused for a long time. Eventually she stammered:
‘Actually my problem’s a terrible one. My church preaches that
I’ll go to hell for doing this… It’s the ‘big M’.’ ‘Oh, I said,
"masturbation"…’ Later I’ll talk a little more about
the course counseling might take in a situation like that.

# A single man told me he really liked a woman at
his work, but every time he was near her he couldn’t open his
mouth to talk to her. ‘I just jam up’, he said…

# A husband talked to me about the sexual problems
he and his wife were having. ‘I need to manually stimulate her
for up to an hour before she really feels anything… What can
we do?’

# A woman with marriage difficulties said: ‘I wish
my husband could communicate genuine affection to me – and tell
our teenage daughter she’s beautiful. Why can’t he do that – just
sometimes?’

# An engaged couple raised the subject that got the
girl most angry: ‘He’s always taking sideways glances at other
girls… It makes me so mad!’ His response: ‘Well, I don’t think
I’m unusual. I read some research the other day that said we males
think a sexual thought every minute-and-a-half when we’re out
in public. And if women dress in a way that says "Look at
me!" what am I supposed to do?’

# Another courting couple said, ‘We’ve had to stop
praying together. Every time we do we both get sexually stimulated,
and it’s downhill fast from there. Why does that happen when we
pray?’

# A homosexual man tells me what he does when he’s
lonely: he goes to a men’s toilet in a suburban park and any night
he’ll find other men hanging around waiting for sex. Then, in
the toilet or behind a tree they’ll mutually masturbate each other.
Often not a word is spoken; and they’ll each go off into the night,
not having really met as persons…’

# And then, the other day, a young professional woman
talked to me about being seduced into a sexually-active lesbian
relationship, even though she herself was heterosexual…

And so I could go on. Sex, for many (most?) people
is a very complex business…

Part 2 follows…