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Quotes provided by Marg Schrader

in response to articles on spirituality and sexuality



God's passion created ours. Our deep desiring is a relentless returning to that place where all things are one. If we are afraid of our sexuality we are afraid of God.

 

God is sick with love, is burning with desire for us. Sin is drying up.

Hildegaard of Bingen

 

I was asked in church to choose between my sexuality and my spirituality. I was taught to pretend I am not a sexual being…..

a lesbian Christian

 

I view these two powers, my sexuality and spirituality, as dancers. Initially both were wallflowers afraid to dance. My spirituality was immobilised by proscriptions and fixed answers. My sexuality was hiding in a closet ashamed of itself.  When my sexuality began to emerge, my spirituality froze in fear, then nearly ran out of the room.  But then it noticed other souls dancing gracefully and realised it was missing their grace. My spirituality wondered if the lack of grace had something to do with the rejection of the stranger on the other side of the room, my sexuality. Timidly one invited the other to dance. At first they never looked at each other, out of embarrassment, shyness, perhaps even contempt. They were lousy dancers. Then they cast furtive glances toward each other sometimes angry or resentful, sometimes flirtatious and seductive. Each took turns attempting to lead and control the dance, while the other felt crowded and claustrophobic and backed away. Finally they found times when the dance led them, and for brief moments they became perfect dancers, full of grace, true to each other. They danced together as my soul.

Chris Glaser in Coming out to God, 1991

 

So much of our sacred sexual story, individually and as a species, has been driven underground. Shame and guilt abound: the journey to wholeness will require a great deal of gentle dialogue, tender care and deep healing.

Diarmuid O'Murchu in Reclaiming Spirituality

 

Mystics use sexual language not because they are repressing their natural impulses but because it is the closest they can get to the experience in words. Knowing God is orgasmic, which breathes new life in to the “Big Bang” theory.

Mike Riddell in On Courting Divine Pleasure. Article in Third Way, 1997

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