Sex, Religion, Politics: What My Elders Taught Me

The divisiveness among us in general, and this election cycle in particular, have inspired me to reconsider what my elders taught me: It's best to avoid three topics for polite and civil public conversations: sex, religion, and politics. I believe their wisdom was based on generations of actually experiencing the harm that such conversations, when had in public, can have on us and our relationships with each other. 

Public conversations on these topics rarely, if ever, change the behaviors, beliefs, or opinions of those who engage in them. If anything, they promote the hardening of positions and harming of relationships. They tend to dehumanize and divide rather than unite us.

I believe your opinions and beliefs concerning sex, religion, and politics are none of my business. Why would I care about them? If I did care, I would speak with you in private about them, not in a public setting. 

My opinions and beliefs concerning sex, religion, and politics are none of your business. Why would you care about them? If you do, speak with me in private about them.

Your opinions of my opinions and beliefs are also none of my business. Again, I do not care. Why should I? 

I do care about you and our relationship. I do care if you threaten or harm me or those I love and care about. Otherwise, I'm not here to live according to your expectations or hopes for me. Neither are you here to live according to mine. 

I also care very much about our freedom to live our lives, with no harm to others, as we so choose. And I care about our freedom to express our beliefs and opinions, whatever they are. Just don't expect me to give a damn about your expressed beliefs and opinions. I might or might not give a damn. 

When it comes to elections, I don't care about what you have to say about who you're for and against, unless I ask you in private. I care about what the politicians have to say to all of us. And I care about their record. 

You have no sway on how I vote, except when your public behavior and words tell me something about the kind of folks your candidate attracts. 

I wonder why candidates do not care more about what their own constituents say and do in public. 

So, I've decided to take to heart the wisdom of my elders. I'm going private with my opinions about sex, religion, and politics. From now on, I consider your opinions on these topics private too. They're none of my business. If you expose them, I'll pretend I didn't see them and move on...

Because I care more about you and our relationship than I do about your opinions and beliefs regarding sex, religion, and politics. 

Our Spirit and Work

Our spirit is that which makes us alive.

Our work is the expression of our spirit's will to do two things:

Continue to live

Create, produce

Most, if not all, living beings work to continue living. Work is the activity we do to sustain our life. It's how our spirit sustains itself. It's what we do for food, water, and protection (clothing and shelter). It's how we take good care of our own spirit and other's spirits too.

When we are able and do not work and depend on others to care for for us, we fail at being responsible for ourselves. We make life harder for others by making them work for us. We thwart our spirit's own drive to sustain itself.

Some who have others do their work for them are called "leaders" and "business owners." Others are called "dependents", "lazy", or worse. There is little difference between the two. Both live off the labor of others.

We each have our own work to do to sustain ourselves and continue our lives. We do well when we do it.

Most, if not all, living beings also create and produce. Flowers create and produce blooms and aromas. Trees create and produce nuts and fruit. Spiders create webs and bees create hives and produce honey. 

We humans also create and produce: clothes, shoes, jewelry for our bodies, body paint, piercings, hair styles, houses, farms, machines, factories, music, dance, wood and stone carvings, paintings, poetry, stories, songs, and abundantly more. 

All living beings also naturally reproduce. 

All creativity, production and reproduction is the fruit of our work driven by our spirit.

Work is a natural activity. It's in-born. Our spirit compels  us to work. It drives us to sustain ourselves. It also drives us to create, produce, and reproduce.

Our work is a spiritual activity.

A Different Perspective on Eternal Life

Many believe that life, more specifically, human life in the form of the soul, is inherently eternal. They believe life always has been and always will be. It's a given in their view.

Truth be told, we do not know that life is inherently eternal. We do not know that life always has been and always will be. 

We also do not know if there was a time when life was not. We do not know if life had a beginning. If it did, we do not know when, where, or how. Much less do we know why there is life rather than not.

Since spirit is life, we do not know if spirit had a beginning or not. We do not know if spirit is inherently eternal. Maybe it is; maybe not.

We do know this: life and therefore spirit is potentially eternal. As long as the living continue to live life goes on. It is at least possible for life to continue eternally.

This means that eternal life is about spiraling forward with sex, conception, birth, nurturing, growth, maturity, sex, conception, birth, nurturing, growth, maturity and so in a potentially eternal spiral. This means that eternal is not a given. It isn't inherent to life. Rather it is depends on the actions of the living- all of the living.

It also means that every one of us plays a role in the potential eternity of life. We either contribute to it or detract from it. We either affirm and promote life or deny and negate it. 

The choice is ours. May we choose wisely. May we choose life. May choose that which makes alive. May we choose spirit.

Knowledge and Belief or Wonder and Curiosity?

The previous posts raise a few of the questions we can ask about the great mysteries of life, death and sex. More important than answering the questions is allowing the questions to have their way with us. 

Let's not pretend to know the answers. Rather than knowledge we have beliefs. Wonder and curiosity are better. 

Wonder and curiosity trump knowledge and belief every time.

The Great Mystery of Sex, Part 3

For many sex involves physical pleasure: touching skin to skin, the firm embrace, the moment of penetration, the ride, orgasm, the physical desire fulfilled.

For others sex involves pain, even death (How does the Black Widow spider become a widow?) Why does physical passion go hand in hand with sex? Why are they linked?

For many sex involves intense emotions- fear, excitement, happiness, anger, guilt, shame, and sadness. Why are sex and intense emotions linked? 

Some recognize that sex is spirit-related. It's about life. It sustains life. Why are sex and the continuation of the living linked?

For a few sex is a devotional practice and the sexual embrace a sacred and magical act. Why? What's behind that?

The abundant pleasure, pain, and power of sex raises so many questions.

Why is life squirming in sex?

The purpose of asking questions is not to get answers. Behind our pretense, we do not know. Our questions are met with silence.

It is okay that our questions link with silence. It's okay that the answers remain secret and hidden.

It's okay to stop making up answers to fill the silent void in our mind and eclipse our wonder.

We can open ourselves to wonder and smile in the presence of the great mystery of sex.

The Great Mystery of Sex, Part 1

What death takes sex gives: life.

Sex and spirit go together. Sex is spirited and sustains spirit. Sex sustains life. Sex affirms life. It celebrates life.

As you read this sex goes on all around.

Right now billions of the living are touching, stroking, sucking, mounting, penetrating, thrusting, clawing, biting, smacking, humping, riding, banging, panting, moaning, groaning, screaming, spewing, gushing, collapsing, gasping for air, relaxing and calming back down.

Members of the opposite sex writhe together. So do members of the same sex. Members of the same species join. So do members of different species. Some squirm alone, others in pairs, still others in groups.

By light of day and darkness of night, the living dance a wet and wild orgy.  No law or moral code constrains it.

Why all the slippery, messy sex? Why is it that sex sustains life rather than something else?

Why is it that sex and spirit, that which makes alive, intermingle?

Why are so many conflicted that they do?

The Great Mystery of Life

Why are we alive rather than not? Is this not the biggest question of all?

Does life have a purpose? If so, what is it? Is it the same for all living beings?

What does it mean to be alive? If something changes, is it alive? Is there anything that doesn't change? Is everything alive?

Did life have a beginning? If so, when? Where? How? 

Are some lives more valuable than others? If so, which ones? How do we decide?

Why is sex such a huge part of life?

Why does life feed on death? 

What determines how long we live?

These are just a few of the questions we can ask about the great mystery of life in which we participate.

Some borrow answers from others- parents, religious authorities, spirituality celebrities, philosophers. 

Others presume they're wise enough to make up their own answers. 

Either way their discomfort with not having an answer is numbed. 

I prefer the discomfort of not having an answer. I call it wonder. 

For me the point of the questions is not to answer them but to let them inspire in me a profound sense of wonder. 

Life, Death, Sex: The Three Great Mysteries

The word "mystery" comes from an ancient Greek word that meant "secret, hidden". It's related to the word "mute" which means silent.

We humans  are limited in our ability to know and understand what we experience as we live. As a result, we feel that much about life is secret. Much about life is hidden from us. 

Things hidden attract us. They feed our curiosity and compel us to ask questions. We ask about life. The answer is silence. Nature is mute about so many things. The gift nature offers us wrapped in muteness is wonder.

So, we live with our questions unanswered. We live with secrets in the presence of a nature that is mute about most of our questions, especially our big ones: 

Why are we alive? 

Why does anything exist rather than nothing? 

Why do the living die rather than keep living? Why do we stop existing? 

Why is sex so intimate with both life and death? 

Why are the living driven to unite in sex for pleasure, pain and reproduction? 

Why sex?

These are the three great mysteries: life, death and sex.

My next three blog posts ask the unanswered questions about these great mysteries that give us the gift of wonder, if we accept it.