I Know The Way You Can Get
by Hafiz
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into The innocent
And into one's self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
From: I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
100 men were paid to participate in a survey on sexual behavior. All the men were assembled in the large room. The professor stood at the front. He announced that the first set of questions had to do with frequency of sex. He said to the men:
Do any of you have sex more than once a day? A couple of hands went up. How about once a day? A few young men raised their hand proudly. How about 3-6 times per week? Several more responded. (gesture each time) How about 2 times per week? ... Once a week?
Raise your hand if you have sex between once and 3x per month. The enthusiasm of the respondents began to dwindle. Once per season, or 4x per year? Finally the professor came to the last category. Once a year?
An older man begins to jump up and down. His hand shoots upward like a child who has the answer to a tough question in class.. The professor wonders if there was a misunderstanding. "You have sex once a year is that right sir? The old man replies "yes and today is my day."
Sex is important in our lives as individuals and as a society. Today I will present two opposites, sex as celibacy and suggest that either can be done as spiritual practice. We can choose to use our sex lives to cultivate a growing awareness of the sacredness of the energy of life moving in and through us, connecting all of creation. We can also choose an intentional practice of refraining from sex in order to cultivate mindfulness of this same life force and achieve the same or similar ends.
Celibacy is not the most popular spiritual practice and probably will never be. To the contrary, we are a very sexually oriented society. Some say there is an overemphasis upon sex, an obsession. The sex industry is one of the largest industries in the world. In this consumer society sex is also used to sell most anything or everything. Many people ruin their lives and the lives of others because of an unwillingness or inability to take responsibility for their sexual behavior.
There are also large numbers of people who are inactive sexually. In a healthy society this option would be accepted and held as an option worthy of respect. In our society, it is not. The message droned by our cultural media is that everybody wants a good sex life, and the implication is that if you don't have one there is something wrong with you. In this productivity and achievement oriented society, people become commodities, and having a good sex life is another thing one must do to keep up with the Joneses.
This is one reason why I chose to highlight celibacy as worthy of our respect. It can be a path to spiritual awakening. It can be a rejection of the harmful idea that we must compete to establish our worth, and an affirmation of the inherent worth of ourselves as human beings.
As a man raised in America, I understand the competitive attitude toward sex. A few years back I decided to give a sermon on sex. It really excited me to realize that I had never heard a UU sermon on sex before. I got to be the first to enter into this virgin territory. All right, let the groaning begin!
Seriously, it's another great Sunday to be Unitarian Universalist. There is a real lack of freedom and ease of discussion around sex especially in religious circles. I am very grateful for the freedom of expression we enjoy within our movement that allows us room to play in our learning. I am also glad for the responsibility we demonstrate in the exercise of our freedom.
Today and always we understand that is not the responsibility of the Minister to tell us THE truth and The Way on this subject. We hold that the our sense of what is most sacred to us can be found inside ourselves. We don't need anyone to lay down the law or pronounce the truth about sex. We also place faith in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning that is supported in our congregation. Our sacred covenant is to seek to create and maintain the conditions that will support all who come here to find encouragement and challenge to grow along spiritual lines and move with ever increasing integrity and ease in a seamless flow from the values abiding in our hearts and souls. And on the topic of sex, as with other topics, each of us is encouraged to take responsibility for our own belief system. Some of our principles and traditions come to mind: our faith in reason and open discussion, the right of conscience and respect for nature. If we discuss and reflect upon these shared values and apply them to the topic of sex we will find ourselves moving forward in a path of spiritual growth.
Pfshew! there I feel better already.
I asked everyone that subscribes to cuuc-discuss if they had a particular topic on sex that they would like for me to address. I thought it was very brave of me to do this, but maybe people were feeling shy. Anyways, I got no responses. Not content to rest on my laurels, I thought to challenge myself to give a sermon that would affirm sex and celibacy as potentially valuable spiritual practices.
I posted again to solicit thoughts on this topic. I knew this topic would stimulate and engage people. Thanks to my new Facebook page, I got responses from all over the country. All right there were 5 "friends" who responded but these responses did come from different parts of the country.
People also came to me in person to address this topic. I really enjoyed watching, I mean listening to and reading peoples comments. You may not be surprised to hear that people seemed much more enthusiastic about sex than about celibacy. Actually there was a chorus of complaints that celibacy when it's imposed or not chosen can be a bummer. One women told me that if I wanted to learn about celibacy, I should get married and have 4 kids.
One member of our church commented that this seemed a delicate subject and she was eager to see how I handled it? Actually she said that she looked forward to seeing how I'd make it interesting without getting out of line. Getting out of line?! Me? What do I look like? a priest?
It's good to laugh, and I do want to acknowledge that again and again, not only in the Catholic Church, but in our denomination just like everywhere else people have failed to respect the responsibility of their position. Did I just use the word position in a sermon on sex? How many appreciate a good double entendre? All over the world people fail to respect the responsibility of their job or role. We may laugh at the evangelicals warning about the temptation for sin, but we know that people in positions of leadership often abuse the power and trust placed in them, and the result can be traumatic for individuals and communities. That is a serious matter.
Condemning the worst perpetrators as deserving of torture or our contempt will not reduce the number of incidents. The frequency of incidents of hurtful sexual behavior may be much more prevalent than we realize. I say to you in all seriousness that if you know that you are slipping toward such a temptation, please reach out for help. Beyond any academic discussion of right and wrong, let us strive to uphold a spirituality of compassion and justice. We want to do all we can to support the alleviation of suffering. We want to encourage and help each other to find a practice of right relations.
It does amaze me though, how individual sexual misconduct gets held as a great evil when greater forms of violence go unnoticed. I mean presidents can be shown to have disregarded the constitution, taken illegal actions that resulted in great suffering and thousands of death, and this doesn't get nearly the attention as when a President has sex with an intern. Many Europeans commented that Americans had such unrealistic puritanical expectations of its political leaders.
Lest puritanical expectations be applied to this Pastor, I share with you the following:
A young man wanted to purchase a gift for his new sweetheart's birthday, and as they had not been dating very long, after careful consideration, he decided a pair of gloves would strike the right note--romantic, but not too personal.
Accompanied by his sweetheart's younger sister, he went to Nordstrom and bought a pair of gloves. The sister purchased a pair of panties for herself.
During the wrapping, the clerk mixed up the items and the sister got the gloves and the sweetheart got the panties. Without checking the contents, the young man sealed the package and sent it to his sweetheart with the following note:
"I chose these because I noticed that you are not in the habit of wearing any when we go out in the evening. If it had not been for your sister, I would have chosen the long ones with the buttons, but she wears short ones that are easier to remove.
These are a delicate shade, but the lady I bought them from showed me the pair she had been wearing for the past three weeks and they were hardly soiled. I had her try yours on for me and she looked really smart. I wish I was there to put them on for you the first time, as no doubt other hands will come in contact with them before I have a chance to see you again."
"When you take them off, remember to blow in them before putting them away as they will naturally be a little damp from wearing. Just think how many times I will kiss them during the coming year.
I hope you will wear them for me on Friday night.
All my love.
P.S. The latest style is to wear them folded down with a little fur showing."
Kidding aside, can any of us deny the power that sex can have in our lives? One way that we UU's take a spiritual, moral and ethical approach to human sexuality is to provide excellent education and scientific information for our children and ourselves. Our UU sex education curricula is renown for its intelligent and progressive manner. Our kids are not going to be left unprotected with "Just say No."
Last year at our Minister's Retreat, Educators Rev Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow introduced us to a lesson on the evolution of the brain, and the role that lower and higher aspects of the brain play. The base of our brain, sometimes called the reptilian brain, is concerned with basic survival functions. These include eating and sex. Dowd suggested we often think we use the higher function of our brain to direct our lower brain activity, but in reality we use our brain to rationalize its influence upon us. He compared it to riding a big elephant. He says there we are riding thinking we are in control of the elephant and suddenly it turns to go after what it wants. So then in order to appear to be doing our job we start coming up with reasons why it is good to head in that direction.
Buddhists refer to the lower brain functioning as being the mechanical nature of our functioning. thoughts. In this sense lower, doesn't mean worse or bad. It simply recognizes that some basic life functions aren't designed to have lofty discussions. Instead we are have a built in mechanism that enables us to make simple decisions quickly. This serves the survival of the species and more often than not the individual.
Seen in this light, we don't need to get an antagonistic attitude that our nature is wicked evil and sinful. We understand that everything in nature has its place. We also recognize that we are magnificent beings with complex nervous systems. We realize that higher up on our brain stem are aspects that enable higher functioning.
To put it crudely, I once heard it said that humans don't have sex with what's between their legs, they have sex with what's between their ears. The question for today is what aspect of our brain and mind; what consciousness directs our sexual behavior?
The way that people talk about sex reminds me of the way many talk about religion. A lot of us people talk a good game. You know what I'm talking about. Have you ever noticed that when sex or religion is raised as a topic, you often hear a lot of canned responses and pat answers? People start sounding like a celebrity guest on the David Letterman show. Oh I love sex. Sex is great. Sex is sacred. Sex is something that God has ordained for blah blah blah. It strikes me as similar to the way people replay some script from bible school. This is unconsciousness.
One reason for unconsciousness may be our collective denial and avoidance of pain associated with sex. As someone whose work has included doing some counseling for twenty+ years, I can tell you that people have a lot more pain connected to sex than is obvious to public view. If as a society we prohibit open dialogue, this prevents the flow of compassion and connection that would foster health and healing. Our cultural expectation is that we would talk about our wounds only to a therapist, a very close friend or possibly a lover. For many these channels are blocked or not available.
Again what I am advocating for is not a particular scripture, not a particular spiritual practice but a religious liberal attitude that includes support for learning and compassion. Instead of pretending that we have an objective truth of some perfection of enlightened sexual behavior, let us place value in the questioning and willingness to learn. The question I offer today is: "how can we bring peace and compassion into the consciousness that rules in our sexual lives?"
I remember reading in one of Barry Niel Kaufman's books that what ever attitude we have in life, will characterize our sexual lives. If we worship power, and see everything in terms of competition, control and status, than this will likely influence our experience of sex. If we have a generally anxious fearful attitude toward life, this too will influence how we have experience sex. If in life we focus upon our body and physical sensation, this will likely be our emphasis in sex. If we see our own joy and pleasure as unimportant, if we have a compulsive need to please others, this is how we will experience our sexuality. If we there is a lot of emphasis on emotion in our lives, it is likely that this will be how we view sex. If we are concerned with relationships, with the connections and qualities shared between one another, so too will it be in sex. If we are tuned to the transcendent, the eternal, the creator or life force, then we are more likely to experience the spirituality of sex.
What are the beliefs that rule your life? What is your religion? What is it that you practice moment by moment through your days? As we grow in awareness of the belief systems that operate in our lives, we approach an opportunity to grow in consciousness. And this is true in particular of our sexuality and or sex lives. It is also true that bringing consciousness to our sexuality, choices and behavior around sex will support a growth of overall consciousness. In other words, sex can be a powerful tool for discovery of the self.
In this same vein, celibacy can also be chosen as a tool or path to achieve greater consciousness or self awareness. Many of us have experienced a loss of a relationship and had at least some sense that engaging a new person immediately could bring about more confusion. Maybe we had a sense that what was needed was time to digest and or heal from a loss. Some of us then chose celibacy to help us grow in self awareness. Well, this same principle can be applied at any time leading one to choose a time of celibacy.
This is similar to the idea to fasting. Fasting has been done throughout the world and throughout history as a tool to support turning attention from the demands of the physical world in order to turn to an inner consciousness The person who doesn't eat but spends his day thinking about food is not a skilled or effective at fasting. Instead fasting is generally done in conjunction with prayer, meditation or quiet contemplation.
As a spiritual practice, celibacy means more than "not getting any" or not doing it. Celibacy can be empowering in the same way fasting can be empowering. The point of emphasis becomes the conservation or conscious application of life energies.
In Jewish and Eastern religion, there is great attention and respect to the energy, life force and or spirit. Our UU tradition can teach us a similar orientation to view the life force as sacred. When we begin to pay attention to the life force, the energy that percolates and blossoms in us and others, we begin to awaken to the sacred not as something other worldly, but something beautiful and mystical and powerful right here and now. It is the flow of life that animates us. It is the energy that tells us what we value. It is worthy of our observation, our disciplined attention, and our reverence.
Whether we are sexually active or not, we can acknowledge and discover this life force inside ourselves, and also connecting us to a beloved, or to the beloved of all creation. May we awaken our awareness of this divinity today and always.
Amen.