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thursday morning thoughts
Sherry Pofahl, Cheri Pofall, Shari Po' Fall said--
>>>>>Okay, this is where I would _really_ like this conversation to go...
_Is_
it okay to focus on fulfilling one's desire through another? Or is it
more
correct to focus on fulfilling _another's_ desire? Isn't denying self,
and
fulfilling others, the heart of Christianity? These are my prime
questions
in this. (I don't even PRESUME to have an answer to this awfully complex
question; I would just like someone to bite.)<<<<<<<<
First, thanks, Sherry, for such a thoughtful reply. Very nice.
I think this is interesting in all instances of giving. I give to the
poor, I sacrifice myself in some way, I put others ahead of myself, and
that's good. There's no getting around the fact that good giving is good
giving. Every alternative is inferior. But, no matter how pure my heart
is, this side of heaven, there's always the little seed of pride and
self-satisfaction that goes with good giving. Rather than just having
joy in my having given, I have some pride. And rather than my joy being
100% drawn from the receiver's joy, it is always partly my own
satisfaction about having done good. Something in there is a little
WACK, if you know what I mean. At the same time, I really believe that
the thrill my heart gets from witnessing or participating in goodness is
the thrill of experiencing the closest thing we get to have to heaven on
earth. And of course I should feel good about that. But there's that
little seed of selfishness. I've know those who talk about giving up on
goodness because goodness isn't perfect on earth. Because there's a
hypocritical selfishness in doing good. Nonsense to give it up, though,
I think. We do what we can. The imperfection of our actions is one of
the reasons Christianity has the concept of Grace.
Must I apply this directly to sex? I will say only: even in a hand hold,
even in a kiss, a spirit of giving going out to a spirit of receiving is
the only way to go. And for things to be great, both people must have
the humility to do both, both must have the humility to hear all the
little nos and yeses in each other's skin.
(I read back over the above and noticed that if you replace the word
"good" with "sex" you get a reading which is completely . . . um . . .
on-topic. And funny.)
Tobias Fritz said:
>>>>Sorry, but you should say American Christians here. Nowhere else have
I seen
Christians so upset just about words without looking at what they were
intended to mean.<<<<<<
An insight: many things that are Victorian morals in America are
wrongfully called "Puritan" morals, but this word thing does relate back
to the Puritans. They had a really strong reading and interpreting
tradition because they wanted so badly to understand scriptures and to
interpret the signs from nature that God put before them. They liked
opening up passages of scripture and creating close-to-home metaphors to
help themselves understand them. But, then, as I write, I realize that
what Toby is talking about isn't Puritan word-practice, either. It's the
practice of propagadists. It's a political practice used to gain one's
poinnt by ignoring the context and complexity of one's proof text. Maybe
Americans do this so much because everything 'round here gets turned into
politics, including Jesus, thanks to folks like the "Moral Majority"
political block. I guess we could use some good old fashioned Puritan
word reading. And I guess that this taking of words and phrases to an
extreme, free of their context, may be a perversion of the Puritan
pratice, designed to win arguments rather than improve souls. (And, in
my thinking, a major difference between Puritan ethics and Victorian
ethics is that Puritans answer to God and Victorians answer to
society--where arguments are won--so maybe what we have here is another
victorian situation that I almost wrongly attributed to the poor
Puritans.)
But, really, propaganda is as old as civilization, so I don't think we
should say "American Christians" here. Maybe we should say "Political
Christians." Cos Europe has had propagandists, too, I hardly need to
say.
These are my thoughts this morning,
Fred
PS:
This town has chimneys,
Smoke goes up to winter white,
My knees will not shake.
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