Disciple Bible Study 12, Song of Songs

First, it's important to know uh Tim has kindly made uh a Hungarian uh poppy seed bread that's seasonal, right?

Yes.

So that's on on offer and um don't be shy, just get up and grab some, right?

And if you if you say I only want half a piece, go ahead and rip it.

This is what we do in the Episcopal Church.

Well bless you.

Um hey, first question, as always, super awkward and not helpful.

Um oh, and disclaimer, uh 1010, I've got to go because we've got chapel to do.

Uh you're all invited if you want to stay for that.

Um what did you what did this book do for you?

Um you may have read it and thought this has nothing to do with God.

That's okay.

Um, you may have said, like, uh like why is this in the Bible?

I I'm just really curious to hear what Song of Songs did for you or didn't.

Well, you for for us, because we kind of read it not together, but we were both reading it.

Um for both of us, our marriage is is a second marriage.

And so um we've gone through a lot of stuff in our lives to get to this relationship.

And um this really brought to the surface the whole idea of how, maybe to me, how God arranges our lives in such a way that if we allow it and permit it, He will take care of us in terms of finding a tribe, but a partner or another person that's that enriches and accomplishments.

We really it was really, for me, it was very powerful.

I am I I don't enjoy the poetry.

Yeah, so I didn't I didn't get a whole lot out of it.

I understood it, but I didn't get a whole lot out of it.

It didn't it just didn't do a whole lot of it?

Yeah, yeah, I'll just say this.

We did have that not conflict, but I was I I used to compete in high school in poetry reading, so I love poetry all my life, and to me it's song, it's it's magnificent.

I love standing in front of people and reading poetry.

But Tim was like, honey, this is dumb.

But it was interesting how two opposites that would feel that way yet can feel that way about content without the way it's written, that's difficult.

No, but it's anyway.

Part of me wanted to say get a road, and then like you know, but and I reread it because I knew you know that it was more about the and it did make me question do I truly long for God in that way?

Do I, you know, like um, and the and the imagery, uh, you know, the whole your hair looks like goats coming down.

You know, I got a chuckled out of that because I thought, you know, I would not quite sure I'd respond to that, you know.

But and and I did get the sense that they they were equally committed to each other.

I mean, I didn't feel like this was uh one was more into this than the other.

Um but I I had to read it twice to get, I had to kind of get the giggles out and the, you know, oh my gosh, you know, just like I said, get a room already, you know.

But then when I read it again with kind of a little I I it helped me really kind of what because we're kind of raised not kind of raised, I wasn't raised this way, but I think sexuality is kind of a taboo subject, especially in my like you know, I know Christian couples who have been married forever and have ten children, but they probably would not admit to having sex, you know, when obviously they did.

You know, so I mean I think there was uh all kinds of things in here for me as far as you know um what God has given is I I is not a bad thing.

And and I I never did think it was, but I thought the questions at the end were kind of interesting, you know, especially having young daughters.

They're older now, and one of them has children, but you know, um the world is kind of the society has really kind of upped the game.

And I remember sitting with a seventh grade girl who was just sobbing because two girls in the seventh grade, two girls in her class were laughing at her because she had not had sex yet, and they had.

You know, and and sitting with her and validating her feelings, you know, she's like, I don't want to, and I'm like, then don't.

You know, don't let this pressure so you know, I was like, you are such a treasure, you are such a, you know, it it is a gift that was given, and I think that's gotten kind of well, but but on the other hand, we we also get wind up comparing, and all I think all you understand is the comparison of cultures over time.

You know, I'm 77.

In my time, if you had sex, you were a whore.

Right, right.

And so, and that wasn't right either.

And and so you did you had to be married to have sex and different.

I mean if you were a woman, yes.

A guy is a study and a female.

But that hasn't changed, please.

That hasn't changed.

That really hasn't changed because a woman still winds up having a mark uh for who she was, but yet um um, and I being Hispanic, that was even double stronger.

And um, and you know, I'm just gonna be real honest.

When I married, I married for sex, and it was a bad decision, and my father said, This is a bad, this is not the right person for you, and it turned out that way, but uh, but the fact is that it was a sexual there was that was the reason.

And anyway, it's very complicated and has so many depths, yes, and there's no doubt that at the center of it though is our I think our relationship with God is like that.

I mean, at the very at the very intimate part of it, it is.

Yeah, and I and I like that.

I have very fleetingly, you know, a couple of times felt that so excited to meet with God and feel God like nothing else can compare to that.

And I want more of that.

I want to be that excited, I want to be that, oh my gosh, you know, like he's the one and only.

We have a painting at home from Japan.

And there's a man and and and and woman they're embraced by each other in a sexual act.

And the man represents compassion, and the woman represents wisdom.

And I think that's kind of well, it's very ancient, it's a copy, but when you buy it in a shop, it's beautiful.

And they're nude, and her back is to you, and she's and but he explained it that it was wisdom and compassion, and it is magnificent.

Yeah, it's really beautiful.

But even this is in Bhutan.

So around the world and all humanity we have come, you know, that still has that trans, you know, transference into our relationship with God and our relationship with each other.

Anyone else?

It was very hard for me because I think when I look at that love, I think it's a very immature love.

Um we we kind of like think that that's what love is when we're young, that it's kind of this very passionate, fiery thing.

And then as we age, we kind of like, or we experience, I shouldn't say age, but as we experience the world, we kind of see like, oh, it's really not people like that.

Like the true love is a little bit different.

And so, and I also reading, rereading Genesis, I really don't like that part of that woman, that you know, creation of woman.

I like the first one better because the other one kind of paints it kind of sets woman aside.

And um, but um, so it was hard for me to read because I think it's if you I think it's really hard to at least in my personal spiritual journey to search for God in that way and want to kind of experience God like like that.

And I think the very first part of my life I really struggled to like experience God that way.

Um and um and so it was it was a difficult read for me.

Um I didn't want to say to them, you know, this isn't it's you're not always gonna feel like this.

There will be days where you're like, oh man.

So I want to hop in on that because uh I want to say yes and no to those in my own experience, if I can.

And I want and I'm gonna do that obliquely.

Can can I be like kind of bombastic here for a second and tell you that actually there's a really interesting read of Genesis chapter two that we don't get because we're steeped in tradition.

So Genesis chapter two, which we read, says that God creates the human being.

And this is interesting because um there's a couple of words in Hebrew, shoot.

Oh, here we go.

So in Hebrew, the first uh the first man, I don't know why I'm doing this, it doesn't matter.

But anyway, the first man is called Adam.

And interestingly enough, that's a pun because really um Adama, if you put an AH on the end, is like clay.

Like it's it's the dirt.

But the first thing that God makes in Genesis 2 is not the Adam.

God makes actually the Ish.

And that means, interestingly enough, more like human than it means man.

So God makes the human being, and the human being is meant to tend the garden.

I I and by the way, I'm not like just trying to be politically correct here.

Um Genesis 2 does not use that name for a bit.

God makes the each.

That's it.

So uh tends the garden, and then God says, Wow, it looks like the human being shouldn't be alone.

So I'll make the animal.

And it's as if, like this is like kind of an interesting view, it's as if God doesn't know that the animals are not going to be suitable companions.

Because God keeps trying.

So the amoeba, not really a good fit.

Um, hey, neither is like the snail, saber-toothed tiger, that could be real scary.

So those don't go.

And interestingly enough, the human being names all the animals, God names none of them.

And God actually looks with curiosity to see what the Ish is going to call the animals.

By the way, biblically, when you name something, you have power over it.

So this is telling you human beings have this relationship over all of the animals, not to be their ruler, but in Hebrew the word is actually uh it's the word mashal, which means to shepherd.

That's why we have her.

Well, and consider then, right, humans aren't given dominion over the earth, they're given shepherding over the earth, right?

And if you dominate your flock, you don't have it anymore, you're a bad shepherd.

What you're meant to do is lead domesticated animals who can't lead themselves to things like food and forage and shelters.

You're supposed to protect.

Uh, you can really argue human beings are given stewardship over creation, and then this is very like ecocentric.

None of the animals work, so God says, Ha boy, what am I gonna do here?

Uh the elephant was not a good helpmate.

I know what I'll do.

I will I will take part of the human being out from the first one, and and then there'll be two and they'll get together, and that'll be it.

So, interestingly enough, um, there's this word rib.

And what we've learned, and and even in like if you go to Georgia today, you you may hear that women have more ribs than men.

Uh, that's uh a well-held view from this story.

They don't.

By the way, we like the same number ribs.

Um rib is actually a terrible translation of this word from Hebrew, it really means side.

Well, you could say like how much of the side.

The rabbis interpret this to say that actually here's the here's the human, is the Ish, and then interestingly enough, the woman is called the Isha.

And all that means is came out of the first human being.

So this is a like a direction ending from the human being.

So this is a differentiation between human and women in Hebrew.

Well, um, the rabbis read this and they actually say, the rabbis, I you can read this in the Talmud, the rabbis say the first human being was androgynous, or rather hermaphroditic.

The first human being had both genders, and essentially what God did at this moment is split the human being in half.

And then when the two pieces come back, they become the one human being.

This is part of that justification, right?

They become one flesh again because they were one and they were divided, so we come back to one.

And there's this really interesting uh conclusion here.

The two human beings look at each other and they're naked and they're unashamed.

And that's really critical word, because you know, the first thing they realize when they eat from the tree of knowledge in the next chapter, the first thing they know is that they're naked and they are ashamed.

I don't know if you notice that.

They hide from each other.

They've been naked their whole lives and they hide from each other.

And what the rabbis sort of say that happens in marriage is when two people come together, are naked and unashamed again.

That's the rabbinic view of marriage.

And of course they're talking about bodies, but I think they're also talking about vulnerability.

Right?

Because there's this interesting thing that happens, hopefully, in a marital relationship, which is that your own felt inadequacies and insecurities can be on display, and instead of the other person pushing on them their cradle down of love and respect for you.

And and as Brene Brown says, as marital love grows, you don't love your partner in spite of their flaws, you love them because of their flaws.

So my wife is a clutter bug, I'll just be honest.

And I wonder sometimes why don't you pick that up first?

And the reason she doesn't is because she wants to spend the time with me first and do the cleanup later.

Now, I'm a worker, so I like to do the work first and the other second, and I'll be honest with you, because of that, I often just work all day.

So we're different, and I appreciate that her goal in that is time together.

And I've had to move in marriage, or I've been able to move, from being annoyed with that to appreciating that, right?

And I think that's what real intimacy is about.

Now, there's this interesting thing that happens about like sort of the passion between these two people, in some ways, uh, hey, maybe it is um just just young.

You know, Bill Cosby had that famous thing where if you put a penny in a in the jar, every time you have sex, the first two years you're married, and then take it out every year after that, you'll never empty the jar.

This is what uh Bill Cosby says.

So there's an interesting thought.

Um because I think in some ways uh relationships do kind of start out very uh very physical, and frankly, we learned that intimacy is much greater than physical, although represented in it as well.

Um but but I but I I I do think what's interesting about this this passage is to think a little bit about some of the things you already shared.

Uh, there was a book that came out, uh it's been now, it's been forever.

It's been like 25 years ago, it's called A Tribe Apart, and it's about like modern youth culture.

This was in the 90s, and interestingly enough, what it said is something like um 80%, and you it's hard to be exact with a stat, but out of all these interviews, like more than 80% of high school girls who have sex leave clothes on.

Whereas boys did not.

And of course, her conclusion was it's because high school girls have body shame.

Um Brene Brown's book, I thought it was just me, but it isn't, sort of says it's more like 90% of women who have body shame.

Body shame.

And this is maybe really helpful to think about.

Um, these two different, these two words are really, really different.

Um, guilt essentially means I made a bad choice.

I can choose different next time.

Shame means I am bad.

It's not about choosing, like I'm fundamentally flawed.

So part of her research with women is that most women are ashamed of their body.

As in, no amount of diet or exercise is going to fix that.

It's not fixable.

There's something wrong with my body.

Most women are naked and ashamed of their bodies.

Now she says, interestingly enough, that trend is growing among men because of the way male marketing's happening.

It's maybe like 30% of men are ashamed of their bodies.

Um is that considered like just innate?

Yeah, like there's something inherently wrong with me.

Like if my lips look different or my nose was different, or I had bigger breasts, or I had a skinnier stomach.

And to be honest, even people who achieve that, like they they do what they want, they don't lose their shame.

Because shame doesn't work with remedies.

Shame is I'm inherently flawed, and and when you're inherently flawed, there's no fix to it.

You see.

If you've got body guilt, you can exercise and go on a diet, or you can get plastic surgery, and then you fixed it.

But when you've got shame, there's no fix, don't you see?

You'll never be happy with it.

I don't know if you've ever had this before, um, but it could be that you lost the 10 pounds you thought and you thought, oh crap, you know, I did that and I still look at me.

Because there's actually nothing wrong with this, it's all here.

I I I don't want to project my experience on you, but this is the sort of stuff Brene Brown says.

So I think what's interesting is we could view the relationship between these two people as very young and immature, or we could say, here are two people whose intimacy is naked and unashamed.

Which takes a lot of, I wouldn't suggest work individually and together.

Uh because I will tell you, I've gotten to the point where like I'm not so worried about my body, but there's things in my soul and spirit, and I'll just call them vulnerabilities, that um they have a lot of like shame around them.

And of course, it's always scary to put that in front of somebody that you love because wow, if they didn't receive that well, well, then it's devastating.

In some ways, it might be better to not share that.

So that you're not disappointed than to do it and find out, in fact, you were a terrible person for having that thought or that feeling or that inclination or that secret.

So I I want to suggest there's a couple of ways to read the book.

And I think she is trying to say in the in the video something more like this idea of real intimacy is about being naked and unashamed, not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally, etc.

And in that sense, the physical represents the other things.

And I think this is her idea about relationship with God.

I always thought this is like, you've got to be cuckoo to think this has to do with God.

And I still think it's a real stretch.

However, again, if you if you sort of read it, there's a couple ways to read it.

One is having this kind of intimacy in God's fundamental acceptance and our own power in our relationship with God.

It's interesting to think we have power in our relationship with God.

As a kid, I was taught we have no power at all.

But relationships that are mutual don't work that way.

Mutual relationships are when two people have choices and power and they choose each other.

So it's an interesting way to think we get to do that with God.

The other thought is that these are people who are naked and unashamed, and boy, you know, like I get this idea that God knows everything about me, and sometimes that's a little scary because God knows how bad I am.

But in this book, Lady's not worried about her cleft palate or her birth mark or her hairy armpit, whatever it is, she trusts that lover is very well aware of those things and interested in them.

That's an interesting thought, isn't it?

I don't know what your relationship with God is like.

I'm not there.

But that's an interesting vision to think the things I'm most insecure about God is curious about, not afraid of.

I don't know if that made sense.

So I I I think there's really two ways.

This could be very infantile.

It could be.

It could be all about, and I think infantile is when, honestly, in these young relationships, intimacy was more about me than the other person.

Or it could be that you're so engrossed in the other person that you find yourself there by, well, serendipitously, you find yourself in finding somebody else.

That to me seems what intimacy is really about at a deeper level.

Not because you're looking, you are looking for them.

And out of that compassion and curiosity, you find yourself in a new way.

So I don't know why I was standing up to do that.

I'm just gonna just gotta calm down now.

Yes, sir.

I have a hard problem understanding something.

I guess I have a hard problem understanding.

Well God.

I mean I If he knows everything.

I don't understand him being a curious.

I just intellectually can't get my hand drive.

Well, I and and I think the best we can do is analogic thinking, you know?

So I mean, again, I I would tell you, having had kids, like I pretty much know what my kids are gonna do in situation A B C.

Uh and and and yet when they do those things that I thought they would do, especially when they're great things, I'm sometimes pretty tickled with delight.

Even though I pretty much knew what they were going to do.

Tickled with delight.

That's my best analogy.

I guess would be like uh what uh I was introduced to process theology one time, and I kind of like the idea that God didn't it wasn't all knowing, that there was a relationship between his people and himself.

Process theology is that God is trying to work, God is having to work out, like we do, what it means to be in relationship with somebody.

And boy, you know, my relationship with my kids have changed, whether they felt it or not.

The way I relate to them has really, really, really changed.

And um, you know, it doesn't have to be factually true to be insightful.

Because we we have to hold all these things knowing that our theology is all blasphemy.

Because it's all wrong.

Uh it's all limiting to who God actually is.

So we're kind of seeing through a mirror dimly, and it's a really interesting idea that maybe helps to say, like on the one hand, God knows everything, and on the other hand, like God's working it out.

And you know, about parent and child, my my girls are now in their mid-50s and I have grandkids, but like I've been reflecting and how it has never changed that I'm surprised how I learned something else that I didn't know before, or that I'm feeling differently about that, or I'm knowing more.

And I know I I really think my girls and I don't talk about that, but I think, I believe, that it's a two-way street, that they feel the same way.

And and that's pretty amazing.

So if you take that up to a higher level about how God that that's and then for God, it's not just two girls, it's humanity.

Yeah.

So that's awesome.

I mean, that's the that's the miracle of Christmas, right?

Is Jesus was embodied, so human relationships give us insight into who God is.

Yeah, and that's not wrong, in fact, that's revelatory because Jesus was enfleshed as we are.

So, I mean, that's an interesting, interesting bit here.

Um couple other thoughts I think that are really interesting in this in this book.

One is there's a lot of discussion about pleasure, physical pleasure.

And part of our puritanical heritage, really, this is the gift of the Puritans, is that we're afraid of pleasure.

In fact, some people have said that, and and this is a good Baptist joke, and I grew up Baptist, so it's okay, is we're most afraid as Baptists that somebody else is having fun.

So if somebody else is having fun, we go and try to spoil that because it must be wrong.

Um, and and this is an interesting book, really, because it sort of says that pleasure was created by God for our enjoyment.

So instead of feeling guilty that our bodies feel pleasure, we should say, thank God.

No, I mean, really, that's it's quite interesting.

And and this is specifically about the kind we're most afraid of because of the Puritans.

This is about sexual pleasure.

Which, ah and part of our gift from that, by the way, comes from Augustine.

Um, Augustine, maybe you know him, of Hippo, uh Bishop.

He's the one who came up with the idea about um human humanity fell in the garden and passed on original sin genetically.

And really, Augustine looked at babies and said, humans are selfish because babies only think of themselves.

So that was his that was his idea.

And Augustine said, he's the one who said that sexuality is just for procreation, not for unity.

And to be honest, we're still trying to recover from that because as Protestants, and in the Episcopal Church, we're Protestants, we make a counterclaim.

We say marriage is for unity and sometimes for procreation, but procreation is not necessary for the sacrament.

Which means, and thinking through this, right, if sexuality is just about procreation, we could miss the sacrament entirely.

And you can have sex without having unity.

And the name for that biblically is pornea, from which we get pornography.

This is interesting.

Pornea is about pretend intimacy in which there's no real unity.

Which means, broadly speaking, and I had a professor who said this who was a pretty, pretty important Greek scholar.

This even happened at 9-11.

You know, they kept showing these images over and over and over of the planes blowing up the towers, and he said that's pornographic.

And I think he's right, given the definition I just gave you, right?

The passion of the Christ, if you've seen that movie, is pornographically violent.

Pornographically violent because it creates no intimacy, it creates estrangement between you and Jesus.

And this I think is a real interesting thing when you if you haven't seen this, I it's worth YouTubing.

It's called the Dove Campaign for Beauty.

And there's this picture, it's this it's a video about how it is that a billboard model got from being a person to being on the billboard, and it involves lots of airbrushing and neck stretching and body doubling, and it's really interesting.

Um it didn't sell soap, uh, so they quit it.

But it's an amazing um picture about where pornography comes from.

It it takes a human being and turns them into some fantasy, and then so doing that tells us that the fantasy is better than humanity.

And of course, I think what it represents is if we only get caught up in bodies, we miss souls of which bodies are a part.

So I I mean again, I think we could read this very juvenile and say, this is all about body focus, or we could say, bodies are part of our souls.

They're valid, they're important, and they are probably one of our primary means of expressing intimacy.

Well, I guess that's my problem with it.

Yeah.

Is that, you know, you know, it's not that I can't extract that from this reading, but it's that being what it is, I think, and humans being flawed the way that we are, I think it's like pornography.

It's like it's too easy for us as flawed human beings, for somebody to pick it up or a young person to pick it up and look at it, and then kind of get off the path.

And so without I think a shepherd to help guide you through that, it's just um it's just hard.

And I and so I I do feel like um, I don't know, and for me, I kind of had to take it to where um into the humanity and um creation bit.

Like I had to go through reading it as as man trying to heal his relationship with with with you know other humans, and so that's where I kind of was able to go with it.

I love that you said that, and I want to tell you the biggest disservice church gave me as a young person was entirely around sexuality.

What I learned in the churches of my youth was um Christians don't have sex before they're married, and then when they do, it takes care of itself.

So I had no understanding of what intimacy was like because I thought it all worked out.

And I would tell you that there are married persons I know whose relationship with their partner, male or female, is what I would call lust and not honorable.

We can think about our partner degradingly married or not.

And we were taught that sexual fantasies were wrong.

So I wonder, and by the way, this is me wondering, I haven't done this.

I wonder if the church doesn't miss, albeit a very controversial opportunity, in training young people into what kind of sexual fantasies are appropriate and godly.

Well, you know, the church that I grew up in, which was Roman, it's an all-male institution, and there is no dialogue, and they do make rules that protect them rather than that dialogue, because they're not supposed to have any sex.

And for me, a Roman and Hispanic, which would be a double layer of expectation, um, you know, to have sex out of marriage isn't wellish.

And and it's it's absolutely wrong not to make the eyes of the church room and the eyes of the culture.

Um in my case, I also um it was a double-edged sword.

You're gonna marry you should marry another Hispanic, uh Hispanic, and a Catholic, and a Catholic, but I didn't I marry a white Catholic.

And that was so I met some of the requirements, and um then that was a disaster later.

Um it becomes so darn complicated, and so and for I think for women, I don't know, maybe for men, you guys have to speak out for that.

It becomes so I think from tumultuously.

It took me a long time to get that all the joker.

I don't know.

Well my my both my grandmothers were kind of like opose.

Oh gosh.

Wow, yeah, so and Hispanic, so you know, like they told my mother, like my parents were kind of semi-arranged, and yeah, but they were very liberal.

They did, you know, they took us to church and I was confirmed in everything, but they kind of never really pushed anything on me, but my grandparents were very I just I'll just tell you this.

I I I had not had this vision when I came back from my first buried from the honeymoon.

My mother was standing running out of the bed in the garage as I told her when we picked up in the car, and she was crying, and she hugged me.

I make hugging.

So it's like I had gone through this suffering thing, and she was crying that I've gone through this terrible pain.

Um I had pretty much blocked that out of my pain, you know.

I mean, it is, but it does shape, and then you have to work about reshaping and re-interpreting it.

Yeah, I too grew up in the Baptist church, and um Miss Rose, who was in charge of the young people, told us that we should never kiss until you were married.

Yes.

I mean, no kissing, we we didn't use the S word, but uh we were not too kissed before we married, and she was a little bit late when she told us that.

But we never and that was the interesting.

See, this is the thing that was lacking, is that we were never really told why.

So we were just given, you don't do that.

Well, she told us that that we should go to the uh altar, the wedding altar, as having never been kissed to meet our.

Yeah, and that's a trend in fundamentalism.

There's a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye that was very influential.

It came 20 years ago and it was all about how we should court one another.

Yeah, very influential.

Uh and and um still is in some in some places.

Um and again, what it what it created was this idea that there's like there's really no head space for what's going to happen.

And and I also wasn't trained that marriages are really hard.

And that you have to like work at them.

I just did not get that at all.

Um, and and some reason I had like this very strange conception of my parents' marriage because you know, it all just worked out.

That was the thing, you know, and uh so I was just really left behind with with all of that business.

And um again, I think there's this sort of opportunity to to carve out um some space for this.

I mean, again, you know, we were taught that if you consider sexuality at all, it equals lust and is a seven deadly sin.

I mean, it's we didn't use that in the Baptist room, as we were told, in instead of this idea about validating our physicality.

And um, this book actually has an interesting thought.

Don't awaken love before it's ready.

Right.

And I I I would tell you, uh, I I really like that thought.

And in some ways, I think we could say, oh, that's saying don't have sex till you get married, but I think it is also saying instead of that, I think it's saying to be very careful with the intimacy that we open ourselves to and the ways in which we do that.

Because I I do believe, and maybe I'm a little bit conservative this way, I do believe that sexuality is an opportunity for intimacy, and if we do it in ways that don't do that, it leaves us in bondage, quite honestly.

In future relationships, we now have this bondage experience about being naked and unashamed.

I've been being naked and shamed, right?

Again, I hear about high school girls leaving their clothes on, and I think, oh my god, the baggage they're creating for their future sex lives is horrific.

And and it's interesting that in our I think are not cultures, it's more for women that that shame.

I I don't that maybe there's two guys in here.

I don't think that the men are given that same kind of label of shame.

But maybe that's and Brene Brown says that's changing, and you know, we we can only speak from our own experience, but I had a lot of body shame growing up.

Um I I ended up being a wrestler in high school, and that like led me, body shame led me a little bit to like eating disorder from wrestling.

Not, I mean, I wouldn't diagnose it, but it was something like exercise bulimia.

And um, yeah, so I just I think it depends on on like who who you are and how you were treated.

But Brene Brown says at least 30% of men, and she says that's growing, have fundamental body shame.

They may not conduct themselves with that shame the same way women do, and ultimately she says culture guides us to do that differently.

Um but uh satisfaction in your embodiment is is kind of a hard thing.

And and I I do want to suggest that this book is very affirmative of embodiment, which is really interesting.

There's a couple fancy things in here, I just I don't want to skip over.

Umard.

They anoint each other with nard.

Umard is like ridiculously expensive.

This is what uh Mary puts on Jesus before he's baptized.

And the what Mary puts on Jesus was a year's wages in perfume.

So you so nard, this nard, um, you need to think about your annual earning in perfume.

This is like a hundred thousand dollars she pours on Jesus' head.

We I mean you can't even buy perfume that expensive anymore because we can manufacture it.

But that was nard, like unbelievably expensive, luxurious, and therefore worth putting on another person.

It's sort of an interesting thought.

In some ways, we could hear Mary's anointing with the nard as a reference here to intimacy and extravagance.

Myrrh is another thing that shows up, also an expensive spice.

I mean, it's it's this is these are this is a resin that is found in very few places.

Um uh pricey, aromatic, etc.

They live in a cedar home.

Uh that's like saying they live in a home that's made out of ivory.

I mean, uh you cedar really only grows in Lebanon in in tall enough supply to make a fine home with.

So this is all about fancy, fancy stuff.

Raisins, um, luxury food.

Sorry.

Uh uh people didn't eat raisins, it just took extra production.

They ate grapes and they had had wine.

Um, you hear about things like alabaster legs.

Um uh again, the the these are just sort of interesting images about extravagance and beauty and cultural value.

So all throughout those.

There is a verse in here we get um at many weddings, which is many waters cannot quench love.

And um, there's an opportunity to think about how strong the feeling of love is.

But we're we're coming up on Advent 4, which is where we light the love candle, and it's really helpful if I preach at a wedding, if I do, and and um I've taken to doing that lately.

Um, I sort of say that if love is about our feelings, waters will quench it within two years.

And I think that's right.

I think um feelings will get you two years, and if you don't have anything else, you're done.

And uh helpful again, I don't want to over reference Brene Brown, but Brene Brown says, you know what, love really is not about a feeling, love is about a set of practices and commitments.

So you could say, can you love somebody and have an affair?

And the answer is you might feel in love with them and have an affair.

But you can't practice love and have an affair.

And that's helpful.

And waters, you know, biblically, is this word really, it's a fundamental image for chaos, and it sort of suggests that a lot of chaos can't quench committed love.

That's been right in my relationship so far.

If you've been to church before, and just switching out of Hebrew to Greek for a second, you've probably learned that there's like a couple different kinds of love in the Bible.

There's Philaleo, which is like brotherly love, like Philadelphia.

And then you've probably learned that there's like agape, which is like the best kind of love.

It's unconditional love.

Maybe you've heard this before.

It's totally wrong, by the way.

And then there's this eros love, which is erotic.

And of course, like in the mind of the biblical authors, these are just facets of the same thing.

It's not like this one's better than that one, and this is the lowest form of love.

This book is about this kind of love as a way of expressing the other facets.

It's not just about erotic pornography passion, it's about beautification of bodies and lack of shame being naked as this way of intimacy with one another and with God.

This is just sort of an interesting way to think about in general.

I hope that's the goal we have in our most intimate relationships.

And so the question is, what's in our way?

And do we still have shame in the ways we're naked in our intimate relationships?

And why is that?

Is it because we're afraid of being invulnerable or because we know the other person can't handle our vulnerabilities?

And then what do we do about that?

Do we have shame about our nakedness before God?

I do.

I probably will my whole life.

That's the gifts of my Baptist heritage.

Uh, I will try to recover from the rest of my life.

I just sort of think God.

Yeah, in general, we're taught God loves us, but God didn't like us very much because we're wicked, nasty creatures.

Instead of like, hey, God looks at our body and it's like cellulite, that's beautiful.

Spider veins, love that.

Look at that pattern.

You know what I mean?

Like, we're like, oh my God, spider veins, I'm a disappointment to you and all of humanity and myself.

Instead of like, this is my body, and whatever it does and whatever it doesn't do, it's mine.

You know, you know what is so fascinating to me that this basic look at humanity, at men and women, has in today's world, I think, or maybe I'll throw it out of here.

Yesterday I was talking to my granddaughter who's an architect, and and we got to talking about men and women and men architects.

And she said, Mama, do you know that in every meeting that I go to, I am the only female architect.

And she is very aware of that.

And that that makes me sad for, you know, we talked about that.

But it all comes from the only thing that's different about Rachel, she has the same degrees, the same certification, all that.

She's a woman, and they're not.

They're not.

And it's and it's 2008, you know, is what it is.

And and it's still badass.

You know, the interesting thing you say, and and and this is changing in some groups, because you've heard of mothers of preschoolers, maybe before.

It's this evangelical arm that you know it's a Bible study for mothers.

Yes.

And then there's these mad dads.

You're not including us.

What about the dads?

Excuse me.

What about all the ways women are excluded?

And now because men have power, they're insisting this is not okay.

I mean, it's sort of an interesting thing, right?

And um what's interesting to me is that um there's patriarchy, right, which is like the rule by the men.

But what what I find really convincing is that that's not the bigger problem.

The bigger problem in general is chiriarchy, which is about lordship of anybody over somebody else.

Right?

So the truth is I'm a chiriarch because I'm white.

I mean, this I don't feel guilty about being white, that's silly.

And I don't feel ashamed about it because I didn't pick it.

I am ashamed of what whiteness has done to folks of color, honestly, and of different creed.

So to me, like the compelling thing is um if if if we overturn patriarchy, fine, that's a good step, but if we don't fix that, then then we've deceived ourselves into thinking we've arrived at the goal.

And that's an interesting thing to think about, how this shows up intimately sexually in the workplace.

And this book is interesting insight.

Hopefully, it's helpful to know that that in some ways, if this is about a relationship with God, most Christian mystics, whether we're talking about Julian of Norwich or um Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, who's like a Jewish rabbi, they use this very physically intimate relationship with God to describe this mystical experience of relationship with God.

Same with the poet Rumi, if you've read Rumi, or um the Sufs in Islam, or think about in uh Hinduism uh things like the Kama Sutra, which is really about this radical way of engaging bodies to really under gauge the universal spirit.

It's not about the sex, it's not.

The sex is a method, if practiced appropriately, which requires things like discipline, right?

To engage with the universal ordering principle.

That that that is um the Kama Sutra represents that.

It could be misused.

See, that's the interesting thing.

We we need shepherding.

And the hard thing, of course, is all of us are exposed to images about intimacy gone wrong, so that we we lionize like um flat stomachs instead of satisfaction with ourselves.

We're taught to judge and devalue instead of to be curious and affirmative, especially of ourselves.

So I take shepherding.

And it's not like, oh well, we just we're adults and we figured it out.

By no means, right?

Because these things are so deeply implanted.

And again, right, um I was really taught that marriage is for sex that'll last you two years.

Because if you don't have the other intimacy, you don't have it.

You just don't, right?

And I wasn't taught how to cultivate that intimacy by my church because honestly, the people who are my leaders didn't know how to do it themselves.

No, they didn't have time.

And this is like, I think, one of the biggest gaps we have as a church, because if we ever say we're gonna talk about intimacy with teenagers, you're exposing them to things they shouldn't think about.

No, we're exposing the things that they're already thinking about, but in life-giving, appropriate, affirmative ways.

How we do that is getting married, and nuns, I was in Catholic school, they've been married.

So they knew nothing about it, really.

They've never experienced anything with the habits and all of that.

Well, you know, I do want to say, I don't think you have to have had intimacy with another person to physically to understand physical intimacy.

A relationship.

Yeah, it's the relationship.

Well, and I and I will tell you, and I and I don't know what you think about this, but I've heard from many, many couples who's who say, you know, the older we got, the more we realized intimacy, you know.

Well, I don't know what I was say about that.

Their intimacy grew and not necessarily sexually.

They sort of said actually sex became increasingly unimportant as their other intimacy grew.

That's not everybody's well, that's what I, you know, that's sort of what some folks have said, but I but I do think there's this interesting lack of intimacy with our own bodies.

We're not taught to value our own bodies.

I would say a Catholic priest, celibate, can cultivate intimacy with their own body and be able to communicate that to other people.

And that'd be a great starting point.

And you know, with I don't know about the rest of the women in this room, but aging, that's that's the other thing that happens for anyway.

All of a sudden you're looking at the mirror and go, where did that come from?

With the gowels, with the the stuff that wasn't there, and uh and it is it is a part of that.

Yeah, and then you think, well, wait a minute.

You know, I'm not sure.

Well, there's the other trick that we didn't learn, which is how do you reconcile with your body after you've had a baby?

Because having a baby changes your body forever.

And and then there's this loss.

Oh my god, like I'll never have abs again.

My ribs are gonna hurt the rest of my life.

It depends who you are.

I've got these stretch marks, I'm not attractive, and and that's an interesting bit, right?

That again, women suffer.

Two two great books.

One is I thought it was just me, but it isn't.

That's a Brene Brown book.

It's fantastic.

The other, and I wish I'd read this in high school, it's this book called Come As You Are, and it's written by a woman for women about just inherent sexuality, um, biological, physiological differences from men and women.

How interesting that the book says this sort of thing that happened is actually relatively true about the formation of things like human genitals.

It's sort of interesting how they sort of come from one place.

Um talks about women's sexual experience, but not in a way that's degrading, in a way that's informational.

Wish I'd read it in high school, because again, my church gave me nothing about it.

As an adult, I found it really, really helpful to read.

Um, I've got to quit because we're doing chapel.

You're all invited.

We are not meeting next week.

We will meet January the 2nd if you'd like.

Same time, same place, to do lesson 14.

Thanks for being here.