Just Remember – Only God Can Sleep With Everyone

So says one of my favorite contemporary spirituality writers, Rolheiser, as reported by Carl McColman who is faithfully redacting Chris Hooten.

A sampling:

“To understand our sexuality and to live with its unfulfilled tensions, it can be most helpful simply to understand this. In loving, the ultimate wound is not to be able to marry everyone. The greatest human hunger, felt in every cell in our being, is that we cannot be completely united with everyone and everything.”

Can I get an ‘amen’ in the comments section? No? 🙂 What, is it too close to Valentine’s Day? Well by all means, read it in context before casting thy stones of moral indignation. Rolheiser‘s original writing (and the courageous bloggers willing to wrestle with his subversive orthodoxy) challenge me to be a better author, husband, friend, and lover of God as a result. Bravo, all.

Related: Dan Brennan maintains and entire blog devoted to spirituality, sexuality, and cross-gendered friendships.

Dreams Deferred and Trees of Life

I’ve been revisiting Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes‘ brief-but-powerful poem “Dream Deferred.” It evokes so much for me in this season, from marriage to eschatology to relationships to community. I’ll let it speak to you:

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

Dreams need to be translated into fulfillment, into reality, before they simply die, or worse. Mr. Hughes echoes the proverbial wisdom “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but fulfilled longing is a tree of life.”

So to all my friends who are hurting and hoping: Here’s to sweet dreams, and the salty journeys that evoke our thirst for fulfillment–only in sugar and salt can we be parched enough to drink together of Life’s Common Tree!