Sex Love Power

And even further back. Back. Back. Through the annals of time. Back through the many days and years, lying like so many layers of sedimentary rock over what is hidden in oneself. Hidden just as rough and dark and hard there as diamonds. Enormous and heavy as fist-size diamonds.

Resting in the dark. Waiting for. Reserving themselves for rediscovery. Dark there but potentially bright and dazzling.

And in that deep down darkness. There is the person one once was. The boy. The boy-man. Who could think of nothing in his spare moments but women. Woman.

Who could think of nothing but his fulfillment in the act of sexual love. Fulfillment as completion. Fulfillment as end state. Fulfillment as purpose. Fulfillment as rapture. As ecstasy. As rest. As intimate knowledge of the other. Intimate understanding of. Well. The other. Because what else was there?

And that understanding, that rest, that peace, that ecstasy, was. Well. What one also understands to be love. Love of the welling kind. Love of the making kind. Love of the recreating kind.

Love reciprocal. Love elliptical. Love indelible. Love correlative. Love unstoppable. Love improbable. Love incalculable. Love ineluctable.

And this sexual love business. Oh, what can one say about this? And not come off as a moron. As misguided. As advocating sin. As being prurient. As being immoral. In the Christian context we’ve created for ourselves. In the deeply superficial sense we have of sin in this facile Christian culture we’ve created for ourselves.

I was reading something the other day. It was in one of those Christian magazines. I think the essence of it was, the guy wanted everyone to believe that orgasm is unimportant. That sexual fulfillment is really just a contraction of a couple of muscles. That sexual love is trivial.

And he wanted us to understand that love is a much more profound business than this. Than sexual love. And I wanted to wring his neck.

I wanted to reach into the Christian magazine I was reading and wring this misguided pastor’s neck for spewing such nonsense. I wanted to take his words to the fireplace and exterminate them with extreme prejudice. Because of what words like these can do out here in the world. Coming as they do from an authority. From God’s representative on earth.

Oh, let’s just take a brief tour through human history. And human literature. Let’s just take a look at what the role of sexual love is in the history of the human species. Let’s just reflect on the little that we know about this.

It is a history—among other things—of sexual love driven wars and triumphs and death and art and literature and murder and suicide and ecstasy and mayhem and economic striving and ruthlessness and bliss and agony and degradation and aspiration and. And. And. It’s a history that over and over demonstrates the extraordinary power sexual love has had in the lives of the human species.

Why would anyone try to pretend it is unimportant? Trivial. All the facts say otherwise. The history books are full of this stuff.

Rather than being superficial in its expression or superficial in its experience or superficial in its import or superficial in its consequences, it is utterly profound. It absolutely drives huge complexes of human behavior. Huge sequences of acts and omissions of acts of human beings.

And it makes human beings. It makes human spirit beings.