Catherine Groves

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Sexuality and Spirituality

by Catherine Groves

Sexuality and spirituality! How's that for a rousing topic? Most contemporary readers likely would not so much as blink at the suggestion that sexuality might have something to teach us about spirituality. Any few raised eyebrows would be worn, I'd suppose, by readers drawn to traditions that treat the two as mutually exclusive. For those inclined to such disciplines, the path to spirituality is the renunciation of all things worldly, all things fleshly. Accordingly, to be spiritual is to disentangle one's consciousness from the snares of our material entrapment.

But I'm not about to argue for or against that vantage. Instead, I wish to expand upon a comment I made in my April-June 1993 editorial for Christian*New Age Quarterly.¹ In that piece, I concluded that "'inspired by God' cannot factually hold more ... than 'inspiring to us.'" There is, as I see it, a disparity between belief and reality — a disparity of kind that forever sets a chasm between our most acute observations and reality as it is.

Yet I also remarked that "to realize that need not dampen the inspirational power." But how can that be? Could I seriously have meant that the significance of inspiration so exceeds factual considerations that to detach it utterly from the realm of actuality would not diminish it? That's exactly what I meant.

Over the past century, our culture has been steeped in admiration for the rational, a paradigm that leads us to express human experience as a result of its facts. We look to psychology — or astrology, or our past lives — to explain our behavior. We look to genetics to demystify our proclivities, be they sexual orientation, psychopathic urges, or psychic ability. We look to anthropology — or sociology, or perennial philosophy — to make sense of that bent of our species toward religious imagery. Even while we attest to the magnificent enigma of the human experience, we tend to assume the enigma can be explained by carefully reasoned observations. In short, we can be distilled down to our facts, even if we have yet to discover the precise system that renders our human nature wholly intelligible.

Sure, such zeal for locating the facts behind human experience has produced methods and models quite useful for social and self understanding. But I wonder, can human experience be so easily reduced to the logic of its components? Trends in religious thought often seem to suggest it can. We can cogently reconstruct the factors that led to the rise of the Christian Church — or the New Age movement — and can even delve into the psychology of its proponents. We can look at the biographies of mystics and saints to learn what character traits — or psychoses — underpinned their transcendent awareness. The dynamics of religious experience has been analyzed — some would say ad nauseam — sociologically, psychologically, even physiologically. True, we grant that this is a highly speculative science, and yet the very avowal of its limitations presupposes the esteem we have, if not for the specific theory, at least for the methodology that gives rise to such theories.

Now, as fond as I am of any good bit of reasoning, I'd be the last to gainsay it. Still, reason comes up empty-handed in its grasp of the "meaning" within human experience. At core, the experience of meaning is quite other than that which lends itself to a factual — and hence analyzable — basis. It's just not the stuff of rational method.

Why do we eat? We are physical beings, dependent upon ingesting the nourishment found in plants and, some would say, animals. Our bodies have evolved into efficient systems for replenishing the nutrients our cells require. Even our tastebuds, the growls of our stomach, and the urgency that accompanies a plummet in blood sugar prod us toward the food necessary for survival.

But that doesn't describe my sense of eating! Sure, when hunger strikes I typically reach for foods that meet the specific demands of my body. Yet what of the lasagna that oozes with hot strings of mozzarella peeping out of noodly blankets, all smothered in alluring red sauce? To eat, is this simply an act of survival ... or is it something rich and wonderful and fraught with something more, something evocative in the human experience? Is it mere biological imperative? That one extra forkful when my tummy is full says that it is not.

And what of sexuality? As we look to the animal world, we recognize our sexual activity as part and parcel of something we share with other lifeforms, the drive to perpetuate our species. While it is perfectly within our ken, as many couples can attest, to have intercourse for the express purpose of procreating, does the biological imperative even begin to describe human sexuality?

If it did, wouldn't our gutter-talk run, "Whoa ho ho, get a load of that babe! What a seductive way she has with nutrients! Fancy all that vitamin-rich milk she'd have for nursing my offspring!"

Or, "Check out the genes on that one! He simply oozes high IQ! Couldn't you just die for a squeeze of those brain cells?"

If anything, the practice of human sexuality pokes fun at its analysis time and again. Hardly are we attracted to one another on the basis of DNA profile. We do, after all, as deeply cherish the "genetically challenged" spouse as we would the pinnacle of our breed! Indeed, we as a species invest untold resources into preventing pregnancy — a whole lot more, I'd wager, than we do in promoting or prolonging fertility. If human sexuality can be distilled from its factual, biological basis, how come the antithesis is so clearly the norm?

Now few would seriously contend that sexuality should, in practice, be stripped of all but its biological function. It's pretty prima facie that human sexuality would become impoverished of its beauty, delight and compassion were we to view only such facts. Clearly, mating gives way to meaning, a meaning that isn't confined to its components.

Furthermore, who would even think that the two need correspond? We can revel in the findings of biogenetic research and find no less fire in the touch of an appealing partner, regardless of his or her procreative potential. When it comes to sexuality, we know that the facts don't make the meaning. Indeed, that was never the point!

What does lasagna and lovemaking have to do with spirituality? In the human experience, why we do what we do has little relevance to the riches of the act. Sure, we eat for the survival of our persons, we have sex for the survival of the species, but neither of these "whys" hold our story. While new realizations may strip our beliefs of their formerly supposed factuality, that does not compromise the meaningfulness we meet in believing.

Indeed, the deep, vast magnitude found in believing unfolds precisely as we realize faith infinitely exceeds any anchor to reality we could wish for its content. No way is the significance of inspiration diminished should we recognize "inspired by God" cannot factually hold more than "inspiring to us." If the human experience of meaning is more — so much more — than feasting on a nutrient or caressing a gene, why would we dream it "a must" that our spirituality be the stuff of facts? Isn't the sacred more meaningful than that?

¹Catherine Groves, "Through the Editor's Eyes," Christian*New Age Quarterly 5:2 (April-June 1993).

"Sexuality and Spirituality" was originally entitled "Through the Editor's Eyes" and was published by Christian*New Age Quarterly 5:3 (July-September 1993). For more information on Christian*New Age Quarterly, write to Catherine Groves, Editor at PO Box 276, Clifton, NJ 07015-0276 or visit christiannewage.com. (And please bookmark this page prior to adventuring off this site.)

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