It’s when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart: not to a flower, not to a dolphin, to no innocent form but to this creature vainly sure it and no other is god-like, God (out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts, as guest, as brother, the Word. — D. Levertov, The Stream & The Sapphire
On God in the Flesh: What’s the point? What difference does it make for God? What difference does it make for us — for the way we live with our bodies and minds and souls?
I never cease to be amazed by the general unwillingness of the Church — the Body of Christ — to talk about itself as a body and its members as bodies – real flesh and bones and blood. Perhaps it’s why we’re so scared to talk about sex and why we shouldn’t be so surprised at the recent data suggesting that 90% of all American adults have had pre-marital sex. It’s no big surprise, nor is it necessarily something to lose sleep over. What we should be losing sleep over is the incredible disconnect the Church has sown between sex and stewardship — the right care for all that God entrusts to us, including but not limited to our power for pleasure and procreation. God’s Incarnation into a real body with real parts, endowed for all sorts of wonderment, reminds us that it’s always to the Church’s peril not to say something encouraging and helpful to those on the cusp of sexual activity. Perhaps the numbers on per-marital sex would drop. Perhaps the rates of HIV/AIDS and other STDs would drop. Perhaps the number of unplanned pregnancies would drop. Perhaps the number of divorces would drop. Who knows? Either way, we’d speak a powerful Word into the most intimate place of any person’s life — and they’d hear that God isn’t afraid or embarrassed to be there — and they’d hear that they, in all they do with the precious gift of these incredible bodies, are destined, like Christ, for divinity.
