"There is passion in the universe: the young stars, the whirling
galaxies - the living, pulsing earth thrives in the passionate embrace of life itself. Our love for one another is the language
of our passionate God....It is desire that spins us round, desire that sends the blood through our veins, desire that draws
us into each other's arms and onward in the lifelong search for God's face ".
Sallie McFague, Models of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p.
130.
There is an incredible richness in the world's mystical traditions that
speaks of love and union. Whe we practice cultivating gentleness and tender-heartedness in the loving-kindness meditations,
we touch this place within. For many this experience is felt like a home coming, from many years of self-isolation and armoring.
In the Indian traditions of bhakti yoga, the yogi strives to create a loving
feeling toward the Divine, often personified for the sake of the practice as having a sensuous form. The imagery one
encounters in the writings of bhakti saints is often that of a desirous longing for the embrace of the Divine.
There is incredible depth to this relationship as depicted in the narrative
of Radha and Krishna in Hindu epic literature. This depth is created when the relationship of the lover, the yogi, is
seen as simultaneously being one-sided (the lover strives to rest in the ultimate ground of being approached as the embrace
by the Indescribable beauty of the Divine) and as the Divine and human in a give and take love play, often with role reversals.
This is what gives the Bhagavad Gita is remarkable evocative power.
Through the wisdom and insight born of a life-long dedication to spiritual
practice many luminaries have found that love cannot be reduced to sexuality, but it cannot escape it either. Any escape from
it leads to a cold and sterile love, no longer the embrace that spins our pulsing earth, sending blood surging through
our bodies and drawing us into each other's arms, as evoked in the fist quote above.
Christine Gudorf, in her book Body, Sex and Pleasure: Reconstructing Christian
Sexual Ethics brings out the insight that is at the core of yogic spirituality -- that "bodily experience can reveal the divine."
She also observes that "affectivity is as essential as rationality to true Christian love." Finally, and in line with
the Indian traditions, she observes: "the experience of bodily pleasure is important in creating the ability to
trust and love others, including God."
I offer these observations to further our appreciation of a spirituality
which is not about furthering separation (from ourselves and from others) but is wholly about embracing life in all its fullness
and depth.
