Living Together Before Marriage--not such a good idea?

The conventional wisdom, especially among younger adults, is that couples should live together for a time before getting married. The assumption, I believe, is that people assume that by living together a couple and test out their relationship. If it survives a few years of living together, than maybe it is worthy of a lifetime commitment.

This sounds reasonable, but the data doesn't support it. The NYT reports that a new study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that adults who live together before getting married about six percent more likely to get divorced within 10 years. Meanwhile, the number of couples who go this round has doubled in the past 15 years. Approximately 61% of women in the late 30's have lived with a sexual partner.

However, couple that were engaged before they started living together are actually more likely to stay together than the average. Other things that increase the likelihood of staying together: marrying after age 26 and having a child 8 months or later into the marriage.

I remember when I was getting ready to be married my therapist, Mary Gates, told me that the mistake couples usually make is to assume that being married is like living together. Actually, she told me, marriage is a whole 'nother beast. Marriage means taking a relationship beyond being about two individuals and brings in the entire clans. "You invite everyone into your bedroom," she said. The living and the dead.

And it's true, in my pastoral and personal experience, that marriage pulls the couple into much larger narratives and dynamics. Often they are simply unprepared for the change that marriage brings. I don't think that this is an issue for engaged couples because they already are living into marriage, and therefore never settle into a pattern of unmarried bliss.

This reforces my conviction that when I'm doing pre-marital counselling of couples that live together I need to talk quite a bit about how things change after marriage.

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A Close-Up on Priestly Indiscretion

The New York Times is running an article that serves as a kind of case study of what happens when Roman Catholic Priests have affairs with women in their congregations. Father Henry Willenborg was serving as a spiritual director for a retreat for Catholic women when he became attracted to Pat Bond, one of his directees.

“Here I am this small-town girl, and at the time I didn’t feel that I was very attractive,” she said, “and yet he’s putting his vows on the side and he wants to be with me, in the most intimate, loving way. It was quite an honor.”

“It’s such a powerful thing because you think — and this is the illness of it, too — you are led to believe and you let yourself believe, that you are a chosen one. That you are so special,” she said, adding of the priest, “It’s not that they’re putting God aside, it’s that they’re bringing you up to their level.” (Source)

When Ms. Bond became pregnant the first time, she said that Father Willenborg wanted to her to have an abortion. She refused, but the baby was lost to a miscarriage. She became pregnant again, and this time carried the baby to term. She entered into a legal agreement with the Franciscans that they would pay her about $85,000 in child support over the first 18 years of the boys life.

Still, Father Willenborg and Ms. Bond continued their relationship with little consequence to the priest.

An unexpected turn of events brought their idyll to an end. A young woman showed up at Ms. Bond’s house in a rage. She told Ms. Bond that she had been in a sexual relationship with Father Willenborg for years, since she was in high school. (Reached by phone last week, the woman confirmed the relationship, and said it had caused her a lifetime of pain. She asked to remain anonymous.) Immediately, the Franciscans sent Father Willenborg to a treatment center in New Mexico run by a religious order, for priests with sexual disorders and substance addictions.

Ms. Bond says that after that, they had sex together only once more: immediately after he returned from seven months at the center. She still has the receipt from the hotel room. (Source)

In a court deposition years later, Father Willenborg said that he was never disciplined and never counselled to leave religious life. Ms. Bond got help from a group that was originally founded to help priests and their lovers discern whether the men should leave Orders an marry or break off the relationships.

“We were naïve,” Mrs. Finnegan said. “We quickly discovered that many of these priests were playboys. They weren’t looking for any discernment, they were simply staying and playing. It was the women who needed the support. Unfortunately, many women accept the kind of abuse from a priest that they would never accept if they were dating another man.”

She said that in 25 years, Good Tidings had been contacted by nearly 2,000 women who said they were involved with priests, many who had signed child support and confidentiality agreements like Ms. Bond’s. There are similar support groups in at least seven countries.

A landmark study in 1990 by the scholar A. W. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine, found that 20 percent of Catholic priests were involved in continuing sexual relationships with women, and an additional 8 percent to 10 percent had occasional heterosexual relationships. (Source)

That's right, 20% of Roman Catholic Priests were involved in continuing sexual relationships with women. That's not just occasional boundary slipping--that's ongoing relationships.

The situation with Ms. Bond and Father Willenborg became more complex. She wanted help from the Franciscans to pay for her son's college education. They resisted, but after a paternity test confirmed the priest was the boy's father they eventually settled at paying half the cost. But then son, Nathan, was diagnosed with cancer. The church has been reluctant to help with the medical costs.

This sort of situation does make a case for ending mandatory celibacy for Roman Priests. My guess is that there will probably be Married priests before we see women priests. Indeed, there are already a few married RC Priests. It might also help with vocation crisis in the RC Church.

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The Sex Talk

It's been a wonderful retreat. I think the kids are getting a lot out of it. In the beginning I think it was a big adjustment, perhaps. One of the monks used to word "spooked" to describe them! But after 24 hours they all seem to fit right in. Kids are great at adapting like that. Interestingly, our severely autistic boy is thriving here. we suspect it's the structure he likes. When the bell rings he trots down to the chapel with a delighted expression. I think he must find the repetitive chanting of the psalms soothing, as well.

I've been making the kids go to all the Daily Offices. That means that they are in the chapel praying with the monks five times a day! But as I said, they seem to be enjoying it for the most part. Yesterday (Friday) we had two sessions on prayer. My hope is that exposure to different styles of prayer will help the kids learn what works for them.

Today we had a talk about "human relations"--which is a polite way to say "sex." Kerrie and felt strongly that we needed to do a unit on human sexuality. Our experience is that what the kids get at school is mostly biology and disease prevention, and that if the church has anything to say about human sexuality confirmation class is the time to say it! We divided the kids by gender for "the talk." the guys and I ended up talking quite a bit about dating. How do you meet girls? How do develop relationships with them? It was important to me that they see how foundational principles of Christian ethics--such as the respect for every living being--translates into choices in their personal lives.

On a practical note, I thought it was important to tell the boys about how common it is for girls and women they may date to have had traumatic experiences in the past. Certainly I dated girls who had been through painful experiences and had a need for healing around those issues. The important thing for a guy in that situation, I told them, is to be patient and gentle. Very, very patient, and very, very gentle!

Was it an awkward talk? Maybe a little, I won't lie. But I'm glad I did it, especially in light of the sexual abuse workshop I attended earlier in the week in which Father Ray pointed out the need for the church to teach kids about the sacredness and ethical implications of sex. The Diocesan coordinator for safe-church practices affirmed that the policy of the diocese is that such conversations are appropriate as part of religious education in parishes, so long as we have parental consent (which we did).

Anyway... I'm glad we did it! The next time we'll have a talk like that will probably be pre-marital counseling! God help them in the mean time!

This afternoon Bede is coming to talk to the kids. We suspect that after two full days the kids will have a lot of questions about what they've observed at the monastery. It's been neat to see how they've clicked into the routines of life here!

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Sermon - Pentecost 13 2009

I was very pleased with how this sermon turned out. I was nervous to preach about sex. I thought about how I was really trusting the congregation not to freak out. Afterwards one person told me some stories about very personal anecdotes they had heard from the pulpit in years past. By comparison my little sermon was tame! So next time I could be more explicit without so much worry.

Still, one visitor told me that she came from a Pentecostal tradition and thought my sermon was just edgy enough for her! It's important to preach where people are at, ya know?

Preaching about something of such interest to me made this a very easy sermon to both write and deliver. Still, when I listen to it I can't help but think of all the stuff I could have/should have mentioned! Anyway, enjoy!



Here's the audio...


Here's a direct link to the MP3 file...

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Is Food the New Sex?

George Will has an interesting editorial in the Washington Post about how food has become the new bell-weather of personal morality, replacing sex. This argument about how moral attitudes toward food and sex are being transposed is based on a policy-review document entitled "Is Food the New Sex" by Mary Eberstadt.

Essentially, the argument goes that Americans (and I presume they mean "North Americans") are increasingly loading food choices with moral implication. So people are becoming prudes about eating fair trade, organic, healthy, etc. food. But choices around sex seem to have less moral weight or meaning.

[Eberstadt] notes that for the first time ever, most people in advanced nations "are more or less free to have all the sex and food they want." One might think, she says, either that food and sex would both be pursued with an ardor heedless of consequences, or that both would be subjected to analogous codes constraining consumption. The opposite has happened -- mindful eating and mindless sex. (source).

How do we account for the imbalance of prohibition on two goods that, objectively speaking, are both harmful in excess? Why the the transposition of inhibition from one to the other?

But her argument goes much further than showing that this has happened--she wants to explore the relationship between the sexual revolution and our current attitudes toward food:

Today "the all-you-can-eat buffet" is stigmatized and the "sexual smorgasbord" is not. Eberstadt's surmise about a society "puritanical about food, and licentious about sex" is this: "The rules being drawn around food receive some force from the fact that people are uncomfortable with how far the sexual revolution has gone -- and not knowing what to do about it, they turn for increasing consolation to mining morality out of what they eat."

Perhaps. Stigmas are compasses, pointing toward society's sense of its prerequisites for self-protection. Furthermore, as increasing numbers of people are led to a materialist understanding of life -- who say not that "I have a body" but that "I am a body" -- society becomes more obsessive about the body's maintenance. (source)

It's a fascinating analysis of the relationship between two primal human drives. And who can resist reading an essay with section titles like "Broccoli, pornography, and Kant"?

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Dutch Lose Porn Archive

I'm on a roll with random wacky news. Check this out: the Dutch city of Leeuwarden is missing it's pornography archive....

Spokesman Erik Krikke of the city's historical center said the archive -- which contained photos, drawings and erotic texts with a connection to the city -- may have been taken home ''accidentally'' by an employee or visitor.

''We're hoping that someone will say 'Hey, I have that in my attic' and bring it back,'' he said Thursday. ''No questions asked.'' ...

Krikke said the bulk of the archive had been assembled by a ''fanatic'' curator at the historical center, mostly during the 1960s and '70s. Items such as pictures by local photographers and artists would be difficult or impossible to replace. (source)

Yes, yes... I'm sure it was "accidentally" taken...

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The Myth of Teen Promiscuity

There have been several articles in the media lately about the "Myth of Rampant Teen Promiscuity." Basically, sociologists have determined that teens today are having less sex and are postponing the onset of sex compared to teens 10 or 20 years ago. the notion that kids today are more sexually active than their forebears is simply false. While it is true that teen pregnancy is on the rise, that may have more do with abstinence-only sex ed programmes than loosened mores. This goes against prevailing wisdom, and that discontinuity between popular myth and measured reality is, itself, a worthy topic to explore.

In her NYTimes blog Judith Warner argues that adults want to believe in teen promiscuity (and other forms of "moral panic") because it masks more complex problems. This is familiar territory, think of the alarms raised over the "Overscheduled Child," the "boys are falling behind girls in school" phenomenon, or the "Overmedicated Child."

After all, moral panics – particularly those concerning children – always serve some hidden purpose. “Modern ideas about the innocent child have long been projections of adult needs and frustrations,” Gary Cross, a professor of modern history at Penn State University, writes in his 2004 book, “The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture.” “In the final analysis, modern innocence has let adults evade the consequences of their own contradictory lives.”

All the examples of child myth-making that I’ve mentioned here have to do, at base, with the perceived corruption of childhood, the loss of some kind of “natural” innocence. When they depart from kernels of reality to rise to the level of myth, they are, I believe, largely projections that enable adults to evade things. Specifically, the overblown focus on messed-up kids affords parents the possibility of avoiding looking inward and taking responsibility for the highly complex problems of everyday life. (source)

The fact is that the best way to delay the onset of sexual activity in children is to be engaged in good solid parenting. "Teenagers with more parental supervision, who come from two-parent households and who are doing well in school are more likely to delay sex until their late teens or beyond. 'For teens, sex requires time and lack of supervision,' Dr. Kefalas said. 'What’s really important for us to pay attention to, as researchers and as parents, are the characteristics of the kids who become pregnant and those who get sexually transmitted diseases'" (source). Usually, it is argued, kids who engage in risky behaviour (sexual or otherwise) are acting out because of underlying problems such as low self-esteem, isolation/loneliness, and poor emotional intimacy with parents. Blaming traditional sex education as being too permissive or popular culture is not a sufficient response to the very real problems that some kids have.

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RIP Bettie Page

Bettie Page, the famous pin-up model, passed away at age 85. For good or ill, this most popular of post WWII models had an enormous impact on fashion, the sexual revolution, and how women are perceived in society.

Part of what makes Bettie's story so interesting is that near the height of her fame, in 1957, she disappeared from public and spent the next three decades living a relatively normal life with its ups and downs including a few failed marriages and a struggle with depression. She only reemerged as a pop icon in the 1980's and 90's, but was extremely reluctant to appear in public.

In fact, for most of those post-modeling years Bettie lived in poverty. The odd pair that rescued her were Hugh Hefner (of Playboy fame) and Billy Graham. Heffner gave her money and, I'm guessing, Hollywood connections to finally make money on her royalties. The Billy Graham crusade gave her a purpose, redemption, and even a job (she apparently worked as one of Billy Graham's advisers).

Despite being born-again Christian, Bettie never denounced her past or said that she regretted it. In fact, she said in interviews that she was proud of her role in shifting the lines of decency in American culture.

Photos of Bettie post-modeling career are extremely rare. The only one I know of was taken with her friend, Hugh Hefner, at the 50-Anniversary Party of Playboy. When asked about her reluctance to be photographed, she said, "I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times. I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people’s perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

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Pastor's Advice on Marriage: More Sex

The New York Times has a great article about the trend in evangelical circles to encourage (married) couples to have more sex.

Mr. Young, an author, a television host and the pastor of the evangelical Fellowship Church, issued his call for a week of “congregational copulation” among married couples on Nov. 16, while pacing in front of a large bed. Sometimes he reclined on the paisley coverlet while flipping through a Bible, emphasizing his point that it is time for the church to put God back in the bed. ...

Mrs. Young, dressed in knee-high black boots and jeans, said that after a week of having sex every day, or close to it, “some of us are smiling.” For others grappling with infidelities, addictions to pornography or other bitter hurts, “there’s been some pain; hopefully there’s been some forgiveness, too.” (source)

There have been a few influential books published recently encouraging couples to have more sex--notable 365 Nights and Just Do It. Both of these are reportedly very funny and free accounts of couples committing to have as much sex as possible despite demanding jobs, children, and middle-age. From what I've heard (I haven't read either one) the embedded gender ideas are basically mainstream (not scary in the way some Evangelical notions of gender can be).

The biblical, theological, and pastoral convictions underlying the role of sex in marriage is, of course, substantial. God wants us to have sex. So why don't we talk more openly about this in Christian marriage? When I do pre-marriage counseling with couples I usually spend at least one session talking about it. One of the things I always mention is that sex inside marriage is very different that the sort of love-making that happens in courtship or even when a couple is living together. Something shifts when you actually get married. A therapist friend of mine (Mary Gates) told me once that when you get married suddenly all your family comes into the bedroom with you. The sex "means" something it didn't before. It has become, in an important sense, more sacramental now that it is contextualized by Word and Spirit.

The notion of sex-as-sacrament is pretty profound. As a sacrament, this "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace" is a ritual that is what it represents: the union of two people "in mind, body, and soul." It has the power to accomplish that which we cannot do on our own--it takes us beyond ourselves and into a share of the bounty God promises us.

Like all sacraments, the best preparation for sex is forgiveness. Just like we ask God's forgiveness before touching Christ's body, we also need to have a similar spirit of openness and vulnerability when reaching toward our spouse. In fact, I have ever spent time in marriage prep teaching couples how to ask and grant forgiveness. If I teach them nothing else, this may the most important lesson in marriage prep. The sad thing is, many people do not know how to ask for forgiveness in this or any other relationship. Oddly, our culture right now has a hard time with this part of the sin-contrition-newlife cycle and that gets played out in marriages all the time.

Another problem for many couples has to do with the problems that arise from negotiating the tricky boundary between self and other. Psychologists call it "self-differentiation." Here's a scenario, Jane and Mike are married. They always have sex on Friday night, usually after spending time doing something as a couple going to the movies, dinner, or out with friends. Increasingly, however, Jane feels more distant from Mike. As a result, she feels less inclined to make love on Friday nights. Now, if she declines his advances this could be seen as a mark that she is living authentically and not just keeping up appearances. her actions will align with her desires. But, on the other hand it may not help her higher-level goal of having intimacy with her husband. If she has healthy self-differentiation she may be able to think something like, "I really don't feel like this right now, but I will do it for him." Poor self-differentiation might look like, "I really don't feel like this right now, what's wrong with me? I better do it anyway or Mike will get mad..." Note that having sex or not having sex in a particular situation could be the result of poor or good marital health. The key is whether your sacrificial offering of yourself is acceptable or not.

Note that in the Bible not all sacrifices are pleasing to the Lord. In fact, one has to be quite deliberate and careful about what is offered up and how. The wisdom here is that God doesn't want us to make sacrifice for His sake but ours! Thus, one must always examine that which is to be offered carefully.

I'm still learning how to do this this kind of discernment around self-differentiation. Something about the ability to be ones self and yet utterly connected to the other at the same time. Meditation helps, I think, as do the other typical spiritual disciplines: prayer, service to others, listening, study, etc. It's a lesson that takes a lifetime to learn.

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Vicar Has Unfortunate Potato Accident

From The Telegraph:

Vicar went to hospital with potato stuck in bottom

A vicar attended hospital with a potato stuck up his bottom - and claimed it got there after he fell on to the vegetable while naked. The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.

He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.

The vicar had to undergo a delicate operation to extract the vegetable, one of a range of odd items medics in

Sheffield have had to remove from people's backsides or genitals.

Others include a can of deodorant, a cucumber, a Russian doll – and a carnation.

Speaking of the vicar, A & E nurse Trudi Watson, of Sheffield's Northern General Hospital, said: "He explained to me, quite sincerely, he had been hanging curtains naked in the kitchen when he fell backwards on to the kitchen table and on to a potato.

"But it's not for me to question his story. He had to undergo surgery to have it removed."

She advised anyone tempted to use such objects in sex games to think again.

"It can be very dangerous and potentially life-threatening," she said.

"Surgery can lead to infection, nasty scarring, and it could possibly end up with the person having to use a colostomy bag as a result."

A hospital trust spokeswoman in Sheffield said: "Like all busy hospitals we do see some unusual accidents.

"But our staff deal with them in a discreet, professional and kind way." (source)

I love how the hospital admin is claiming that they provided this poor guy with "discreet, professional" care! Sure doesn't seem that way from the article...

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Infidelity on the Rise

According an article in the NYTimes, adultery is on the rise among older men and young couples. One possible explanation, better sexual health among older folks:

Among older people, a host of newer drugs and treatments are making it easier to be sexual, and in some cases unfaithful — Viagra and other remedies for erectile dysfunction, estrogen and testosterone supplements to maintain women’s sex drive and vaginal health, even advances like better hip replacements. (source)

More troubling for me is the shift in relatively young marriages. "About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively." One possible cause, the Internet?

In younger couples, the increasing availability of pornography on the Internet, which has been shown to affect sexual attitudes and perceptions of “normal” behavior, may be playing a role in rising infidelity. (source)

Interesting, but totally speculative from a scientific point of view.

The news isn't all the bad. The article ends of the following optomistic note:

The General Social Survey data also show some encouraging trends, said John P. Robinson, professor of sociology and director of the Americans’ Use of Time project at the University of Maryland. One notable shift is that couples appear to be spending slightly more time together. And married men and women also appear to have the most active sex lives, reporting sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week. (source)

An aside: The Talmud (Jewish commentaries on the Law) includes a fascinating discussion among Rabbis about about sex (within marriage, naturally). It is the man's obligation to provide physical affection, not his right to demand it. Indeed, sex is one of the three basic rights guaranteed to women in Jewish law (the others being food and clothing). He cannot legally withhold sex, even if the couple has already produced children. However, she cannot withhold it as a form of punishment, either.

The frequency of sex recommended by the Talmud depends on the husband's profession (and may be modified by the marriage contract). Sailors, for example, were supposed to have sex rarely. But laborers were supposed to make love more often. Scholarly types, including Rabbis, were supposed to do it about once a week. So there you go! If you're interested in Jewish views about sex, check out the book Kosher Sex.

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A Rare Note About Schismatics

I normally don't comment much on this blog about the ongoing unpleasantness in the Anglican Communion. But the latest news from Jerusalem is just too juicy to pass up: a group of conservative Bishops meeting in Jerusalem have decided to redefine what makes them "Anglican."

The conservatives’ statement said that although they acknowledged Canterbury’s historic position, they did not accept the idea “that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

They said that membership in their conservative alliance within the Communion would be determined by 14 principles of theological orthodoxy laid out in a manifesto they released on Sunday, which they called the “Jerusalem Declaration.” (source)

Funny how they are willing to abandon traditions like the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the the Lambeth Conference (which they wanted to undermine by meeting ahead of) when it suits them. Also significant that they are framing this as an anti-Colonial movement. (Note, by the way, that they met in Jerusalem despite the objections of the Anglicans there who feared the impact this would have on the delicate relations they have with their Christian and Muslim and Jewish neighbours.)

But perhaps most troubling and non-Anglican is this weird "Jerusalem Declaration": Since when is communion determined by passing a test of theological orthodoxy? Note that they want to return to the 1662 BCP as the standard of worship and the "plain reading" of the Bible (modern scholarship be damned!) They also, of course, make male-female marriage one of their founding doctrines. It's so odd to me--if you are going to define a church with 14 principles, to make one of them about sex and none about, for instance, economic justice. Jesus had very little to say about sex or marriage (avoid divorce, adultery is bad, weddings need booze, etc.) but lots to say about the evils of wealth. Sigh.

So they are taking their toys and going home. Fine. Let them split off like all the other splinters from the Anglican Communion. All I know is that I have a very nice little Garden that God wants to me to do something with. And boy are those tomato plants getting tall!

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Spiritual Partnership

My attention was attracted to this story about two American Buddhist teachers, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, a man and woman, who are living together in a yurt in Arizona. What makes this remarkable is that they say they are celibate but have also vowed to never be more than 15 feet apart. Even more interestingly, he insists on keeping his monastic vows.

Male-female spiritual partnerships are not unknown in Tibetan Buddhism. In order to practice "Highest Yoga Tantra," for instance, an aspirant must give up his monk vows (including celibacy) and begin having very ritualized sex with a compatible adept. This kind of Tantra is a real fascination for Westerners, of course, although I don't think it's common nor nearly as "fun" as it sounds to most people. It's a very disciplined endeavor in real life--one of the main practices involves maintaining a high level of arousal for long periods of time (like, hours) without orgasm. But, again, one must give up being a monk in order to practice this form of Tibetan spiritual discipline.

An anthropologist might say that this phenomenon is a kind of "transgressive sacrality"--that is, a religious practice which derives it's efficacy from it's violation of religious taboo:

Transgressive sacrality’ within a religious tradition is something completely different [from heresy] for, though violating the interdictions and observances of the tradition in question, it does not seek to replace the latter. Instead it lays claim to a superior degree and second order of spirituality derived precisely from the violation of socioreligious interdictions whose general validity and binding force is not at all questioned by the transgressor. In fact, transgressive sacrality cannot operate without the existence of such binding and powerful taboos, and often presents itself as an esoteric form of the mother-religion, the latter serving as the exoteric prerequisite and recruiting ground for it. (source)

The idea of transgressive sacrality is often linked with the "crazy wisdom" tradition within Buddhism--esteemed teachers violating the rules as a kind of pedagogy. Living a Paradox as a way to break through spiritual materialism.

But this couple is not doing HYT (Highest Yoga Tantra)--but instead are trying to model a kind of male-female spiritual partnership of a different kind. They describe their reasons for doing this thusly:

One, he felt that it was impossible to keep secrets in this age of Google Earth. Two, he decided that if Buddhism was really going to succeed in America, it would have to be more inclusive of women.

“If these ideas that will help people are going to make it in the West,” Ms. McNally said, “it can’t be a male-dominated culture, because people are not going to accept that.” (source)

They are transgressive not because they are having sex (which they say aren't), but because they are challenging traditional notions of gender and relationship within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Monks aren't supposed to do this kind of thing.

But their practice — which even they admit is radical by the standards of the religious community whose ideas they aim to further — has sent shock waves through the Tibetan Buddhist community as far as the Dalai Lama himself, whose office indicated its disapproval of the living arrangement by rebuffing Mr. Roach’s attempt to teach at Dharamsala, India, in 2006. (In a letter, the office said his “unconventional behavior does not accord with His Holiness’s teachings and practices.”) (source)

Yet there is something undeniably appealing about this kind of practice. It's marriage times ten--an exercise is attending to someone other than yourself!

They eat the same foods from the same plate and often read the same book, waiting until one or the other finishes the page before continuing. Both, they say, are practices of learning to submit one’s will to that of another. (source)

Marriage is a spiritual discipline, and I think looking at these kinds of extreme examples from other traditions can be helpful for understanding Christian marriage. For one thing, if gives us a way to understand intimacy that is not necessarily sexual.

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J.C.'s Girls

Here's an interesting story: there is a ministry in Los Angeles called J.C.'s Girls. A former stripper turned evangelist has created a ministry reaching out to strippers and their clients. Heather Veitch is also trying to change the culture of local churches to accept sex-workers who are looking for the Gospel and brave enough to risk rejection by congregations.

My favorite quote:

And I came to [my pastor] and said, "Matt, um, I want to go into strip clubs and tell strippers about God." And he said, "Heather, go make it happen."

So part of this story is the empowerment of lay ministry to do unconventional evangelism into cultures that are alien to mainstream Christianity. At first I was a bit suspicious because this looked like a bait-and-switch kind of approach, but as I've listened to Heather's story a bit more I see that her approach is actually much more loving and open-hearted than that. She is the real deal.

No doubt her visibility will be raised even more by the documentary film about her, "The Pussycat Preacher," but she has already been on the talk show circuit.

Something else about her is worth noting: her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him disabled. So she is raising her kids, taking care of her husband, earning the money, and do this ministry on top of all that! More power to her.

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