Survival and Celebration

PURITY, SEX, DISASTER

Sometimes disaster just takes over. Sometimes disaster wins, and all you can do is rest in Soul until the debacle passes. Wouldn’t it be nice to arrange life for maximum comfort and enjoyment? We like to think that we can. We like to think that, if we dot our i’s and cross out t’s, everything in life will be fine, or at least manageable. We like to think that life can’t just come crashing down around our ears, but of course it can. Obey the rules and fulfill your obligations and everything in life will be fine, until it isn’t. Sometimes the best response to disaster is to wait. Wait in Love. Wait in Soul. Pray. Worship. Abide. Do the best you can while you can. Don’t be crushed by your limitations. Don’t be demoralized by your helplessness. Let the logic of events and personalities play out. Life doesn’t always make sense. The poor mortal can’t always figure things out, but he goes on living anyway.

I don’t know whether I’ve made a mess of my life or not. It certainly hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would. I’ve just gone along and done the best I could, lived by my own lights. I’ve offended people I loved and lost them. But, I know the folly of trying to redeem the past. The past is past. You remember it, but you have to let it go, and there may be things about it that you will never understand.

I wish that I had been bolder and more sexually involved and aggressive as a young man. I would have had more fun. I would have been a better friend. I would have had better friends. Maybe it was the time. Things are so different now, and not necessarily better. Things are crazy now. Things we used to torture ourselves with don’t even send a ripple over the surface of today’s collective consciousness. We shackled ourselves with propriety, remorse, guilt, fear. We worried about the impression we made on others. We worried about offending them and alienating ourselves. I worried about offending God and contravening my own standards for living. I gave sex short shrift. If I could have eliminated it from my life, I would have. But, here I am, sixty years old and still sexual. I didn’t have to over-indulge sex. I didn’t have to be a sexual suicide. But, I could have enjoyed it more.

Graphic retrieved May 5, 2015, from http://www.solliday.org/wp-content/uploads/puritan-painting.png