Looking for Love

This week is the week of love. Valentine’s Day approaches on Sunday and with it comes all the romance greeting card companies can bring and Godiva chocolates can feed us. I have never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I am just not. I feel it is a “forced” holiday to unnaturally force men to make grandiose romantic gestures that they normally wouldn’t make. It is expensive and it is a pain in the neck to go out to eat any night before Valentine’s Day or on the day itself. So I am not a fan of Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day and the idea of love have been on my mind lately. How could they not? Everywhere I go I am smacked in the face with red hearts, roses for sale, chocolate, etc. So in thinking about Valentine’s Day I decided to go a little out of my comfort zone today with this blog post and review a book. A book about history. A book about religion. A book about intimacy. A book about love. A book about rules. A book about….SEX! Yes, I am reviewing a book about sex today and I have forewarned my mother to stay away from the blog. Afterall she has a lot to do with my review of this book…..(shhh, no one tell her!)

So why would I, a photographer, mother and graphic designer want to review this book about let’s face it, SEX, on my blog? Because I could identify with many key issues Elrod identifies in his book as being crucial to living a life satisified spirtually and sexually.

Now don’t run, don’t click away. Keep reading….

Randy Elrod’s book “Sex, Lies and Religion” was a book about a subject I can honestly say I’ve never seen paired with Religion. But it is, and he does a very effective job of communicating the connections between the two. Being an artist I revisited some of my Art History as he delved into the familiar territory of the controversies surrounding the statue of Michelangelo’s David (he graces the cover of the book in his “almost” purest form) and that engaged me in the book as I was able to connect right away with something I love–art. And once he took me down the connections between Sex and Art History, many of which I knew and many he introduced me to, we traveled towards poetry, which of course as any reader of this blog knows is near and dear to me, to some pretty big issues I could identify with on an intimate level. Curious? Keep reading…

First Big Issue: SHAME

Yes, shame and sex have gone hand and hand with me since I was young. Hence the reason I told my mother to stay away from my blog. Being raised Catholic and later Episcopalian, I was raised in a church and home where sex was just not discussed. It was not mentioned. The “talk” with my parents was awkward and we all just wanted it over with as soon as possible.

I will never forget the night my Young Life leader came to dinner just as my mother had just told my sister and me that we could not use tampons anymore because of Toxic Shock Syndrome (a girl in our school died from it). When Denny arrived for dinner that night there was a feminine hygeine war going on because we were swimmers, we needed our tampons. And Denny arriving at the heat of our argument just added shame to the whole evening. No one talked at dinner but Denny, trying to joke about it. All at the table save my father and Denny were red in the face and unable to make eye contact. Talk about awkward! So you see, even the issue of feminine hygeine carried a veil of shame in our house. Why? It was related to SEX! Sex was something you just didn’t talk about. Period. (no pun intended..) Let alone with religion at the table for dinner (i.e. Young Life leader).

“To renounce your sexuality is to say, in effect, “This doesn’t belong to me. This sexual nature has caused me trouble and heartache, but it’s not really me; the ‘real’ me is the soul that finds itself stuck in this body. I don’t owe one thing to that bodily, sexual part of me.” (page 15)

As a girl I believed even something so natural as my menstrual cycle, a part of my human body made by God, was shameful. Therefore I didn’t want to be associated with it!

Later in life when I had trouble conceiving a child, I had to put aside that sense of shame if I was going to have a child. You cannot go through years and years of fertility treatments being uncomfortable with every sexual aspect of your anatomy and that of your husband. It just is impossible. So I had to teach myself to talk about sex with perfect strangers analyzing my every ovulation cycle and subsequent unsuccessful attempts to conceive (readers of this blog know the happy ending & that I do have two little boys). Simply the idea that at a young age I would be so embarrassed over a discussion of tampons will probably clue you in on how difficult it was for me to go through so many VERY personal physical exams and tests with complete strangers, many of them men. So I also appreciated the section of Elrod’s book in which he discusses procreation. My shame was tied with sexuality as a whole, including my womanly need and ability to conceive. So in renouncing the shame of sexuality I realize at the same time I have permission to renounce any and all shame associated with fertility.

Second Big Issue: Religion

My Catholic and Episcopal upraising has no doubt embedded in me the unrealistic perception that sex is as unreligious an act as there can be. Yes, we make babies that way but beyond that “let’s not talk about it.” So kind of like the ten commandments, sex and the discussion of it was something I saw as not being of God, too religious, go straight to hell for even thinking about it let alone doing something with those thoughts. Was I right? Of course not! And Randy’s book helped me see how warped my sense of the connections between sex and religion are in my head.

“Why through centuries, has the Church worked so hard to control sexuality? Perhaps because sexuality is so wild and free.” (page 18)

Wild? Free? Hardly the descriptive words I would use to describe sex as I was brought up to believe. But that is what is so good about this book, it hits home right where it matters. It confirmed my now adult view of sexuality that yes, I can be a sexual woman and be a faithful woman, too. But, I can have it all? Why not? If God made me and gave me my sexuality, why wouldn’t he want me to enjoy it? Did I believe all this before the book? No. I’d like to say that I was a hip, cool, sexy mama that has it ALL going on. But I’m not. I’m human. I didn’t see the spiritual side of sex but now that I’ve read Elrod’s book? I’m seeing it. And I see that I don’t need to be ashamed or feel sinful in wanting a healthy sex life.

I think Elrod’s statement that “God understands that we tend to search for love in all the wrong places” hit dead on for me. We do look for love in all the wrong places, don’t we? Many of us run from love. We run so fast that what is beside us and ahead of us is a big, messy, dizzy blur. But we don’t have to and that is why I liked this book. I liked discovering how so much I believed to be true was indeed a lie or at best, a tall tale. It made me unburden the weight of what I thought were sexual affronts and revisit sex and all that comes with it (believe me there is a LOT of detail in this book and Elrod does not hold back) and actually feel as if it was cool to talk about sex on my blog today. Before I read his book would I have blogged about this subject? Not hardly.

Did I agree with all aspects of his view on how sex and religion are interconnected? No, I didn’t. But when talking about sex and religion in one sentence I think there is room to disagree. And I’d say my Catholic roots are to blame for me not seeing eye to eye on some of his inferences. But once again, we all come to the subject of sexuality from a different perspective and therefore we’re all going to have perceptions that are alike and unlike Elrod.

So if you plan on doing something special for Valentine’s Day for your partner, consider buying this book and reading it together. If anything, it will get a healthy conversation going about a subject so many of us don’t dare talk about–SEX!

Learn more about “Sex, Lies & Religion”

And of course, as promised, I lured you all hear today with a freebie and it’s a good one! Today and today only I am giving away my fourth set of Commercial Use Vintage Valentines as my freebie. This is commercial use, no credit required (but awfully nice to get).

Download Expired

Still want some vinatage valentines? My shop at Divine Digital has some! Go check them out:

http://ow.ly/153M2

Have a wonderful day!

Cyndi

Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact. ~Marlene Dietrich

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love. ~Butch Hancock

Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions. ~Woody Allen

There’s nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex. ~Billy Joel