its connotations are basically not ethical but religious ... moral sanctity cannot be physical

THOU: What should I say to you today? My heart is heavy. The priest on the retreat said, "you are so inclined to give. Try to know God (in the Biblical sense) with vulnerability and intimacy. Try to receive." And for this wisdom, I'm glad I went. I learned something else too: that forgiveness is vulnerable to abuse, that the accuser can wield it and point it at the accused, and transform it from the cutting of a tether to the possession of the lance hitting its mark. I knew this of pity, of mercy, of sympathy (thanks to Blake)--that they can become hierarchical power structures rather than true relationships--but I had never recognized human forgiveness turning on itself this way before.

(--Though this is the same turn I give my father everyday.)

And something else: all those counselors, therapists, psychiatrists who tried to help me help myself. What a burden put on them to diagnose, to discover a treatment plan, to rest assured in their expertise that should the plan not seem (to me) to fit my needs, it is not the structure that fails, but the one placed within it. How many times did I put myself into another human being's hands, accept the course of action, find myself feeling worse, and hear: "you're resisting the process." Somehow, on the other side of side effects and symptoms, freedom awaits. But first I must put aside my sense of reality (for I am the delusional one), trust the more objective sense of the expert, live alienated from myself while I learn "healthy" behaviors and perspectives, let the drugs work their physiological magic, and, at the same time, honor my feelings.

Meanwhile not a thing has been done to address my arrogance. I am certain I can out think my helpers, that of course I know myself best. Only you can provide that realism. Only in you do I see fully that I know absolutely nothing.

I haven't felt this way in many years, Lord: angry with generically imposed structures, embarrassed by what feels facile and sentimental in psycho-spiritual exercises, misread, misunderstood, and already well-equipped from years of therapeutic coaching to cope in healthy ways. "Be gentle with yourself": journal keeping, letter writing, gardening, exercise and sunshine, hot baths, "shop for clothes," "see a movie with a friend," "be a learner as well as a teacher." What possesses the experts to think I don't attempt to do these things already? I might be an asshole, Lord, but I'm no longer a purger, a cutter, a drinker, an abuser, a selfish friend, or a suicide. I might be prone to self-pity, to anger, to manipulating men, to selfishness, to withdrawal, to terrible fears of abandonment, to laziness, to repressed feelings, and to depression. But I'm aware of it. I'm aware that I can lay those things at your feet, that this is the best thing I can do, the only thing I can do.

"Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the Word and I shall be healed": this is not magic, though it is miraculous. This is the eternal utterance of your incarnation and crucifixion, the almost imperceptible movement of grace in my spirit as it learns to give up my utterance for yours, to lean on your chest (as the Beloved disciple did at the first Mass) and to listen for the rhythms of your heart. All I must do is accept the exchange: the rhythms of the profane for the rhythms of the sacred. The river flows to the sea. All I must do is allow it to empty.

All weekend I wanted quiet time to pray. I wanted to be alone with you. I wanted silence. I wanted to be allowed to sleep. Not once did someone say: pray.

Pray.

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"Matrimony is not sinful. But it is profane. It belongs to the 'things of this world,' to the fleeting realities of our present condition (I Corinthians 7:32). The opposition between virginity and matrimony is not that of purity and impurity. As in the Old Testament, they are contrasted as sacred and profane life. Virginity is 'holy,' that is sacred in the biblical sense of the term: it is qadosh, set apart, and exalted. 'Dedicated' or, rather, 'consecrated' would be the best rendering of the adjective ayios in I Corinthians 7:34. By continence the virgin is made sacred, assumed into the sacred sphere of the divine glory." (81)

--Lucien Legrand, The Biblical Doctrine of Virginity

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