My March 13 sermon drew both on my experience as a facilitator of the “Our Whole Lives” curriculum and on a seminary class on the Song of Songs, specifically the work of David M. Carr. If you were intrigued by what I had to say about the “sexy poetry” hiding in the Bible, you can read much more in this vein in Dr. Carr’s book, The Erotic Word: Sexuality Spirituality & the Bible. A few brief quotes from Carr’s work inform my sermon’s key points:

I work here on that premise–that sexuality and spirituality are intricately interwoven, that when one is impoverished, the other is warped, and that there is some kind of crucially important connection between the journey toward God and the journey toward coming to terms with our own sexual embodiment. (…)

To be sure, there are some who would prefer simply to disregard the Bible, but it is too deeply embedded in many of us and our culture. We ignore it at our peril. Just when we think we are free of it, old interpretations of the Bible come back and misguide us again. That is where my rereading of the Bible comes in. It is aimed at bridging the sexual-spiritual divide that continues to characterize much of Western culture. (p10-12)

I hope you find this an interesting and fruitful topic of exploration.