Nuns, Knitting, and Sex

Yea, I knew people in formation took courses on various topics. I’ve heard of courses on charism, ministry, community living and the like. I never heard about the psychosexual one though. But I’m sure you’ll find out about it soon. dee

Ack. Posted a couple of links with double yarn overs, but don’t know if they came through. The important thing seems to be wrapping the yarn the direction you normally work, especially if the yarn over happens on a wrong side or purl row.

If I might chime in on the relevance of a sexuality workshop for celibate religious… IMHO, if one does not have a good sense of who she is as a sexual being, and is not committed to healthy integration of that part of herself, it is not possible to make a fully informed and adult choice to live a celibate life in a way that witnesses to gospel values.

It seems to me that a lot of the sexual abuse by priests, most of whom are now older men, was a product of a lack of attention to promoting a healthy awareness on one’s psychosexual health.

another sister julie, that really made me LOL! nice one!

I learn to knit purses, then you felt them. I think that is the correct term. You wash them in hot water then they shrink. I love it it covers up all my mistakes.

OK, folks, here’s what I can say after an afternoon and entire day devoted to psychosexual development…and thanks, Sandy for your summary! This is probably restating what has already been said. Understood in its broadest sense, sexuality is about connections, and as Sandy mentioned, energy for relationships. Genital sex is one aspect of sexuality, and in US culture, having sex seems to be where sexuality begins and ends. Sexuality is about how we connect with others, show care and concern, express affection…all of which have many dimensions. So much of this is about basic human development…regardless of our status as married, single or consecrated celibates, we all have need for connection with others, including intimacy (a deep, meaningful relationship).
That’s been the past 2 days, in a nutshell.

DL25, I agree with your statement,
If no one understand the committment they are making, then they are not going to be prepared.
Part of being at this workshop with other novices is so that we have tools to bring to our discernment and personal development. I say ‘tools’ because lots of this is a life process, not something that can be addressed once and for all in a 2 day workshop.

Thank you Jill for bolding all those words–it makes me look very smart

Haha, yes I am in the process of learning nun, but I don’t think I have mastered it yet. I speak ballet pretty well though-Lol. Good luck on your knitting!

Just throwing it out there: if you google “psychosexual development” you are going to get 3 zillion citations on Freud (with some Jacques Lacan citations thrown in) and, except for the fact that Sister Jill used the words “genital sex” and Sister Sandy referenced “lesbian women”, not much of what you find in those googled citations will seem remotely related to what the Sisters wrote re: “energy for relationship”. Freudian theories are much more difficult to employ usefully than anyone ever tells you and, unfortunately, in the ether world, the term “psychosexual development” equals Freudian theory. You have to dig to find more useful and less superficial (read: less orifice-oriented or, in jeanspeak, less “orificial”) understandings of psychosexual development….and what it means to live fully as clergy or religious: as sexual beings (being so designed by God) who have consecrated their “sexual” or “relationship” energy to God and God’s people.

There was a knockout article in (I think) the 2008 VISION Magazine Vocation Guide on sexuality in religious and clerical lives. I found a brief VISION article online at the VISION site (it might be the one I remember, or not); here are some excerpts from a Marist brother which capture this issue for me:

—-”Would it surprise you to learn that some of the most sexual people I know also live lives of celibate chastity? Spend time with any one of them and you will come away with this lasting impression: Here is a person who is profoundly human and deeply spiritual”.

—-”Reluctant to talk about our experience of living celibate chastity, we fall back on a familiar set of responses when asked to explain our choice: “For the sake of the kingdom,” we say, or “in order to love everyone and not just one person,” or even “to be more available to others.” Having gotten those reasons on the table, we have also been known to take a collective deep breath and hope that no one asks any more questions. Is it any wonder that a number of young people have come to think of celibate chastity as asexuality—not being sexual, a sort of neutered existence?”

—— “As a person choosing a life of celibate chastity, then, I put my emphasis on developing and pursuing ways of loving, rather than on genital sexual behavior or my lack of it. To live a loveless life of celibate chastity is a contradiction in terms.

“Saint Thérèse of Lisieux characterized us as exiles of the heart. She understood intuitively that our loneliness and the longings we experience have the power to lead us eventually to a place inside ourselves. More often than not, this inner sanctuary is “off limits” to all but a few people, close friends, and other men and women about whom we care deeply. Herein, we are truly ourselves and hold and cherish all that is most important to us. Passion and intimacy have their home here; in this place sexuality and spirituality come to understand that they are friends and not foes. Herein dwells the person that God has known for all time”.

—– “Philosopher Bernard Lonergan reminds us [that celibate chastity - consecrated religious life] is ‘akin to an other-worldly falling-in-love. It is total and permanent self-surrender without conditions,
qualifications, reservations.’

And who among us wants to undergo such a conversion, to embrace this revolution of the heart? Herein lies the challenge of celibate chastity: While a people may be judged to be naïve and foolish in choosing to live out their sexuality in this manner, they also commit themselves to live with passion, to be deeply spiritual and sexual at the same time. Simply put, they rediscover the fire—that longing for the Lord—that has always burned brightly within them”.

AUTHOR: Brother Seán D. Sammon, F.M.S. serves currently as superior general of the Marist Brothers of the Schools.

******************

And I connect that back to Sister Sandy’s note in this way: when we truly know ourselves as sexual beings, our passion – wherever we direct it – becomes more authentic, more vibrant, more creative. If we are called to life as religious women, knowing who we are – a straight woman or a gay woman – does not, need not change our calling or our willingness to respond to that calling. Knowing who we simply frees us to love fully by bringing into our relationship with God our full selves, our most intimate selves, the selves God wants because, when he made us, he found us beautiful just as we are and loved us just as we are.

If I do enter religious life, I know I am going to be one of those “very sexual” religious people Brother Sammon mentions: I love love. I love men; their energy energizes me. I love intimacy in all its human forms.
And I think that will never change. I hope not. This passionate little character who burns hot in every way is who I am; it is who God made me, and I am more and more sure that that is not inconsistent with consecrated religious life, with celibate chastity.

My spiritual director says to married people: “The world is full of people you could fall in love with, and you are likely to meet at least a few of them. When it happens, greet him (or her), and then go home to love the person you already chose”. I think the advice is going to hold for me if I do end up choosing religious life: the world will remain full of men I could fall in love with, and I will likely meet some of them and I will likely be aware that we could fire up a wonderful romantic love together (and I don’t just mean sex but I mean sex, too)……..and, because I am aware of my very particular “psychosexual” self and know that it is simply the way of the thing called jean, I will greet those men and then go home to love the person I already chose: God.

I hope the presentation was as good as the one I was at with my ICN groups ( I was fortunate enough to have the same workshop twice-Racine and Oconomowac) several years ago. I was incredibly impressed with the speaker (a woman religious). What a wonderful necessary ministry. I have often used what I learned there in my religious life. I wish my older Sisters would have had something like that in their formation. Some get the information belatedly, which helps some. Jill explained it well. Sexuality is important and relevant to everyone even vowed celibates.

Jean, I agree.

Dee – I love your language: “right (and appropriately loving) relationship”.

Makes me think (in my very “stream of consciousness” way) of my favorite bit of Jeladdin Rumi’s poetry: “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground”. Our trick is just to learn the way that nurtures our very particular pieces of ground.

It has been an amazingly exciting thing for me to realize that my “love of love” and a calling to religious life are not mutually exclusive. That, in fact, it is my “love of love” that allowed the Holy Spirit to get my attention. My my energy for intimacy – my “sexuality” in the sense we are using that language here – allowed me to come back to the Church. I was never going to get there except through “a conversion of the heart”. I think I came of age at a time that allowed me to believe that the Gospel’s social justice teachings were widely accepted as moral teachings for a humane and just world and, thus, who needed to go to Mass? I somehow grew up in the Catholic Church without really absorbing or understanding the spiritual necessity of being in relationship with God and Jesus. Somewhere along the line, after Hurricane Katrina, I woke up and knew that without the spirituality —————- without that dialogue, without that participation in a relationship with God, without the accountability that comes when we choose to be in relationship —————— all the rest becomes relative, subject to debate, subject to translation and adjustment to accommodate our individual convenience and desires, etc. Without relationship with God, it becomes possible to qualify and adapt and water-down and interpret Gospel teachings until they are so relative that they begin to look like “suggestions” rather than absolutes, and then there is no solid ground left. I was becoming more and more discouraged as I watched the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, the storm-ravaged among us slipping our of our grasp as a society, and I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do my social work again because I felt we were inviting people into realationship with us and then we failed to be present in the way they needed us. I was devastated: my work was one of my ways of loving in the world. I love being in relationship with people whose souls are so strong and vibrant that they refuse to be lost to the world and, thus, continue to place themselves before us and ask for our help. I love love love the loud and the difficult and demanding among our forgotten ones: they are people who are driven by the need for connection and, thus, the connection – though perhaps smelling bad and filled with fear and anger and sometimes tears – is an energetic and life-focused connection.

In the end, this conversion of the heart – by bringing me in to relationship with God – has restored me to faith that we CAN live according to Catholic social justic teachings even in our mess of a society. The covenant God offers – I will not abandon you – is the covenant I always wanted to offer to the noisy, psychotic homeless guy on the street when I convinced him to let me take him to the doctor, the community kitchen, to our shelter. I did not want to abandon him but I had a husband and a house and a life to return, too, and my friend on the corner had no place on that side of my paycheck. Relationship with God is “right relationship” with his people and, in that equation, my life is beginning to fill with a depth of intimacy and joy and authenticity in life that I could only guess at in the past.

Sister Julie, again, I love love love this site. Jean

Jen and sister,

In speaking of knitting patterns, I had great sucess with Talia from Knitty (http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring08/PATTtalia.html).

I was just browsing and looking for something totally different on the web but, as a knitting catholic, the blog caught my eye! You have a new reader!

Cheers!

Jean:

Your descriptions of the interactions between you and the victims of Hurricane Katrina were very poignant and spiritual. Thank you for writing about them. I admire people that work in that sort of ministry.

I find that “love” is so significant a part of our faith. And people who devote their entire lives to God (and, by extension, to other people) are indeed lovers of great magnitude, whether celibate or not. They are hopeless romantics who are infatuated by a love greater than the universe. This passion, or energy, for intimacy does indeed make them very sexual beings. I do feel, right down to the deepest core of my being, that my relationship with God is quite a sexual one- not a physically sexual one of course, but a sexual one nonetheless.

I was raised Catholic and spent some time away from the Church as well. Some of it was due to my age and more “worldly” interests, some was the result of my issues with the hierarchy and institutional Church and, perhaps most importantly, a lot of it originated from the fact that deep Catholic spirituality and a focus on the experience of God and God’s love was rarely if ever taught. It all seemed to be cut and dry, lifeless. I do believe for many that unless their relationship with God is personal, and not just something read in books, etc., religion can be quite uncompelling.

I’m glad you found your way back. I feel the Church has a lot of faults, but at it’s core it is beautiful. And yes, the Church has made mistakes and continues to do so, but it does far more good than negative. In some ways, that’s the bottom line.

Peace and blessings.

dee

Thank you, Jean.

What wonderful lessons to be learned. Sister your link to your sex and knitting topic totally obliterated the trashy lap dancing nun sensationalism for anyone patient enough to keep reading. Now if only I can put this all into words the next time someone attacks about preists, abuse and the catholic church. I should direct them to your blog and ask them to read for themselves before passing final judgement. In Doubt Meryl Streeps’ character was a hero for me-no doubt colored by my own experience of abuse.(Not by a religious person) Reading this made me see things in another light. The love and compassion expressed for the abuser as well as the abused (the ones not habitual monsters) is beautiful. We are all sinners all needing forgiveness.

Jean , thank you for your stories of Katrina. I need to learn to love the difficult people in my own life as you do-that is our call so hard to do but so rewarding if accomplished. The brave words of Faith of the old woman made me cry but in the best way. What a gift I’ve recieved here today. Please keep writing and sharing your experiences.