One of my covenant brothers is a man named Andrew Shearman; he is in his sixties now. It is through his trials and joys of life
that he has learned every day is to be lived to the full! A poet in his
own rite, a warrior for sure, but the lover he has become truly makes
him one of the most enjoyable people to ever be around.
When, Mo, his
wife of 40 years stands to her feet, the conversation stops, and he asks
what he can do for her. When she approaches the dinner table, he
immediately stands to his feet, and the chair is pulled out for her to
be seated. They dance, sing, travel to exotic places and are all about
the kingdom of God! My own wife finds him dreamy; he has mastered the
lover archetype!
It
is strange that the West has largely created cultures of conspicuous
consumerism, when it took as its ultimate hero and God figure a poor
simple man. Why does most of the world consider the West to be greedy
and materialistic? Why do we produce such a high rate of physically
addicted people? Why is the search for affluence and pleasure our main
concern? Could it be that we have not blessed the good side of joy and
pleasure?
Now, it comes back and bites us from behind. When I consciously seek a certain
amount of creature comfort in my life, I find that it satisfies me, and
also will never satisfy me. That is the very life-giving and creative tension to live in.
We
go to the outer world as Western Christians for our daily pleasures,
but we seldom allow them to bring us to God, or even to ourselves. We
remain split and always feeling guilty. Flesh is bad and Spirit is good
in our terrible dualism. Yet the Christian religion is supposed to be
incarnation – a love affair between flesh and spirit. It really is
quite strange.
Ours
is the only religion in the world that dares to believe that God became
flesh. Christianity says that God is love but does not appear to really
enjoy the lover. We still make our religion into a moralistic matter
instead of a mystical joy. Like Michal, the daughter of Saul, we
despise David for dancing half naked in Church; we look away from the
“Freedom”. Religion is not a proper and dignified thing, it is a love
affair! Moralisms keep us making lists for God instead of making love
to God.
The most loving men, the most generous to society and to life, are
usually men who have a lusty sense of life, beauty, pleasure, and sex –
but they have very realistic expectations of them.
The
man, who took me recently to a four-star restaurant with his elegant
wife, while speaking excitedly of the food making love to him, is the
same man who talks passionately about refugees, injustice, and Third
World issues, and he has passed these passionate concerns on to his
natural and spiritual children. He is the lover I am talking about.
