Tag Archives: imagination

Inside Ethan Frome

Books, Film, Poetry, The Arts, , , , , , ,

Please, I beg you, 
Do not speak kindly to me.
Will you not employ those gentle words;
Words that imply a tenderness toward me,
Words indicating something beyond 
A superficial concern, 
Words proposing that you have cared for me, 
Words to suggest that you have truly seen me?

Again, I implore you, 
Do not ply me with such talk.
Will you not deploy that lasting language;
Language indicating that I am not alone,
Language that wraps round my mind 
As a downy shawl,
Language filling a moment with sweet assurance,
Language laced through with prohibited promise;

Offering to hide me from the ever present cold,
From frigid winter being most of all I’ve known,
Offering to shield me from the bitter wind of envy, 
From the bruising hail of callous rage, 
Offering to shelter me from the flood of frustrated hopes,
From the reckless malice of the unsettled,
Offering to protect me from the rising tide of hatred, 
From the penetrating gaze of the anguished?

Be still, I beseech you.
Your discourse quickens the imagination,
Pledging to spill over the edges of dreams;
To pour into consciousness,
To course down the breast,
To fill the hungry heart
With precious reminiscences 
Of the one who uttered it.

Therefore then
Wield cautiously that fertile expression
Pulsing so near the wasted barren land,
Giving birth to thought disallowed
T’would rush flaming toward 
The dry parched field,
Gently whispering round the ear,
Easily caressing the nape,

Thought delicately
Meandering round the bare shoulders,
Pressing toward the ever willing flesh,
Thought of being lifted, invited in, 
Comforted and made warm,
Threatening to send one
Storming brazenly forth 
To capture a place 
One is forbidden even to visit.

L.L. Shelton, Copyright 2014

Brief Thoughts Regarding Human Sexuality

Bible Talk, Living the Word, Married Life, , , ,

(An Addendum to, Brief Thoughts of Love)

My Young Friend,

Each of us is composed of both physicality- our body and the stuff therein, and of a soul or spirit- the eternal self; that was a thought in the mind of God before our physical existence and destined to continue long after our body has perished. We are each in possession of a mind- emotion and intellect (albeit there are varying degrees of functionality among them) and along life’s way we each develop a personality and a sexuality, both a reflection of a deeper development- that of character. Character is the essence of who you are; it is your nature. These things are inextricably intertwined until the day of physical death. Until then, one can not function apart from the other and each is connected to and affected by the other. This is a terrifically complicated and marvelous design.

God has created our sexuality specifically to allow for and to encourage the most intimate level of communication in relationship that two people and their Heavenly Father can together experience. He designed this aspect of the system to lend us the ability to procreate and to grant us the capability of relating in a way that is illustrative of that way in which The Trinity relates, and of the way in which God in Christ relates to His people. Also, it is to be a reward unique to the covenant marriage of a man and a woman in the Presence of God.  It may be startling to consider that God is a part of the expression of one’s sexuality, and yet it should be obvious. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere at once. As Christians, we are promised that His Holy Spirit lives in us- all the time. Our God does not slumber or sleep, rather He carefully watches over us continually.

However, because we are living in the contaminated environments of the earth and of our own fleshly bodies, we are apt to the perversion of our sexualities. Though there are myriad natural consequences as a result of expressing one’s sexuality outside of the one relationship for which it was designed, and those consequences are always spiritually degrading, often emotionally detrimental, and many times physically debilitating; still we are highly likely to misuse this aspect of ourselves, and yet Christ insists that we are to strive for sexual purity.

Interestingly, Christ is apparently unconcerned with the technicalities of things surrounding human sexuality; things such as whether or not a person should date at this age or that, whether a kiss is sexual or not, or that a person refrain from intercourse until marriage. It is possible that I have, again, startled you. I mean to convey that Christ’s concern is for something infinitely greater- our sexual purity; and sexual purity has its roots in the imagination. It is in our imaginations that He desires to reign supreme. Pure sexuality begins in the thought life and can never be achieved apart from it.

Sexual purity is maintained through the constant effort to view God, ourselves, and others appropriately, as living beings valued beyond price, worthy of sacrificial love; as opposed to objects to be used and abused according to our whims or our erroneous desires.

In God’s economy, there is truly no need for such deliberations as whether or not to hold hands on the first date; as He has in Christ surely freed us from endless and  rigorous  contemplations of the nature of “angels on the head of a pin” rather, God has allowed for us to be (in Him) all that we can be!

In His Love,
An Old Friend

See Psalm 51, Matthew 19, Mark 7

Copyright, 2012. L.L. Shelton