Meditations on Eros, Masculinity, Femininity, Adam and Eve
From Brother Giles We in the West have a tendency to compartmentalize everything human. We speak of three or four loves (C.S. Lewis wrote about five). Then the tendency is to think of them as separate and different. But does that make sense? "God is Love," not "God is 3, or 4, or 5 loves." The problem we have when we compartmentalize love into separate components is that we feel that we must shut down anything which doesn't fit into our previous definition of that compartment. This can lead to a false understanding of chastity as "Don't touch this, don't think that." Now, to be sure, we must be very careful here. Those rules are all true and very important. We must not get rid of them, as has always been a temptation when people feel that rules are oppressive. Having said that, the problem with seeing chastity in terms of following rules is that, while those rules tell us when we've strayed off the path of chastity, they don't tell us a...