All Old Users

It’s been said that females and males can’t be friends because of the big S word involved…..that friendship without sex equals questionable intentions (blame When Harry met Sally!). I’ve always found that to be a very simplistic and stereotypical view of men and women relationships. I personally, have been able to have two very close platonic male friends (they were “bridesmen” in my wedding). As a woman in the book quotes, we have never nor will we ever engage in any sexual intimacy. Instead, we laugh, we talk, and we share stories. I often find myself getting offended that people, especially church people (not all but some!) have relayed to me that having male friends somehow conflicts with God’s view of marriage and intimacy. Luckily, in this book, it seems Mr. Dan Brennan is on my side!

This author presents a different perspective from existing church culture. “Christ came not to just reduce the old disorder of lust, violence, and possession between men and women ,but to usher us into a new world of embodied communication with each other.” He submits that it is possible to live together in Christ without lust or sexual innuendos interfering with the friendship. In focusing on the fact that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, our focus shifts onto our common bond of Christianity rather than our own temptations and desires.

Read more

For as long as I have been a Christian, I remember being taught, repeatedly, the story of Billy Graham and his attempt to always be above reproach.  I have no idea if the stories of the Reverend Graham are true or not but they went something along the lines of:  Reverend Graham would not get on an elevator if he’d be on board with a woman alone, that he wouldn’t counsel a woman unless a third party was present, etc.

I never questioned these stories or Reverend Graham’s intent until recently.  A dear friend of mine, we’ll call her Molly, came home from college and told me the story of how she couldn’t visit a male friend of hers because his wife wasn’t available to “œtag along”.  Molly understood her friend’s feelings but yet she wound up feeling “œicky”; which was quite vexing to her because she did nothing wrong.

Read more

Mary Magdalene had a difficult couple of days after her best friend Jesus was crucified. She was numb all over. When she couldn’t stand it any longer she decided she would go to the place her friend was buried and mourn for him there.

She gathered up the spices of her religious custom to ensure that he was properly buried. She arrived at the tomb and found that Jesus’ body was gone. Immediately, Mary loses it. She goes to find a couple of Jesus’ guy friends to help her figure out what happened.

The guys showed up and sure enough Jesus’ body is no longer in the tomb. The guys totally forgot that Jesus’ was going to rise from the dead and they get angry. They looked at each other and said, “OK, it’s on. Let’s get everyone else and find the punk that took Jesus’ body and teach him a lesson.” They totally forgot that Mary was there and just leave her behind as they go to “save the day.”

Mary was not in a good place emotionally. Her good friend Jesus was crucified and when she came back to the tomb to care for him his body was gone. Her friends didn’t really ask how she was doing; they just came up with a plan to right the wrong and left her in the garden alone. After all of the emotion of the last few days she broke down in front of the tomb weeping for the friend she lost…not once, but twice.

Read more

Note: Due to a mis-communication, there were two posts for chapter 3.  Here is the second version.

So I am going to start out by stating my own personal opinion and go from there. I truly do believe it is possible for a friendship to happen between males and females. We start out as kids and maybe your best friend growing up is the boy next door. Then somewhere in junior high and high school, you start thinking about cute boys and he is thinking about hot girls. It goes to show that as kids we have a certain maturity we tend to lose as we get older and trends get sexualized.

In chapter 3, it starts out comparing our segregation of sexes to the segregation of blacks and whites. History shows us that cross-gendered and cross-raced friendships have not been popular. But in a day were sex is everywhere you turn, can you really assume a man and woman eating lunch together really are just eating lunch? There is nothing else more?

Read more

In October 1939, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a speech in which he famously likened Russia to a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, and then pondered over the likely  key to understanding that country’s motivations.  In Chapter 4 of Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, Dan Brennan’s argument changes gear.  It is as if he is approaching open country after having had to negotiate the civic roadblocks and pot-holes that Freud, Hollywood and an overly cautious evangelical approach have put in the way of a frank discussion of relations between the sexes.  Or to follow Churchill, Brennan at last feels comfortable enough to suggest a key which might unlock the mysterious compulsion that exists within human beings to encounter or know (in all its rich shades of meaning) the opposite sex.   That key, in Brennan’s own words, “˜a rich relational and theological concept’, is union. By union or oneness, he appears to mean a spiritual progression for humans in their relationships towards embodying the unity experienced by the Triune God.

Knowing that he is opening up a huge field for discussion, Brennan focuses on theology and scriptural interpretation to ground his arguments.  He comes up with twelve reasons (if this seems dry, the reality is different) why the concept of sacred union should impact upon our understanding of gender relations. The Genesis story describes man and woman as made in the image of God, and their human spirituality and sexuality as “˜very good’.   The new order in Christ ushers in new social possibilities in all relationships, and the brother-sister metaphor used by Paul sanctions healthy intimacy.  Furthermore, the metaphors employed by Paul in his letters for the close solidarity of the Church are not segregated by sex, nor are the “˜one anothers’ of welcome, prayer, holy greeting and confession.  Marriage is a human, rather than heavenly sacrament and points to a transcendental union.  And attachment in friendship can be stronger than some familial bonds.   The “˜breathtaking beauty’ of triune love celebrates the difference of persons, and if the role of women has historically been undervalued, it is still possible to uncover examples of female spiritual leadership in the Old and New Testaments, and most importantly there are feminine metaphors, as well as masculine, for God in Scripture. Lastly, there is the example of Jesus, whose close friendships with women prefigure the possibility of intimate but non-sexual association.

Read more

Guest Post by Joanna, she blogs at http://joannamuses.com/ The first post in the series is here.

Our culture loves romance. Pop music is full of it, it has a book genre named after it, whole movie genres centre around it and many magazines devote themselves to the romances of the famous. Romance even has a special day dedicated to it- Valentine’s day.

Christian culture also likes romance. We may seek to present a more wholesome version of it, but nonetheless, romance is given a valued place in Christian culture. We talk about true love waiting or finding our soul mate. We preach sermons on the goodness of marriage. Christian bookstores are filled with books about getting or staying married.

On the surface these all seem like wonderful things. Some of them are good, biblical things. However, in chapter 2 of Sacred Unions, Sacred passions, Dan Brennan contends that there is an dark side to our elevation of romantic relationships.

Read more

Summary: A thorough review regarding obsessional thought only Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (aka “Pure O”)

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle Edition

As a psychologist, I am interested in staying updated on current academic literature. I was interested in reading Imp of the Mind by Lee Baer as I was told it focused almost completely on pure obsessional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. So many people have the preconceived notion that OCD regularly manifests itself as Jack Nicholoson’s portrayal in as Good As it Gets (e.g. hand washing, stepping on cracks, being cleanly, etc). This can lead to misdiagnosis as obsessional ONLY OCD is actually the most common subtype. Most of the people suffering from this disorder are secretive regarding their obsessional thoughts as the thoughts tend to be violent or distressing, such as harming others or contracting a serious disease. It is unfortunate that uninformed individuals may fear individuals with OCD if their thoughts were disclosed. The one thing that OCD diagnosed people should know is that they are very unlikely, very very unlikely, to ever act on these thoughts, despite what their mind may tell them.

Dr. Baer conducted an excellent overview of obsessional only OCD as well as its’ treatment and course of therapy. He starts by giving an example of a man who became obsessed with having sexual intercourse with animals. He also discusses a priest with extremely sexual thoughts and a women consumed with believing she may be a pedophile. The very difficult thing for OCD sufferers is they are almost always aware that their thoughts are “unwanted” or “disgusting”, hence the “imp” invades the mind and makes the suffer worry more for having disturbing thoughts. The fact is that most people have unwanted thoughts and are able to brush these thoughts aside and think “That was strange” or “What a weird thought!’ For individuals diagnosed with OCD, they become hyper-focused on the thought and the interpretation of said thought, often characterizing themselves as “evil” or “bad” for having the unwanted thought. This can lead to anxiety and depressive symptoms as well.

Read more

Takeaway: Probably best suited for bored winter moments

I recently read Three Junes after it was recommended to me by several avid readers with glowing recommendations. I was a bit hesitant at first because this book is one of the “œmultiple perspectives” books which, at times, I find exhausting to read. This book has many themes, which include, but are not limited to, infidelity, fertility problems, aesthetic pleasures, extreme family discord, and most prominently, HIV/AIDS contraction and symptom management. Those are many differing and serious themes, even for a somewhat long book.

The problem with Three Junes is not that it is badly written. It tends to drag towards the middle but has some creative prose. The main issue I had with this bestseller is character development- specifically the question of WHY? Why does the main character engage in these activities? Why does he/she act this way? Why did he/she react this way? These questions never really get answered, for any of the three main characters (or main perspectives aka the three Junes/summers of the main characters), leaving the reader confused and feeling like the characters are one dimensional, and to be honest, stereotypical. Fenno, a gay book shop owning main character, feels especially rudderless. The decisions, or more accurately, his lack of decision and apparent apathy for life made him difficult to connect with on any level.

Read more