Fornication

To the Q&A today, a fellow gaiaster wrote that fornication was his favourite distraction.
Another wrote: sex
lol
I was not so bold.
I wrote something airy for my favourite distraction and then wrote that my second favourite was sort of well like had something to do with maybe....
 ...at any rate, the point being tripping over the word of my fellow: fornication.
hmmm... seems so unpleasant the way I was raised.
Though our limbic systems are quite invididual as to what makes us recoil and what gives us pleasure.  Depends on some delicate age and context when certain words were introduced I suppose.

So I wrote back to my gaia friend to say I had never been sure what the word meant, and if you please, what does it mean.

And he wrote:  voluntary sexual intercourse between persons not married to each other.

To which I responded:  "ah well, now it is clear where my confusion lies. You see, being raised by a clergyman, I always thought the definition of fornication was: sex that shatters the cultural harmony of its particular context and thereby results in pain for the participants or those close to them socially. Wheras I thought that volunary sexual intercourse between persons not married to each other has limitless possibilities of spin off from joy to pain to learning to regressing, offspring, to disease, to pleasure to soaring on the wings of eagles and angels. "

You see, I sometimes sit and think about Jesus' words. For instance, he said, "I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law." Jesus is the only person who has ever kept the law.  The Jews tried and failed.  The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes...tried and failed.  And then there is the "Law".  ______________________________________________________________
For example: Deut 22: If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death-the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you.  But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die.  Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor,  for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.  If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered,  he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. _____________________________________________________________
Which of course, in our particular cultural context, to "keep", would be to cause great pain to the participants and all in social context around them.

And yet Jesus words, Jesus gentle hand to guide us,  all seems so simple doesn't it?

The LAW is to have our heart and body and soul and eyes open in every moment toward our Father in Heaven and in every moment treat all those around us with the care we would wish to be treated ourselves.  And having to juggle time and space and culture and social context and our fellow in each moment, to turn our face toward the eternal and ask for quidance in every moment.  And listen.  And then be open to what we hear in guidance that both asks us to sacrifice our own desire at times, and at other times reach beyond anything we ever knew before in joy and interconnection and praise of creation.  Pain/sin and compassion/sacrifice and joy/pleasure:  are guides.

The LAW will always demand we look after others as ourselves. Though in very few times and place in history will that mean a raped young girl has no safer house to go to then that of her rapist.  But when that was written, a raped girl was now not going to find a husband, had no women's shelter or welfare program.  Compassion meant she had to be brought to the in-gorup and given shelter and life and childbearing and family. 

We do things differently now in our culture.  Sometimes now, sex outside of marriage is a wonderful thing.  :)

Though just as often, care is not taken that it be in context of celebration of the gift of life, and be sure not to result in pain for the participants or anyone around them.
:)