What does Chastity mean?
by Father Gerard Monaghan
Most people believe that being chaste means that one is not sexually active. WRONG!!!
There are many people living good chaste lives who have healthy and vibrant sex lives. It should be noted that they are married. That’s right, even married people are called to be chaste. As a matter of fact, chastity has more to do with fidelity than it does with foregoing sexual experiences. The essence of chastity is being faithful to one’s state in life. Therefore, for a married couple, it means saving their physical expression of love for their spouse, exclusively.
What does chastity mean for the single person?
For the single person it means the same thing. If you think this is crazy, stick with the tour and see for yourself. Sexual intercourse, despite what the media would indicate, is not an indoor sport. It is the ULTIMATE expression of love between a husband and wife. Sexual intercourse, despite what the media would indicate, is not merely a physical act.
It is the total self-giving of one person to another. It is so intimate that it is an emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical experience.
It is so profound that it strengthens and completes the bond of marriage.
“I love the Bible. I’m in awe of it.” “But my quest for a new kind of Christianity has required me to ask some hard questions about the Bible I love.”
“We’ve gotten ourselves in a mess with the Bible.”
“First, we are in a scientific mess. Fundamentalism…again and again paints itself into a corner by requiring that the Bible be treated as a divinely dictated science textbook.” “This approach has set up Christians on the wrong side of truth again and again.” “Many pious people deny our envirenmental crises by quoting Bible verses and mocking science. Just as they were the last to acknowledge the rotation of the earth and its revelution around the sun, they’ll be the last to acquiesce to what science is telling us about our growing ecological crises.”
“Second, we are in trouble in relation to ethics.” “…we are stuck now:…largely obsessed with narrow hot-button feuds (eg. abortion, sexual orientation, nationalism, genetic engineering) that end up being little more than litmus tests for political affiliation.”
“In the United States, white Evangelical Christians are the most fervent advocates of government-sanctioned torture and that frequent churchgoing is a statistical indicator of support for torture.”
“Third, we are in deep trouble relating to peace.” “When careless preachers use the Bible as a club or sword to dominate or wound, they discredit the Bible in a way that no skeptic can.”
“It’s an old and tired game: quoting sacred texts to strengthen an us-versus-them mentality.” “In case after case in the past, there is a kind of Bible-quoting intoxication under the influence of which we religious people lose the ability to distinguish between what God says and what we say God says.“
Taken from “A New Kind Of Christianity” by Brian McLaren. Buy it HERE.
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“There are two ways to read the Bible, frontwards and backwards. If we locate Jesus primarily in light of the story that has unfolded since his time on earth, we will understand him in one way. But if we see him emerging from within a story that had been unfolding through his ancestors, and if we primarily locate him in that story, we might understand him in a very different way.”
“…nobody in the Hebrew Scriptures ever talked about original sin, total depravity, “the Fall,” or eternal conscious torment in hell.” “It’s the shape of the Greek philosophical narrative that Plato taught!”
Taken from “A New Kind Of Christianity” by Brian McLaren. Buy it HERE.
In our increasingly scattered and diverse digital world, in which everybody marches to their own drummer, the Tiger Wood’s apology last Friday morning was one of those exceedingly rare TV events that turned into a communal experience shared by billions of people around the country and the world. Every major network ran it live like it was the President of the United States announcing a major international incident.
If you really think about it, it was theatre of the absurd. People across America gathered in their offices paying rapt and occasionally mocking attention to this: a golfer saying he was sorry for failing to control his sexual impulses. Yeah, I know it wasn’t just a golfer. Every time I think of Tiger’s infidelities I flash on that Nike commercial of kids saying, “I am Tiger Woods.” He actually did set himself up as a role model. And he happens to be the greatest athlete of our time. But it was still a golfer apologizing for screwing around. Considering the massive televison audience alone, we have definitely plowed new ground here.
Tiger seemed quite sincere and appropriately chastened. But the props were strange. Mom sitting in the front row. Business associates and friends gathered somberly as if they were at a funeral. The tough-love hugs at the end.
I liked the part where Tiger came home again to his Buddhist upbringing. I took this as a direct slap at Brit Hume of Fox News who suggested recently that if Tiger converted to Christianity all would be forgiven. This is going to be very educational for Brit. What if it turns out people can forgive a Buddhist? Yikes.
And really, really…Erin didn’t take an 8-iron to the SUV?
Dan rubbed her feet, but Fabio was Roseanne's leading man.
Dear Yenta,
I’m living with a boyfriend but can’t stop thinking about another man. How do I stop thinking about the other man? This would be especially helpful during sex.
-Wandering Eye
Dear WE,
There was an episode of the L-Word that debated whether fantasizing is cheating. According to their rubrix, one said acting on fantasy is cheating, but doing it isn’t, while the other said when you start wanting something besides that which you have, it is time to go because you are cheating.
If you are wishing for someone else, it means you aren’t able to be present with the dude in front of you. This psychological exit means something, and it is up to you to determine why it is you can’t mentally remain in the room in the arms of your man.
What is driving your fantasy? Desiring another while being with a committed lover can mean a million things. It can mean you don’t like your homeslice anymore, or that you feel trapped and suffocated and this fantasy is a way of exiting and expressing, quietly, your freedom. Maybe he is terrible in bed and you can’t stand it.
You could be totally in love and totally scared and this fantasy is a lifeline to life beyond, keeping you grounded. Or, still, you could be curious and lusting for more, maybe even for an open relationship. (See PiggyBack Dating)
Only you know if you love one, and not the other, if your relationship is dead, if you need to be testing the waters right now. Roseanne loved her husband Dan, but she always fantasized about Fabio when sleeping with him. Dan had Fabio’s head and that’s how she did it. It didn’t, however, mean she was set to leave her husband: she loved him.
But you aren’t Roseanne, and this isn’t the L-Word, and fantasizing about someone else besides the one you are with might be a very simple sign that it is time to move on. It means that something is fishy, and needs to be scoped out. The way to make it stop is to determine what is missing and then remedy the situation so you can be present, enjoying the lover you actually have. Go live your fantasy.
Being a strong and independent woman, I probably shouldn’t be admitting this, but I can sense his desire to control me and it turns me on immensely.
The funny thing is that I’m the kind of personality you just don’t control. I am fearless and outspoken and will stop at nothing to make sure justice prevails, even when it means telling the bosses off. I just don’t put up with anyone running over me. I was teased throughout my whole childhood so my way of handling that has been to become a fighter and a defender of not only myself but of anyone else I see being wronged.
So why does it turn me on that I sense in him, a need to control me? And I say “sense” because even though he is my superior, he doesn’t boss me around or act dominating. On the contrary he’s a very fair and flexible person to work with. But it’s the little things and the look in his eye which my intuition reads as a yearning and pining to have me under his control. It mirrors raw and primitive sex where the male takes the female and does what he likes with her. He is the predator and I am the prey. I love to be dominated in bed and play the helpless female, so maybe that’s why this glimmer in his eye is so sexy to me. I can imagine he is -that- kind of man when having sex. I wonder if he can read me in the same way, that despite my bold and strong exterior, I would surrender to him totally.
Men are by primitive instinct, hunters. I wonder if it’s deeply rooted in them to “hunt” females as well and tame them. The more she bites and claws, huffs and growls, the more he wants to subdue her. Maybe his cock is the secret weapon, the final tool to reversing her behavior with the pleasure it brings. It disturbs me to think that this is very close to something they call rape. I’d prefer to think of it as a game, a dance, a process. Just like when you watch documentaries about animals mating and usually the female acts disinterested and runs away with the male going after her. And upon penetration she gives in. That’s exactly what I’m talking about here.
The Pixies have a song called “Tame” which goes like this:
Got hips like cinderella
Must be having a good shame
Talking sweet about nothing
Cookie i think you’re
Tame
I’m making good friends with you
When you’re shaking your good frame
Fall on your face in those bad shoes
Lying there like you’re tame
Uh huh huh
Tame
Then the Toadies have a song called Heel:
Long neck, short leash
Sweet lips are black, black, black, black
You walk, I Lead
Little tricks, stagger and fall
Heel
You’re crying, well listen
This time you really were bad, burn, burn , bad
I will show you some discipline
Yes, you will learn some respect, respect, respect
Heel
God I love you
You’re so pretty
Love you, love you
Pretty, pretty
Heel
Although not directly, I think both of these songs are referring ever so slightly to the thing I’m talking about.
This Sunday marks the time honored national “sex for candy” day. Originally the holiday was based off of the Christian saint Valentine’s day, involving significantly less sex. Thankfully in the last few decades the holiday has gotten what analysts are call “hotter”.
“It’s definately one of my favorite holidays” said local man “if I just give my wife candy or flowers and I get to have sex! That never happens on Christmas, let me tell you”. Apparently this trend carries over to non-married couples as well. “Yeah I plan on having sex with my boyfriend today.” said one woman “I mean he bought me candy and dinner and I didn’t get him anything so I guess its the least I can do”
The holiday also seems to be a bonanza for lonely people. “Yeah I could pick up most any semi attractive girl out tonight” said a homely man “I gotta tell you, loneliness plus alcohol is a powerful aphrodisiac”. Studies show that most lonely people spend the day either getting inebriated, having a casual hook-up, or a mixture of both.
When asked for comment Saint Valentine is quoted to having said “I can’t believe I died a martyrs death to sell candy”
If your marriage is starting to sink, toss out a flirtation device. That’s right, I’m talking anything from teeny-bopper, cutsie wootsie to make your momma blush flirtin’! Toss it on out there and pull your marriage to safety.
Think about it, what was the first thing that brought you and your man together? I bet it was flirting. I know it was for me and Jared. A little eyes, a little smooth (or not-so smooth) talkin’, maybe an “accidental” brush of the arm. The things that made you want to smile, laugh, & spin around all at once because he’s into you, he’s really in to you!
Eventually, though, flirting takes a back seat as you work to get to know each other deeper and share real life with one another. It’s hard to flirt between bills and baby spit up (so I’ve heard on the latter).
But flirting is a fun way to bring the focus back to each other. It’s low pressure and doesn’t take much time at all. Try one of these flirtation devices each day this week.
Send your man a text message with a sweet or sexy message. Pictures optional (but be careful if someone else might see it)!
Walk up behind your husband while he’s doing something mundane, like paying bills or brushing his teeth, and hug him and tell him you love him or thank him for taking care of the finances.
Sit on his lap or curl up close to him on the couch or in bed. I blogged about snuggle benefits on Day Six.
Wear something slightly revealing around the house. It doesn’t have to be dressy. Even sweat pants paired with a low-cut tee or a cami can be sexy.
Compliment him. Don’t just say you look nice, we’re talking flirting here. Try “Check out your booty in those pants!” or “I love it when you wear that shirt. It reminds me of our vacation to Rome.”
Write a message for him in the mirror or the shower steam. (Jared does this for me a lot and I love it. The latest message says, “Hello Beautiful.” (It gives me an excuse not to clean the shower, too!)
Speaking of the shower, hop in there while your husband’s showering. You can probably forget all of the other stuff if you surprise him in there.
Laugh at things he says that are funny or tell him something funny that happened to you today.
Lean toward him and listen when he’s talking to you. Simply engaging him and making eye connection can be flirtatious.
Give him “the eyes” at the dinner table or out in public. Don’t avoid flirting when the kids are around–they may act grossed out, but it’s one of the healthiest things they can observe their parents doing.
Use your gifts and your imagination and have fun with it!
Just a word to the sensitive souls (like me): set your expectations low, especially if you haven’t flirted in awhile. Sometimes I think I’m flirting and Jared has no idea that was supposed to be flirtatious. Try not to be upset if you don’t get the reaction you were hoping for and keep trying. If he’s just not observant enough to realize what you’re doing, try being more direct, maybe even tell him that you’re trying. However, I’ve been in a relationship where my passes where intentionally ignored–that’s not okay–and if you’re dealing with that, you may need something heftier than a flirtation device to bring the spark back.
Have fun and report back to let us know how it works.
Also, I heard this today and thought it was brilliant, “You can’t recreate on Valentine’s Day something that hasn’t been there all year.” Flirting is one of those things you can do every day that takes the pressure off of days like Valentine’s Day. If you “practice” giving affection to each other throughout the year, it’s so much easier to express it on days like Valentine’s. I think that’s why I’m finally ready to celebrate it this year.
The movie hall seemed strangely quiet except for the low buzz inside my head, like the drone of an ancient biplane hidden in the clouds somewhere far above in the sky. I tried to concentrate on the large screen before me. Through the tears, the picture looked blurred and hazy. I didn’t know why I was crying. The biplane was coming closer with each passing second, gradually drowning me in an violent uprising of a now shapeless noise.
I sat erect and immobile, my back pressed against the plush leather seat, my mind sinking into a fathomless quagmire of random thoughts. I could taste Vicky on my still parted lips. My mouth felt dry. I was breathing through it, I realised. I want to close my mouth and then forget about it. I feel all alone huddled in an infant dark. A bluish white lustre hangs like morning fog tracing rows of chairs immediately before me. Silhouettes of the occasionally bobbing heads in them remind me that I am not alone. The familiar smell of a room-freshner colludes at my nose tip to give the stale air a touch of newness – spring flowers, I gather.
Suddenly Vicky turns and looks at me. In the darkness, I can feel his calm, steady eyes bore into my face. Once again I sense that feeling inside of me. The same feeling that I have carried within for as long as I remember. A feeling that I had, unknowingly, reserved for Vicky. I never asked myself what it was or why. I had accepted it unquestioningly. I grip the arm rest of my seat firmly to subdue a shudder that threatens to rack my body. An uncontrollable desire to run outside into the world of light takes over me. My hands are shaking as I tear them off the arm rest to wipe off the beads of perspiration running down my forehead. I feel feverish and weak.
Far from me, stands two exit signs on either side of the growing darkness, glowing eerily like warning signs of the things that wait outside for me. I felt fear etch ominous messages on my heart, which I didn’t know how to read. The massive doors, which let me in, now seemed like invisible prison gates to a dark padded cell without a key in which I was to spend the rest of my life.
I turned to look at Vicky. Without taking his eyes from the screen, he squeezes my arm as if to reassure me. ‘I am beyond reassurance, my dear cousin,’ I tell him, silently. He won’t understand, I know. He comes from a different world than mine. Every year, he visits with his family from beyond that wonderful, magical world I dream of. Seven seas and centuries separate our worlds. People in my world don’t do or say things that you do, Vicky. We don’t even think the things you do. That would be blasphemy. Our desire has made me an outcast already, do you know that?
Darkness is a curse because it gives birth to everything that light refuses to conceive. I have been removed from light so that all that was to be will be. My mind has fought with the inevitability. In horror, I accept it now. Ironically, it wasn’t the light but the dark that made the answers so clear. I now know what people meant when they said I was ’strange.’ I now see the meaning of the look in their eyes. I have hated it. I have hated the light that made them see what they did. Yet was not a part of me waiting for the dark to fall? Was this not the shy child’s unspoken desire? Well, the dark has fallen now, for once and all.
In flashes I see the last two minutes of my life come alive before my eyes. Vicky’s fingers gingerly moving on my thighs; the bursting open of a nameless feeling from the seat of my spine, rising like a pleasurable ache through the muscles of my back into my head, into my eyes, onto my lips; my head titled toward his in the dark, his lips on mine, our tongues promising each other fantasies of the unnamed kind, my body throbbing to discover and deny at the same time; his hands inside my unbuttoned jeans, stroking my adolescent pride, the rising emptiness in the pit of my stomach, my arching hips against the pressure of his soft palm, his lips on mine, interlocked in naked desire, lost in time. I close my eyes tightly in terror against a future that is waiting to happen. I shudder at the thought of stepping outside into the world of light where I will, for the rest of my life, will live as a ‘gay.’
So one of the most frequently asked questions I get from chaps is ‘how can I last longer before I come?’ Men often want sex to last longer but the average time it takes to orgasm or ejaculate (not exactly the same thing, I’ll explain another time) is just 3 minutes. If you jiggle your penis inside someone really quickly you are going to come, especially if you are a young man. (I’m sure some women have this problem too. Discuss.)
Most guys don’t have, what a doctor would call, premature ejaculation: some guys come before putting their penis inside someone and sometimes even before that. (Other guys have the opposite condition called retarded ejaculation, which can cause sweatiness, blue balls and bad backs.) Try some of these things below, if that doesn’t help I’d contact your local GUM clinic and talk to them about seeing a psycho-sexual counsellor who can really help.
So here are some tips for lasting longer: after that I’ll have a bit of a rant about how you should change up your ideas about what sex involves and avoiding boring heterosexual scripts.
1. Pre-emptive ejaculation
If you masturbate and ejaculate an hour or two before you plan on having sex then it means that you will last longer when you have sex. As seen in the film ‘There’s Something About Mary’.
2. Use a condom
Condoms can reduce the sensation of sex a little bit, this should help you last longer. Try thicker condoms or condoms with a delaying action (see here for more)
3. Give it a squeeze
If you start having penetrative sex and feel like you are going to come really early you can pull your penis out and give it a quick squeeze just under the bell end
This should give you a few more seconds or minutes of fun.
4. Tense up your pelvic floor muscles
You know when you go for a pee and you need to stop for some reason, the muscles that you use to do that (they kind of feel like they are up your arse), are the same ones you can use to prevent you from coming. So try it during sex and see if that works.
5. Start Stop Technique
This involves masturbating in your spare time (in fact frequent masturbating generally can help) in order to train your brain into working out when you are really turned on and about to come. Practice doing this when solo and it might work when you are with someone.
You should masturbate until you get very near that point when you normally come, then stop, think about something that turns you off, (like cricket). Once you feel that your orgasm / ejaculation is receding then start up again and repeat the process. It’s lots of fun.
6. Practice and intimacy helps
Sex is better in relationships and the more you do it the better it gets. It also means that you’ll be more comfortable with your body and with each other and less likely to freak out about it.
7. Good sex is not simply about a man putting his penis inside someone till he comes (warning rant alert)
Here’s the best tip for you: penetration is only a small part of sex! Either do loads of other stuff, or use your hands, and remember sex doesn’t stop when one of you has an orgasm (and great sex doesn’t have to include orgasms at all). Keep playing and pleasuring your partner until you’re feeling it again.
Guys, you might go soft after coming (that is the refractory period, which almost all men have, it’s normal and lasts for 10 to 30 minutes) but after a few minutes of kissing or pleasuring your partner or a great cup of tea, you can get hard again.
So change it up, switch the order around, don’t do it like they do in porn and enjoy it. Don’t focus on your performance, focus on how much you and your partner are enjoying it.
HERE’S A BRIEF REPORT in The Scotsman explaining that Chinese authorities are concerned that never have so many ever had so few opportunities to transmit their precious bodily fluids:
Guangdong, China’s export powerhouse, is home to about 30 million migrant workers, the most in the country. Many leave wives, husbands or children in their native villages to seek the higher wages factories pay compared with agricultural work.
That’s not counting the millions of randy young men who don’t have wives, girlfriends, or a reasonable facsimile thereof because of the demographic overhang created by those authorities.
Dreams are fine, you don’t ask for them – humans never asked to dream in the first place. We’ve never learnt how to properly anyhow, and don’t know what a proper dream is, as opposed to an improper one. When we sleep we just get them, that’s a given. They take us to fantastic places and, in equal or lesser measures, dark places. Most of the time they’re mundane; we can’t even be bothered to talk about them the moment we wake up.
Occasionally we’ll dream of each other, and (if applicable) may mention it in passing, so long as the plot is palpable and clean. If an acquaintance appears in what could only be described as a dream rated 18 due to a sexual nature, then our reluctance to cause offence or an uncomfortable situation means we, and rightfully so, keep it to ourselves. In reality our heads move slightly to the left or right or, if it’s a restless night, maybe slightly off the pillow.
Awake, we’re more dangerous. Our imagination is raw and nowhere near as real in feelings as they are when we’re asleep. Instead our thoughts run wild as we manoeuvre them in any direction; conversations, aspirations, conflicts, success stories, failures, death, life… it’s up to us!
Awake, we choose the scenario first, and then work out a route to get there. A dream though, well we have no choice; we get an opening scene and proceed to take things from there.
It’d be good to order off a menu of sorts before we hit the sack right?
If your marriage is starting to sink, toss out a flirtation device. That’s right, I’m talking anything from teeny-bopper, cutsie wootsie to make your momma blush flirtin’! Toss it on out there and pull your marriage to safety.
