Springtime is beautiful, and it’s inherently dangerous. Inside each bud that blooms, inside the beating heart of every salamander, inside each human being, there is a thrust to fully express our life. Except for all of us: the flower, the salamander, all of us, this expression is never completely straight forward. For every moment of great exaltation and growth, there is an uncertainty, a fragility, a vulnerability. When our worship associates met to discuss this month’s theme of Awakening, one of the associates mentioned the play Spring Awakening. I had not thought of it, but it makes sense to talk about this play a little. It’s about growing up, more specifically the challenges of growing up surrounded by violence and repression. It’s a story about teenagers struggling to come to terms with their desire for intimacy, sexuality, and their hope to break out of the constraints they are placed under. The constraints come from their families, their school, their religion – all of them saying some version of what they care about is wrong, what they desire is wrong, the hopes they have are wrong.

And in the background is always “purple summer,” the promise of full awakening, the hope that all this angst and fear will settle itself in beauty. That there will be a place at last to rest.

I don’t think we’re ever done learning, and I don’t think we’re ever done growing up. We might just forget about it. As adolescents the drama of life is unavoidable – questions of desire, questions of identity, questions of life direction – I don’t think these questions ever really go away. But they work on us differently or we forget about them and focus on other things. But this doesn’t mean the questions go away.

One of the programs we’ve offered at this church is Our Whole Lives, OWL for short, a sex positive currciculum for teenagers. That was the beginning of the program, at the time it was seen as a radical idea. A sex positive program, that held as a premise that sex is good, and sexual desire is good, and that it comes with responsibility, and that self knowledge can help us grow in our understanding of our own sexuality and how our values relate to that.

But it didn’t take long for this program to expand beyond adolescents. There was a program geared toward young adults, then a program geared toward those with long-term partners, and then a program for those 60+ who, yes, are still discovering who they are and who they’ve become. It is clear that sex education is not just of benefit to teenagers or those about to be teenagers. As long as we’re alive, there’s always more to learn.

Even though I’m not very old, the sex education I received at school was mostly about disease prevention, with a pretty strong agenda to recommend abstinence. My memory was it being mostly about risk management, which is certainly part of sexuality, but not really what drives most of us. My parents like many tried to talk about sex, but it seemed to be a conversation best kept brief before the awkwardness set in. I grew up in a religious tradition that said in no uncertain terms, sex was for those who were married, and the only people who could be married at that time were a man and a woman.

 

It was a limited matrix, with little compassion for those outside that matrix. There was a lot more to learn, and I knew this even as a pre-teen. I came of age right as the internet was becoming accessible to every home. My parents had a dial up modem, and I learned as a teenager there is a lot you could find on the internet, way more than I could even process. And there was no one to talk to about it who had any level of maturity. I mention this because I don’t think my experience is unique.

For some reason, sex, the only reason any of us are here, is still something taboo. And we don’t need to look very far to see how repression and fear can lead to so much harm. We don’t need to look very far to see how people who become obsessed with trying to control sexual expression is so damaging and ludicrous. For some reason, there is still a strong desire to make sexuality something clear – when sex, like life, is never clear, not if we’re being honest. Maybe that’s why sexuality is seen as so scary.

It’s one of the strongest desires we have, and that strength of desire can make us want to clamp down, control it, draw a line in the sand and say this is good, and this is wrong, and be done with it. Except that doesn’t really work, as we’re seeing. It just creates more harm.

There is an alternative to this. We can make space for it, make space for our desires, make space for our questions. This doesn’t mean we need to act on every desire, but we don’t need to be afraid of ourselves, and I think it’s important to have places of support for people to navigate their sexuality and identity. And there are consequences to our actions, and there is a sense of responsibility we have to ourselves, those we’re in relationship with, our society. But repressing ourselves, shaming ourselves, being violent toward our desires, is not a good tactic.

I trained to be a sex educator when I was in seminary, and I learned something surprising, something I didn’t expect. The adults in my cohort who were being trained often had a harder time honestly discussing sexuality than the teenagers who were participating in the program.

 

Most of the teenagers in my cohort already had a relative ease accepting fluid sexuality, that your sexuality like the rest of ourselves can change and evolve over time. Most of the teenagers already were friends with people who identified as gay, bi, queer. Some of the teenagers in that cohort were questioning their gender identity, and knew others who were doing the same thing. When I went on a training weekend it was a bit more awkward, not in a bad way though. We played this game where they would ask us as a group questions about our relationship to sexuality, and then we would put ourselves into different groups based on how we responded. I remember one of the questions was something like: Is a long term emotional commitment necessary for a satisfying sexual experience? And then we each had to put ourselves on a spectrum from 10 being over here – very necessary to 1 over there, not necessary at all. And I distinctly remember the glances we made instinctively, trying to read each other, before we each answered for ourselves. None of us wanted to stand out or be misunderstood. It reminded me of being in adolescence again.

 

It has long occurred to me that our culture and really worldwide culture is still so immature in dealing with the basic stuff of life. I still can’t believe people are still trying to legislate around sexual orientation, trying to protect an idea of a norm. I still can’t believe how immature we are, how repressed, and how violent. And I’ve been thinking about how addicted we are collectively to punishment, to tearing people down, to shame and humiliation. We seem to forget that we also have the power to build people up, to help people grow from their mistakes, to hold people accountable with mercy and understanding. We have the power to reconcile, not tear people apart. When I watched the moment at the Oscars where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, and then all the opinions about it, I kept thinking of something I heard when I was volunteering at a prison in Oregon. I was listening to a testimonial from a woman who was incarcerated, and she said something which I’ve never forgotten. She opened her testimony with: Imagine being known forever for the worst thing you’ve ever done.

So that’s what I think about when I think about awakening. I think about how I might be part of building people up, how to repair, how to heal. On the surface, people might think that’s weak, that it’s too permissive, that it encourages wrong behavior. But I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s strong to come from a place of understanding or seeking understanding, rather than judgment and shame. I think it’s strong to identify and recall: Yes, I’ve definitely said things that have caused harm knowingly or unknowingly, and I have acted in ways that caused another harm. I know what that’s like, and it feels horrible. Coming from understanding, not from judgment. And if someone is seeking reconciliation, help them. That’s what I’ve learned. If someone is seeking reconciliation, help them.

Like many of you I have been paying attention to the Ukrainian refugees who are trying to find a place to call home this Spring. I’m imagining this Spring being a hard one for many. A Spring of the complications and struggle of new beginnings, coming to terms with what is left behind, or that which no longer exists in the same way.

 

By now I hope you have found ways to help. There are organizations connected to our church, and Rabbi Paula Winning next door  is going with a group of Rabbis to Poland to bring supplies and funds to families that are starting over. I’m heartened by the ways many of you have offered what you could: funds, relationship building, art, prayers. There are truly endless ways we can help one another, and I think that’s the only way we can truly grow, helping each other. A thought, deed, a meeting, a meeting with our heart and meeting with others. We manifest the truth that we’re never alone. And when we realize sometimes after significant struggle that we are not alone, understanding arises naturally, understanding that we are more alike than different. And once we come to that, compassion becomes like breathing, it’s like we can’t help it. It’s just what we do, it’s just who we are.

Each of us has a Springtime, and I don’t think it’s just reserved for adolescence. Each of us has the capacity to grow and mature, and the question for us is how we will grow. Will we grow more judgemental, more punishing, more narrow in our views as we get older? Or will we grow in understanding, humility, compassion? My hope this Spring is to grow in understanding, humility, and compassion. Will you join me?

Topics: Springtime