EACH MARRIED COUPLE IS LIKE A GARDEN

 Eco-CONNECT'20 

EACH MARRIED COUPLE IS LIKE A GARDEN: A BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

By J.B. Nyamunga

The Bible begins with the garden planted by God in the Eden (Cf. Gen.2:8), a garden city, the heavenly Jerusalem. River, a tree of life with twelve kinds of fruit, each fruit each month and leaves of the tree are for healing of nations (Rev. 22:2). This throws one to a wide search outside there and the best place to begin from is that of the book of Song of Songs, which we have come to commonly call the book of Solomon, where Rabbi Akiva describes as “Holy of Holies”.

The garden that flows with water and flowering trees. (Gen. 2-3) and in the book of Revelation it has an invitation of a bride to come…The Spirit and the bride say, Come, let the hearers say, “Come”. Let he who thirst come forward and the one who wants it receive the gift of life of the life-giving water (Rev.22:17).

The lover and the beloved are completely in corporeal world (corpus), while in the Song of Songs we read “How beautiful you are, my friend, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves! (Song 1:15-16).

The interesting part of this text can also raise a pertinent question…why does the couple meet in the garden? It’s the Song of Songs that provides a scenario for holding ourselves to that garden, that garden of reflection… Awake, north wind! Come, south, blow upon my garden that its perfumes may spread abroad. Let my lover come to his garden and eat its fruits of choicest yield… I have come to my garden my sister, my bride I gather my myrrh with my spices, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat friends, drink! Drink deeply, lovers! (Song 4:16-5:1).

Pope Francis in his encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ on the care of the common home (2015) which we are encouraged to read atheist a page each day. Just in that same line we also get the apostolic exhortation of Amoris Laetitia: The Joys of Love in the Family (2016). This garden is entrusted to man by God, for care (Cf. Gen. 2:8). Jean-Pierre states this by driving us into the Hebrew understanding of garden when he states that The Hebrew gan is a “fence” (the root ganan means “to enclose, to protect). In this garden (Gen. 2:9) man and woman discover themselves, but that brings in a big trial and challenge on man and women. The matrix of “where are you? 

This question often disturbs many, the answer is often responded to why do you ask? Say what you want to say? Kwani nini (Swahili for (what is it, what has happened). We are being called to make a journey through the Bible, and the best way to get our bearing is through Isaiah…As the earth brings forth its shoots, and the garden makes its seeds spring up, so will the LORD GOD make justice spring up, and praise before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11).

For Israel shall be like watered garden, like spring of water, whose waters never fail. The prophets as we know them did their missioning in the deserted places, there is where you listen attentively, no noise, only the whistle blowing sound that tickles your ears. Hosea the prophet of love brings in olive tree of the fragrance (marashi) like that of Lebanon. This God can still bestow his beauty out of sorry that each of our story, regardless of their repeated wounds.

The Song of Songs projects us to have the teleos, sharp vision to that of a typical scholar of scripture who would sit on something and gets refreshingly lost in that thought. Its one vision that no one can get it except he to whom that vision is revealed to make that journey.

 Jean-Pierre quotes Robert Alter in his essay, the Art of Biblical Poetry, as unique strategy in the metaphorical inventiveness as that which has a confusing tendency of its borders. He still brings in the reflection of another author, Lewis Carroll’s novel “The characters pass” through the looking glass, and finding themselves in the world of metaphor, a completely wide horizontal hope with new leitmotifs.

One gets lost into the sweetness but there is a limit to it, he can’t hit the roof of sweetness, it’s sweet to his taste. (Song 2:3). It’s not enough to say I love you, but behave accordingly and this is a call to each one in his or her capacity. You should be able to eat with great calmness not as a thief ready for a chase after. It’s about a place for everything and everything in its place.

 In love you don’t compare the palm tree to something else, the beauty of the feel is to climb it and know how it feels. As they say, a palm tree grows under difficulty. Don’t be too lose to be climbed, make it difficult and hard nut to crack, of course if you were not raised in the palm tree zone, this may be difficult to comprehend. You are invited to come in and eat the fruit (Song 4:15-16).

 It’s about the chase coming to the celebration after a catch, its beautiful id you are the one who catches her, she becomes part of you internationally, not externally…my lover has come down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed I the gardens and to gather lilies (Song 2:3), you seal it to be yours (Song 4:12), fence of fence. Intimacy is not a public show, it’s a world of two, one feeling and each is lost in the other.

A metaphor is so lifting that you can’t exclude yourself from what Song of Song says. Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit put it, “a room with no ceiling. A place you say what you feel not what you think, its exotic in nature. As one gate closes, the other opened to allow the personal mystery and openness of being in relation.

This is a place of wonder and requires all the attention of lovers…let us go early to the vineyards, and see if the vines are in bloom, if the buds have opened, if the pomegranates have blossomed, there I will give you my love… (Song 7:13). This shows that we are able to drive ourselves to the sexual nature of flowers, between the pistil and stamen.

The irresistible gratuitousness of the buds reflects the bond of their love. As you stay together, everything matures according to that plan of God, you feel at home, you are yourself, not hidden mystery (Song 8:6-7).

Jean-Pierre quotes philosopher Harrison as one person who always liked to say…”the growth gardens are places that show down time, the growth rates are slow, the ripening of the fruit, the growth of trees, thus the garden supports with its long duration, promises and oaths by which the lovers live.

Rumi says “love is a tree whose branches reach eternity and whose roots grow in eternity and therefore the trunk is nowhere to be found. 

John 20 is a typical scenario “Now in the place where he was crucified, there was in a garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been placed. There then they laid Jesus” (John 19:4-42) she is weeping looking for her lover (V13)…tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away (V15), very powerful gesture of deep passion for lover, for love has no fear, jealousy, etc., this is it. (Cf. Song Chapter 3)…

An encounter in the enchased garden, a graveyard is not an open place for everything to enter in, its sacred place, a place of encounter, a modern desert, a garden of forgetfulness. Hence a good grave yard needs many trees planted there, preserve one and handover to next generation, a change of generations, events, where human person rediscovers the self.

A garden, a place of smells, I sit on the bench and get lost in the smells. We create this garden (kitchen, medical, botanical vertical, urban herbal), where we can get lost in nature, in silence and mediation.

Planting a garden also means offering believers a living parable of God’s faithfulness in his plan of salvation. Between the garden of the origins and that of the resurrection while waiting for gardens-city that of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Between the man and the woman, the garden is the holy of holies of meeting the parable of miraculous beginning and faithful growths of secret intimacy and communion with creation and with the creator. This mystery is great… (Eph 5:32). Equally great is mystery between the couple and the garden.

CONTEMPLATION AND IT'S TWISTS...

 CONTEMPLATION AND WHAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND OUT OF IT

By. Don. J.B. Nyamunga

Contemplation for many may be a recitation of formulated prayers, mysteries of the Rosary and common traditional prayer patterns instead of the awareness of God’s presence at its deepest value. Most of us have been trained to pray, instead of being trained in prayer. Many find themselves in phenomenal amounts of formulas which have become aid to prayer, which have become ends in themselves. It eventually turns into a product-oriented method.

Being trained in prayer has to lead to contemplation. We have to realize that contemplation is not for few people set apart but it’s a call open to everyone to delve into contemplation. This is something beyond prayer but someone, God. Contemplatives are people whose consciousness of God permeates their entire lives. Their awareness of God’s presence magnetizes them and directs them beyond everything else, beyond all other values. They are aware that God creates them, sustains them and challenges them. As a result all other agendas, values fall away. Of course it doesn’t mean that contemplatives don’t find values in other things, e.g. in career, money or achievement, but these things do not become their great value. The awareness of God becomes their greatest value, living steeped in God, surrounded by God, of being directed by God, of being in the presence of God, of learning to see life through the eyes of God, of being aware of God’s love, action and challenge. 

The desert fathers and mothers felt that contemplation can be accomplished through labor (work). These works could be basket weaving for example, which was often mentioned, for the contemplation was not idleness but who is better for the contemplative life if not a person who is working, but not totally caught up in things he or she is working with. With this approach work or being busy can become a contemplative act, can be an occasion for fostering the awareness of God’s presence Giving yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, a chance to relate your own story to the Jesus story, being renewed and revived by that presence. But you remember that all these you have to make time for it. Once you make it a practice in life, there is a way it overflows even into moments that are consciously are spent in reading, working through problems, organizing, administering. 

The interesting thing is that one can’t live contemplative life without discipline. This will include regular lectio, or spiritual reading, to undergird it and to challenge the way one lives. There should be time for work, time for family and community, time for Christian community, time for private scripture reading and reflection. Out of this will come a whole new rhythm of life, a whole new way of seeing the relative importance of various parts of one’s life, it provides the discipline, the structure, to help one to make the awareness of the presence of God as the greatest value in life. A married woman for example who works out of her home may not do her lectio, spiritual reading, with a book. Instead, she might get the spiritual nourishment provided by lectio through listening a tape while commuting to work or working around the house. This will mean cutting out listening to hard rock or watching “soap operas” But becoming a contemplative does involve discipline as well as desire.

Work shouldn’t be an impediment to contemplation, we all have to work. In the rule of St. Benedict there is a marvelous chapter in the rule that says in effect, when you have to get the harvest in, you have to get the harvest in, so pray in the fields. You don’t have to have the harvest in the rain because you have to get back home a certain time to pray, to contemplate. The harvest is what needs to be attended to now. Do it. This is your contemplation. A women living in the suburb can do the same with her good works. This presence of God in one’s life and the world. It wouldn’t be a burden, it won’t be an exercise. It is. This awareness of God’s presence that will always be the filter through which one has to think and act and pray. This presence will always stand between one and those around him or her and what they are doing.

© Don J.B Nyamunga’20

SEX AS A SACRAMENT

SEX AS A SACRAMENT

By. J.B Nyamunga

The most important task of the church is to emphasize the sacramental character of sex. As a symbol of spiritual reality, sexuality takes on the sacred character. A spiritual gift emerges through this physical act.

This concept is probably an intuitive conclusion rising out of the essentially sacramental character of life. In a more modern times sexuality has been divorced form the whole man and delegated or derogated, to the biological and psychological dimension.

Heretical and pagan religious movements have often observed the sacredness of sex. Unfortunately it has not been considered as the divine-human encounter of Biblical sexuality, but has been made explicitly in religious activities. 

In the First letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, Paul urges his readers to “Glorify God in your body.” They would be well aware of sexual orgies at the nearby temple of Aphrodite, where pagan Corinthians visited temple prostitutes in the name of worship.

By way of contrast to this blasphemous violation of God’s gift, Paul encouraged the Christians to see their sexuality as sacramental, a means of glorifying God.

This reminds us of the essential awfulness of pornographic literature which makes the sacred profane. It tempts one to consider his sexuality as an end in itself and to express it in a way that will deny its inherent spiritual character. Reacting by denying sexuality, as many Christians seem to have done, only makes a difficult situation worse.

Denial of sexuality is in effect to accept the secular view of sex. It is to consider it base, fleshly and in opposition to the spiritual life.

Unbelievers hold a similar view of the biological essence of sex while denying God. Christian’s have tended to regard the privacy of the sexual act as the means of hiding from view of stigma of his expression of lust, in sort of vain hope of being secluded from God and neighbor. However, the privacy of conjugal act is not in order to conceal one’s participation in an earthy, demeaning act, but rather to respect its holiness. Just as significant worship is essentially private, so is the exercise of this divine gift to be cloistered communion.

In a guarded way, we would say that there is a significant parallel with the entering of the high priest into the holy of holies on the day of Atonement. His act was neither sinful nor loathsome, but rather a high and holy response to God’s instructions. It was kept from the public eye because of its sacramental character.

Sexuality is a unique function whereby the Christian may grow in grace and in the knowledge of the lord. Its nature as a sacrament ought to be taught early and forthrightly in the context of Christian education. We should be convinced that this would strengthen the church and support a proper psychosexual development of Christian youth.

© J. B. Nyamunga’20

ADULT PSYCHOSEXUALITY

ADULT PSYCHOSEXUALITY

The most important attitude of the adult is a positive attitude toward his or her sexuality. As an adult how have you been brought up to view sexuality, do you believe in yourself about what you inform yourself to be or what you have been schooled into as far as your human sexuality is concerned. There are some of us through the years have been taught that sexuality is innately evil. The really spiritual person is for the celibate, the one who abstains from marriage, and sexual intercourse. If not evil, at least it is earthy and the sort of thing one does in the dark corner apart from the judging eyes of God and neighbor. 

Such an attitude misses the important point of sexuality being the gift of God. The Word of God revealed by the Holy Spirit through the prophets and apostles, explicitly refers to the wonderful potential of it. Responsible sexuality holds the key to great human joy and possibilities for ultimate human growth in spiritual insight and personal fulfilment.

Sexual compatibility involves an understanding of the sexual differences in psychosexuality. Males for example attain the height of sexual potency at about eighteen years of age while female mature in potential of sexual activity in the late twenties or early thirties. The man is easily stimulated to sexual readiness, whereas his mate may need preparation of a romantic aura for satisfactory sexual experience. 

To keep married love exciting and romantic is a most rewarding task. Many couples begin to take each other for granted and develop habits of sexual scheduling and conformity which obscure the ever new delights of the sexual secrets of the marriage partner. 

Marriage is not a reason to stop having dates, or wooing the beloved, or continuing the courtship. It’s through perennial practices such as these that conjugal bliss and mutual love will remain fresh and flowering. An attitude of openness and freedom in sexual play with one’s spouse, as depicted in the Songs of Solomon, will maintain the enthusiastic and exciting encounter of first love and will reinforce the mysterious enchantment of wedded happiness.

On the contrary, much of the difficulty in early marital adjustment relates to the guilt and anxiety of premarital sexual experimenting. This is compounded by the furtiveness and uncomfortable surroundings that usually accompany experiences of illicit sexual activity. That one needs premarital sexual experience in order to become an adequate marriage partner is a scientific nonsense and dangerous psychologically. 

One of the maturing of marital experiences is the opportunity to discover together the mysteries and joys of heterosexuality. In the light of fullness and freedom of Biblically oriented sexuality, this can be a most stabilizing factors for marriage. 

We live in the world where there are many who are frustrated in their lack of opportunity for sexual commitment. However, satisfactory sublimation in meaningful and enjoyable alternate tasks is always a present possibility. In any case, this is the providential ordination for the Christian whose full sexual experience is pending the provision of a marriage partner. 

In conclusion, we can say that sexuality is one of the great and difficult tasks of the Christian, as well as one of the most fulfilling personal experiences. 

We live in a culture in which, for the Christian, psychosexual development is a daily dialectic between the demand for personal purity and the tensions of sexual desire, stimulated by pornographic pressures at every hand. However, with confidence we can remember that our providential sexuality is God’s appointment and that He has provided a means of fulfillment of our sexual personalities in the mystery of marriage. 

The tensions and tests of patiently preparing for this mystery will, perhaps, be alleviated if we remind ourselves that we should work out our own sexuality with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God working within us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Don J.B NYAMUNGA