Eros

I loved the reading that we had today on Eros. It was really insightful, thoughtful, and humorous. I could talk about a wide variety of the things that Lewis addresses, but I think a few of the things I found most profound was his belief that we shouldn't take sex too seriously, that our body is "Brother Ass", and that falling in love and being in love are two very different things.
To begin, Lewis says that it is vital that we do not take sex too seriously, and we cannot take it in the wrong sense of seriousness. This seems particularly insightful to me. In our culture sex is either considered taboo and shameful, or it is put on a pedestal and given privilege that it does not really deserve. On the one hand, it seems to me that the church is very restrained about talking about sex. In my youth group in high school, we did not ever once talk about sex. This past year there was one day that was designated for it. My friend told me that about 3 people out of our youth group of 35 went. Sex is so taboo. It is sort of that idea, out of sight out of mind. And this frankly cannot stand. If we treat sex so seriously that we cannot talk about it to teenagers, how will they ever learn what is moral? I think this becomes most apparent in college when we are given freedom. Calvin does a great job providing healthy boundaries. But consider a state school where there are no restrictions on open hours. A student who has never been talked to about sex will not know how to set healthy boundaries for their own safety. Conversely, we cannot take it to the extreme and make sex so serious that we see it above other aspects of life. I see this most in the media and in the way sex is portrayed in movies and television. Sex is represented as this ultimate desire. It is made to be the true shape of love and what we all want, and this frankly just isn't true. Sex was made to be a beautiful part of life, but we cannot say that it is the most important impulse. It needs to be controlled just as any other impulse. As with anything we need to find a healthy balance with sex, treating it with a sense of humor but seeing the gravity of it's consequences.
The second thing that I found so interesting is how Saint Francis referred to the body as Brother Ass. It is so fitting. I think we often take body image very seriously. It is why we work out, why we eat healthily, why we take care of ourselves. We want our bodies to represent physical health. But our bodies aren't the epitome of our being. They aren't even really that important. Our bodies don't have souls, we are souls that have bodies that are fleeting. That doesn't mean they don't have worth and we shouldn't take care of them. God calls our bodies temples, and we should treat them as such. But at the same time, we should not become obsessed with self-image.
Finally, I thought Lewis' analogy of falling in love with diving was really apt. When we fall in love it is like diving off the board to the water. When we are in love, it is being in the water when we no longer dive, we must swim. All throughout this time, we need our partner to dive with us and they must swim with us once we are swimming. I just really like this analogy because it makes so much sense to me. I was a swimmer all through high school so the analogy really applies. When you are at the starting blocks you take a hard strong dive, this momentum and push is the fastest you go the entire race, but of course it can't last. Once you are in the water, you stay in diving position as long as you can, but eventually you loose speed. You then have to start swimming or you will just float to the surface and stop. Swimming is a lot harder than diving, but it is just as important. You need to swim and to swim hard or you won't finish the race. In the same way, falling in love is the most exhilarating and fastest part of love. But then time passes and things slow down. You have to work to maintain the love. If you try to coast off of the initial love you will never make it. And being in love is much harder than falling in love. But it is the most important part, to keep going so that you can finish the race.