where man and woman, strength and weakness, unite with each other.
In the Temple Space (Aeon), the form of union is different,
although we employ the same name for it;
but there exist forms of union higher than any that can be spoken,
stronger than the greatest forces,
with the power that is their destiny.
Those who live like this are no longer separated.
They are one, beyond bodily distinction.
The Gospel of Philip, 103-104, Jean-Yves Leloup, trans.
I was glancing through previous posts and thinking that perhaps it was about time I went back to the search for a soul mate. I almost feel as though I need to start over, given how much time has passed, and given how much emotional flotsam has been kicked up in the interim. I’m not even certain the emotional flotsam has settled, but I’m trying to think positively for this coming Thursday. Which reminds me: I should try to hunt down my tape recorder.
As far The Gospel of Philip goes, I’ve enjoyed reading it. Some of it I have difficulty understanding, and I don’t fully buy into gnosticism either, but some of it I do understand, and find it beautiful. The hysteria in response to the publication of this gnostic gospel was pretty funny. You’da thunk they were afraid people might actually find it meaningful! One of my favorite objections came from a website called "the Christian alert", purporting to alert christians to the wrongness of this gospel by offering their contradictory "truths". In this case their "truth" made me burst out laughing:
"When do liberals claim it was written? 180-250 AD.
When was it really written? Biblical scholar Ben Witherington III dates it to the third century."
Needless to say, all of those silly and well-educated "liberals" who happened to stumble across this website probably spluttered coffee all over their computer screens. Anyone want to ‘alert’ these christians that 250 A.D. actually IS in the "third century"?
http://www.thechristianalert.org/index.php/Bibliography/the_gospel_of_philip
I don’t mean to imply that I bought into the whole Gospel of Philip (I didn’t), but I did love the book’s take on the union of man and woman, which was so completely the opposite of most christian philosophy it was refreshing (and opposite christian philosophers as well, if there is such a thing; I usually think of them as apologists, or squirrely men who are so terrified of women it’s pitiful.)
" ... with the power that is their destiny ..."
Loved it.
Before I can get myself mentally situated, I figured I’d return to getting the space ready again. I’d gone to some effort to prepare the bedroom all the way back in 2011, but after getting injured, and after multiple hospital stays, it had slid backwards a little bit in terms of orderliness and attractiveness. Example: while your spine is healing, you’re not all that eager to pull heavy furniture away from the wall and vacume the carpet underneath. I had venetian blinds in the windows – now, I thought it was about time to take things one step further and ordered curtains. Burgundy – to support the color scheme (if you’ll recall, I’d gone with reds/burgundys and steered clear of pinks, quite a while back).
So today I pulled the entire television cabinet away from the corner, steam-cleaned the carpet, re-situated all of the the cords, pushed it back ... all well and good, except for the monstrous leg cramps that hit me while I was down on the floor, cleaning out the inside of the cabinet.
So, here’s my thought. Ladies would do a better job identifying with this – I’m guessing that guys for the most part have no issues with women lying under them not moving all that much – but women, if they’re engaged in what they’re doing in the bedroom, would have a real problem if, every time they used a leg muscle, it cramped up rather violently.
The medication they put me on sometimes helps eliminate the middle-of-the-night leg cramps that woke me up screaming in pain – not always, but most of the time – they do not alleviate leg cramps that happen during exercise or strenuous activity. In this instance, all I was doing was getting down on the floor, and getting back up again – it wasn’t as though I were running a marathon.
As far as sex was concerned, unless I planned to lay there like a disinterested trophy wife doing her nails in the midst of, as Sheldon Cooper would say, "coitus" (what a creepy word!) – getting past those awful leg cramps was going to be something of a problem. Was I absolutely certain I was ready to pick up the Search for a Soul Mate where I left off? More importantly, could my soul mate handle an occasional episode of me cursing like a sailor just as he’s laboring up the slopes of Mount Vesuvius?
(I can just hear some doofus muttering, "*Duh*, why duz she wanna marry a vulcanologist?" Wait. A doofus wouldn’t know a vulcanologist from a euphemism, would he? Never mind.)
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