Every Wednesday we invite you to Pause & Pray with us. Today’s Pause & Pray is written/curated by David Gaitan.

Indecent theology (1) for indecent salvation

By: David Gaitan

The burden was heavy.
Like life itself.

The big cold city night lights filled the atmosphere with melancholy, one that penetrated deep into the soul, bringing with it sadness. I do not remember a day before when I felt as sad as then. People who have been close to death say that at the moment when the end of life approaches, they see their whole life pass through their eyes in a second. (2) If that is true, I was dying even when my body was not at risk of death. There is no greater pain or mourning than the one you feel when you are disappointed by religion, even by God.

I remember her smile when she walked into the coffee shop that Bogotan night. Her curly hair and her smile filled the cold place with warm energy. After a couple of hours of conversation, she said yes. Her kiss was the starting point to heaven.

Once in her bed, our bodies matched in an indescribable way. While I kissed her breasts, I was forgetting the pain I felt in my ex-woman’s. When I caressed her legs, my soul felt comforted.

When I entered her body, I saw God. Is there another bigger moment of spirituality than the pleasure of a deep human connection? After the last breakup, this lover decided to rescue me, to heal my wounds. It did not take too long.
Then, she left.

She was an anonymous savior for an anonymous sinner. Only two beings desperately seeking an answer that never came synchronized their demons to be exorcized in a dance in those days when cathedrals condemned people in their pulpits, but pleasure redeemed them in their beds.

If the payment of sin is death, understood as separation, then salvation is unity. Sexual relationships are about unity. (3)

I was being saved!
Sin saved me (4).

***Extracted from: Saved by sin for the Spiritual but not Religious. 2023

Notes:

1. Marcella Althaus Reid. “La teología indecente : perversiones teológicas en sexo, género y política.” España: Edicions Bellaterra. 2005.
2. Elisabeth Küber-Ross. “Sobre la muerte y los moribundos.” Translated by Neri Daurella. España: Ediciones Grijalbo. 1993.
3. Nadia Bolz-Weber. “Desvergonzada.” USA: JuanUno1. 2020
4. If “Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (…)” (James 1:17), then God created sexuality including (mostly?) the pleasure component. God can save, even, through “sin.”

---

Reflection song:

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well, maybe there’s a God above
As for me all I’ve ever learned from love
Is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
But it’s not a crime that you’re here tonight
It’s not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the Light
No, it’s a cold and it’s a very broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Instrumental
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well people I’ve been here before
I know this room and I’ve walked this floor
You see I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
But listen love, love is not some kind of victory march, no
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove she was moving too
And every single breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Now I’ve done my best, I know it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come here to London just to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand right here before the Lord of song
With nothing, nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah