Link Dump No. 1 - Sexuality & Spirituality, (Neo) Tantra & Christian Mysticism, BONUS: M.A. Thesis "Voices from the Mountains"

    Okay, so here is another thing I've been wanting to do with this blog for some time now.

So far, I've mostly just shared thoughts and ideas which take me definitely up to a few hours to write, and require my concentration for long stretches at a time, which is an opportunity I rarely have, and thus this limits how often I can write on this blog, which then also becomes a new hurdle whenever I want to try writing something again, once I'm terribly out of practice.

No problem, because now I have a revolutionary idea that will work for me, but that is not really all too applicable to other people's blogs, so maybe it's not as revolutionary after all?? As I said: no problem. Today, I want to simply share a few links to resources for topics and ideas I've been thinking about lately, which will serve as a helpful base from which to later perhaps write more fleshed out rambles, like the ones I'm an expert at writing. However, this kind of post will only require me to share what the background idea is, and how these things are related. It might not make sense immediately, but hey, not everything I say has to!

With that being said, what I want to share today are a few resources for future reference that link spiritual practices with sexuality and eros, particularly across a "Western" (or broadly Christian) tradition, and later compared to its "Eastern" (or broadly Hindu & Buddhist) counterparts, as I'm currently aware of them. I will also try to make sure this link dump remains approachable without being too esoteric. To be honest, there is not one thing I've read or experienced linking these two in a practical, approachable way like I would hope for, but there is sooo much overlap I've found between spiritual views on sexuality, Eros, Christianity and Eastern spirituality (I will sadly have to use this term very losely), that I need to have something from which to learn and develop these desires.

Perhaps the first thing I should share is the article that first introduced me to this notion a few years ago. Tara Isabella Burton's blog piece titled on sex negativity, which explores the socio-political framework within which modern sexual discourses are framed as liberal or conservative issues in the US, also provides a Christian perspective on the topic, celebrating the role of the "erotic life" in forming a mature relationship with God and one's inner desire for surrender with the Ultimate and with each other. From here, she connects the concept of Eros (also discussed by C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves) to the work of Christian poets like John Donne, whose contemporary George Herbert also wrote erotic poetry but is not mentioned in the piece. Adding to this, I have to think of further Christian contemporaries of early modernity who are not remembered for their written works, but rather for their erotic mysticism, perhaps the best known of whom is St. Theresa of Ávila from Spain, but also the lesser known Sister Benedetta Carlini from Italy - whose life story was recently depicted in a feature film directed by Paul Verhoeven - also comes to mind. Additionally, I am reminded of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which today are practiced widely, and where focusing on the inner desires of the heart is a key component in understanding Ignatian Spirituality. Of course, bridging desires with eros and sexuality from an Ignatian perspective has been explored as well. In general, it seems that mysticism and esotericism go hand in hand when it comes to the relationship between sexuality and spirituality.

An interesting sidenote to this legacy is the role of sexuality and spirituality in the secular and later Christian-mingled Transcendentalist movement, along with a host of other 19th century movements that experimented with polygamy, free-love, relationship anarchy, and more. Tara Isabella Burton also introduced me to this topic in her book Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, but for now I'll only mention this very interesting article about Walt Whitman I found in the NYT archive, called "Of Me I Sing: Whitman in His Time", which mentions one of my favorite erotic poems, Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric. The article also mentions Mormons, Christian perfectionists at Oneida, N.Y. who practiced "complex marriage", the free-love movement at the time, and the romantic and passionate friendships between men and women, which could even be sexual and publicly erotic; and this even relates to the sexual liberation and spiritual perspectives of the earlier Romantic period, from which Transcendentalists like Whitman greatly inherited... However, I feel like I'll need to stop here before I really go off track, so for now, this will have to suffice.

But anyway, I wanted to also look at connections between Eastern and Western sexual spirituality. While already just the sheer volume of theological common ground between Hindu and Christian spiritualities that I'm aware of is absolutely huge (shoutout to David Bentley Hart and the incredibly insightful reading recommendations he often provides), I often feel like most conversations along these lines that tackle sexuality quickly fall into a sort of New Age esotericism, which is all fine and dandy, but I am also interested in the cultural and historical roots that these philosophies and traditions emerged from. Perhaps the most conspicuous and recurring practice that comes up when blending Eastern and Western sexual spirituality today is Tantra, which has also become increasingly a part of my life over the last few years, as I've explored these connections. Now, the ancient Hindu and Buddhist traditions of Tantra have existed for well over a few thousand years, but when most Anglophones talk about Tantra today, they refer to a modern Western appropriation of the term that focuses specifically on practices of 'sacred sexuality' (not to be confused with 'temple prostitution', as the Wikipedia article would have one believe). Here is a link to some simple Tantra exercises I found after a quick Google search (though this is something I will have to ask my friends about in order to learn more, since they are more familiar with Tantra and Neo-Tantra). A book recommendation I've gotten specifically from Pia, who I've mentioned in this blog before as one of my main sources of inspiration (sending you a kiss if you're reading this 😘), is Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Carrellas.

However, recently at Harbor, an online church community I participate in, someone shared a link to their Substack blog, where they talked about sacred sexuality, which is something I had only heard of in the context of Tantra. Clicking through the links they shared, I arrived at a concise summary of what 'sacred sexuality' can mean, which also shared book recommendations in the end. After Googling a few more book recommendations on sacred sexuality, and finding a Goodreads list for books about Tantra, I can probably say that there are at least a few books I'd be interested in, since they are recommended all across these pages. These are: The Art of Sexual Ecstasy by Margot Anand, The Tao of Love and Sex by Jolan Chang, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy by Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti and the Secret Way by Julius Evola, and The Tantra Experience: Evolution through Love by Osho. Perhaps when I read these, I'll supplement them with a good dose of All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, and Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard, which I've carried in my backlog for a while now.

Whether I will read all of those books is yet to be seen, but these resources I've provided so far at least provide a helpful guide for me to start navigating this barely explored terrain between Christianity, Love, Tantra and Sacred Sexuality. I'm excited yet nervous, and perhaps I'll return to this topic again in the future, once I've become a Protestant yogi sex master, at one with the Satchitananda - Father, Son and Holy Spirit :v - wish me luck!

EDIT: Hi again, it's the next morning and I still have this topic on my mind. I couldn't brush off the feeling that it would also be good to seek some more scholarly established books on the topic of Hindu spirituality and Tantra, which was only introduced to the West in its current form in the 19th century. Following from the Bibliographical Postscript in DBH's The Experience of God, perhaps the two introductory texts which called my attention most he mentions were The Spiritual Heritage of India by Swami Prabhavananda, and A Guide to Hindu Spirituality by Arvind Sharma. Alternatively, he discusses the profound impact the Sacred Books of the East series, published between 1879 and 1910 by Oxford University Press, had on the Western understanding of Eastern spirituality, and whaddya know, their website has all the traditional texts of eastern Tantra freely available in the public domain. Finally, I'm currently staying at my in-law's house, which has a wonderful collection of spiritual texts and hidden gems I often stumble upon, curated by my Lutheran pastor father-in-law and a scholar I greatly admire. Today as I woke up, I noticed a copy of Yoga: Immortality and Freedom by Mircea Eliade on my bedroom's bookshelf, and was delighted to find it has a section on Tantra. I don't know whether the book is good, but at least I already have a good place to start, it seems :)

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But before I leave, I also want to use this opportunity to dump my M.A. Thesis, which I successfully submitted in December, and for which I have now obtained my grade (1.3!) and subsequently graduated, so I think it's fine if I share it now. It's been nominated for an Ambassador Award at my university, which makes me indeed very glad, but let's see if I win anything at all. The title is "Voices from the Mountains: Complicating Coal Country Narratives through Local Journalism in Appalachia" and below is the abstract. If you want to read and/or download the entire text, you can do so here.

Abstract
This thesis explores how a handful of online regional, non-profit journalism projects in Appalachia, which have appeared in the last decade, are challenging harmful narratives about the region by creating nuanced, historically informed and community-oriented counter-narratives, which foreground the multiple heritages and identities Appalachians share. To do this, I first analyze three of the most pervasive narratives about the region commonly found in popular national media, and focus primarily on the “Trump country” narrative that emerged from the 2016 election season, before delving into historical “Hillbilly country” and “Coal country” narratives, as I call them. Next, I analyze how the aforementioned regional journalism projects are providing successful counter-narratives through their work, and for this I compare the local and national coverage of the 2019 Harlan County coal miner protest, and find that national journalists depended on the work provided by local journalists before them, and that the existing nuanced, counter-stereotypical coverage they picked up on successfully had an impact on the narrative that national audiences were presented. These narratives also often focus specifically on portrayals of coal mining in Central Appalachia, where many stereotypes come from, and which is also one of the most disadvantaged regions in the United States.

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Anyways, that's finally all for today, and it took waaaayyyy longer than I hoped... Oh well. I'll catch you all next time, I guess.