"Make Us Lovers, God of Love"

Are you, Eternal Spirit, full of erotic energy?
Can we trace our own drive for relationality back to you?
Is not that heartfelt magnetism among lovers
your own numinous paradigm?
Does it speak of you, model you, reveal you?
It seems so.

You are a God of Love, then – above all other identities.
Love is your premier creation.
It is lovers who are your first mystics,
and it is lovers who should guide the world
in almost every way,
lead the religions, lead the nations, and lead the leaders.

Make us lovers, then, God of Love.
Fill us with your own spirit.
May it be so.

– William Cleary

(From the book Prayers to an Evolutionary God)

Reflecting on his prayer, "Make Us Lovers," Cleary writes:

The erotic may sound to us like something debased and carnal. That is regrettable because erotic feelings are above all a creation of God and a revelation of what our world is all about.

In fact, according to Diarmuid Ó Murchú, erotic is not too strong a word to apply to the divine spirit itself, and to all the healthy energies essential to the evolution of the world. The Big Bang also can be thought of as erotic, an unimaginable outburst of love and creativity. In Evolutionary Faith, Ó Murchú states: "If we take seriously the creative Spirit at the heart of the evolutionary process, then we must spare no effort to attune ourselves with the Spirit's wild, erotic energy."

Our sexual experiences might consequently be seen as potentially religious, as revelatory, as sacred. We might express gratitude in symbol, like candlelight, or gesture, like the instinctive motion of hand to heart. All our human love experiences have the potential to take us into the world of the sacred, and in that light the debasement of them is sacrilege.

Recommended Off-site Links:
A Review of Prayers to an Evolutionary God – Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat (Spirituality and Practice, 2012).
An Introduction to Evolutionary Spirituality (Part 3 in the "Countdown to Synod 2013" series) – Michael Bayly (The Progressive Catholic Voice, August 27, 2013).
The Evolution of Consciousness, God, and Prayer – Mark Gilbert (ConsciousBridge.com, February 23, 2010).
ClearyWorks – The Official Website of William Cleary.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
"More Lovely Than the Dawn": God as Divine Lover
"Never Can We Be Separated"
In the Garden of Spirituality – Diarmuid Ó Murchú
In the Garden of Spirituality – James B. Nelson
Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 1)
Sex as Mystery, Sex as Light (Part 2)
The Dancer and the Dance
"Then I Shall Leap Into Love"

Image: Photographer unknown.