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I love this quote--it could be a fitting summary of my book:
"Our trust in the Trinity's embrace frees us to love others more fully with triune kinds of love--fostering deep relationships that involve solid friendships without sexual innuendo" From Marva Dawn's new book, In the Beginning, God
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"If a husband plays tennis with a neighbor's wife on Saturday mornings, he need not be a candidate for incipient infidelity...Only those who suspect that every friendship between a man and woman has sexual intercourse as its natural goal will label every friendship as adultery of intent. The line between tolerable friendships can be recognized not by rules but by imaginative discernment."
Lewis Smedes
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"True love, friendship, commitment, and community are related to beauty...To be or not to be is the question of beauty and its motivating power." John Navone
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This is from James Smith's newest book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. I am really looking forward to reviewing this book here in the coming week. This excerpt below is not within any kind of immediate context of the ordered beauty of male-female friendship but there is so much relevant to it:
"What if we didn't see passion and desire as such as the problem, but sought to redirect it? What if we honored what the marketing industry has got right--that we are creatures of love and desire--and then responded in kind with counter-measures that focus on our passions, not primarily our thoughts and beliefs? What if the church began with an affirmation of our passional nature and then sought to redirect to it?"
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I love this quote. This is from an ordained monk, Guibert of Gembloux and his friendship with Hildegard of Bingen. Although ordained, he opened his life, ministry, and heart to her. Also, his language reveals an intimate bonding that was nonromantic but yet deeply passionate. At many layers, this friendship goes beyond the shallow When Harry Met Sally dialogue, beyond simplistic gender roles, beyond sex-segregation.
"I live with her in the beauty of peace and of all delight and sweetness, I am directed by her counsels, supported by her prayers. I press forward by her merits, I am upheld by her kindnesses and daily I enjoy conversation with her."
Guibert of Gembloux regarding Hildegard of Bingen
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"The recovery of eros is also a recovery of play, an important dimension of friendship...The recovery of play is an invitation to friendship. Playfulness means the devaluation of control. Play involves the capacity to trust and to surrender to the moment. So also with friendship. Friendship has no achievement agenda, no task orientation...Of course, friends often do things together. They embark on common tasks and tackle common agendas. They stand side by side facing something to be done. Indeed, some suggest that men have their own distinctive style of relating: it is shoulder-to-shoulder rather than face-to-face. But must it be an either/or proposition? Friendship often means letting loose of the task, letting go of the need to prove one's usefulness. It means valuing the presence of the other just for their own's sake. It is enough just to be, and to be with. That is playful, and that is gracious. The recover of eros and its playfulness means the recovery of pleasure. Friendship both depends and thrives on it."
James Nelson The Intimate Connection
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"In fact, if we were more comfortable with nonsexual physical contact, we would be less likely to fall into inappropriate sexual activity." Vinita Hampton Wright
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“As long as everybody’s on the same page, opposite-sex friends can be fantastic for a couple.”
Author and psychologist Bonnie Jacobson
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/01/23/lw.opposite.sex.friends/index.html
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"To deny the sexual dynamics of friendship, whether or not romance is involved, is to court disaster. Sexual desire demands its due, and while acknowledged sexuality calls our attention to the ways we are drawn to 'otherness' and ultimately God, unacknowledged sexuality is famous for exploding under the covers."
Kenda Creasy Dean
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"The tragedy is not just that there is so much sexual and emotional infidelity around, but that, because of this, there is so little hetereosexual friendship and love around (even within marriage)." Ronald Rolheiser
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