Death, sex and relationships

Hilda died on Thursday. Peacefully.

It is strange being back at work. Apparently lots of people have been asking after me and wondering if I'm OK. Well now I'm back many of them have been to see me and have been very sweet about missing me. One of them, Hilda, had become very ill. She had gone into hospital after a fall and came out to die on Thursday.

Today is Sunday, a day of rest, reflection and renewal. I went to church twice. How about that? The theme of the week is sex. We heard from the newly appointed rector and the keen new curate who insists on wearing a 'T' shirt with 'cure8' on it. The rector seemed particularly troubled by pornography. He confessed to having a personal issue with pornography and seemed to think everybody else did. His sermon was however about self image, and was directed mainly at young members of the congregation, in particular the girls. He warned them, correctly in my view, about the dangers of being lured into believing that their physical attractiveness is a sign of adulthood, success and a goal in itself. It was wise, sensible, and pitched at the right level. It was addressing sex obliquely, implying that if you join the cult of fulfilment through beauty you were, more or less, flaunting sex and your availability for it.

The evening service was altogether more pernicious. The sermon was given by the naive cure8 and based very much on Paul's teaching to the Corinthians. Paul was no doubt a great man. He managed to bring Christianity to the Romans, and so made it a world religion. He spoke passionately about the morality of the times and about the rules of behaviour to be followed by first century Christian communities. I'm sorry, but that's it. Otherwise he is a self-proclaimed apostle who never actually met Jesus and who was clearly, apart from anything else, a misogynist. Surely no one these days agrees with his views on women. Why then should we think that his views on sex are any more correct for our day. Still more, he accepted and instigated the need to modernise social laws and norms and, for example, overturned the food laws and the need for circumcision. Why then should we think that these sorts of laws, which includes sex, should be fixed in time?

So the cure8 believes that sex should remain between a man and a woman within marriage. That sex outside marriage will lead to the abuse of women in sex through pornography, rape, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease. No mention of sexual abuse within marriage then Presumably as a women become the possession of the man, she should be quiet and obey her master, as Paul would have it. No mention of love, trust or respect. No wonder the teenagers of the church marry young then put up with unhappy marriages for the rest of their lives. No room for same sex relationships either in this church, not even a mention.

George and Hilda loved each other very much and it was my privilege to be with them in her last day. As she drifted away I was able to help her to come round sufficiently for her and George to have a final intimate moment. She smiled. Not her characteristic snorting laugh, which I can still hear, but a smile of recognition and love. They were married for over fifty years, but what mattered is that they loved, trusted and respected each other in all that time. The piece of paper was irrelevant.