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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I pray persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings, Brian Kenneth Wilcox, MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; see www.compassion.com .
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This was a difficult writing to write, one done a few years ago when my mother was in the last stage of cancer. Yet, it is one of the most joyfully challenging I have done. Partly, because of it being so personal. Partly, because it seems so unlike the more “spiritual” material I usually write.
So, I say at the outset: Romantic love, with all its aspirations, frustrations, sex, children, divorce, remarriage, … is a spiritual process. Romantic love is an expression of the OneLife, Love, God, Your Essence.
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I hope this writing delights and challenges you. As you read through it, it might seem disconnected-for it is; be patient, read to the end, and I think you will see a thread of meaning. Also, note that I use both "love" and "Love" for the same Reality, for they are the same Reality.
I am glad to offer this writing again, slightly edited but substantially the same, and with a final paragraph added to speak to the matter of union in Love outside marriage and in nonheterosexual relationships.
My thoughts on the subject have remained stable since its first writing. Today, though I am single and not in a relationship, and have had some short-term romantic relationships in the meantime, my faith in Love is as strong as ever, and my belief in the freedom and mystery of Love - in all forms - is constant.
Remember the beautiful story of Creation in Genesis 2. In that story we see that gender, romance, sex, childbirth, … are all part of the destiny, the design, of human life and culture on earth. Such love, with falling in love and learning what that means together, is to be celebrated as sacred and beautiful by us humans. This is one reason that pornography is so evil: It desecrates something so sacredly beautiful. Pornography objectifies a subjective Mystery.
Obviously, there must be something romantic about Life, that is meant to be an experience as spiritual as any other:
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