I see that it was on this day in 1525 that Martin Luther still technically a Roman Catholic priest married the former nun Katharina von Bora.
Apparently that part of their lives went swimmingly.
I’ve been thinking a bit about celibacy and spirituality recently, and this sort of allows me to stop and in honor of Martin and Katharina, to reflect just a moment on the subject.
First, celibacy has been a part of spirituality for, well, just about forever. And one can see good reasons for it, allowing one to focus, allowing one’s life to be for all both immediately come to mind.
The shadow comes along when one thinks that with those advantages spiritual practice, the great disciplines of the interior life therefore only belongs to the celibate. There are often whiffs of body hating hanging in the air, as well…
I recall a passing conversation with a Hindu monk in which he asserted without celibacy one cannot achieve the deepest insights.
Maybe.
But, I don’t think so.
Rather, the path that we need to find for ourselves is how we can live in this world that is our native country, but which is also a world of flux, of change, where nothing remains as it was.
That’s the hard part.
How do we love fully? And, how do we let go when the time comes to let go?
This is the dance of the authentic spiritual.
It is true for the celibate.
it is true for the partnered.
It is the real dance of life.
The marriage of life and death, the joining of the world and our individual hearts.
The thing that is not one, not two.
The dance…
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