Jacob and wounding

The more I grow older, and hopefully a little deeper in understanding, the more I am aware of how religious traditions have wrestled with sexuality and gender in all kinds of extraordinary ways.  For sexuality and gender have always been such powerful aspects of human lives and spirituality has therefore necessarily engaged with them as vital features of revelation and relationship, as well as repression and resistance. Sadly. so many 'sanitised' and narrowed readings of the Bible and religious traditions have significantly contributed to human distancing from intimate, celebratory and mature sexuality and gender identities.   These are typically those which have much airplay today in wider media as well as conservative and fundamentalist circles.  When however we look afresh at scripture and tradition, particularly through lenses of 'queer' experience, we find something very different.  Some features can be quite confronting, even profoundly disturbing, full of extraordinary violence and subjugation.  Some aspects can also be very  different from our our contemporary contexts.   Yet there are others, rightly viewed, which can help us face up to our own opportunities for growth towards richer sexual and gendered lives.  They can be quite challenging but offer considerable liberative potential.  Among these is the story (in Genesis 32.22-31) of Jacob's wresting with the divine, their wounding and blessing...

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