Not The Religious Type

How Should We Talk About Sex with Teens?

This might be a subject for folks (like PB?) who have experience working with teens--or, I suppose, for people who've parented teens.  (My oldest is 13, so we've made initial forays in this area, but no more than that...)

In the comment section of the "Sex!" post, Titi asked:

My question is how do you translate all of this when talking about sex with people who are not, in fact, adults? Teens have varying degrees of maturity and critical thinking capabilities, but a pretty consistently high degree of sexual drive. And given the trend of sexual activity happening earlier and earlier, we could well be having these discussions with pre-teens who aren't even basing their decisions on hormones so much as social pressures.

On the one hand, the prescription approach has the benefit of having more emotional appeal than the job description as it invokes the larger sense of ultimate well-being. But on the other hand, how many of us have in our youth (and beyond!) disregarded things which we knew to be short-term gains but long-term losses?

And if we resolve ourselves to the high likelihood of failure in shepherding pre-adults to handle adult decisions well, do we act to mitigate the consequences (such as promoting birth control)?

Can Talking about Faith be Fun and Helpful?

Fun trivia moment to start us off. 

So I posted the previous post, headlined "Sex!" (in response to the lively conversation about Tim A's post of two weeks ago on the subject) on Tuesday afternoon.  The blog has been largely dark for the past week (Dan's great post on Friday being the exception) and so we'll need to regain some momentum.  So, as of late afternoon Tuesday, the post had generated exactly zero comments. 

Out of mild curiosity, I checked in to see how many hits the post had gotten, figuring our number would be at about a third of the readership from two weeks back, given the lack of posts.  And, indeed, many days did trend that direction. 

EXCEPT for Tuesday itself.  It was the biggest day in the history of the blog.  By a lot. 

How could this be?  The post that had driven this massive traffic hadn't generated a single comment at that point.  Surely there must be a glitch.

So I checked the hit count through another method, as a control.  Yup, the number was right.  Our biggest day ever, lack of comments or no. 

And then it hit me.  The post was called "Sex!" 

I assume this is a parable of how search engines work.  And a picture of the main purpose of the internet?  (I read a stat some years back that 40% of internet traffic, worldwide, was to porn sites.)

Sex!

Hi all!  We've been a little quiet this past week (thanks Dan for your provocative "examination of conscience" post) as my family arrived back from California late last night.  We had a good time, thank you very much for asking, learning things like that a San Diego Padres/ Philadelphia Phillies game in the middle of a pennant race draws an equal number of Phillies fans, despite a continent separating the two cities.  Who knew?

While we were gone, Tim A. drew lots of interest with his "let's talk about sex" post, and it certainly says that more rather than less talk about sex would be a wise thing.  Thanks Tim and thanks to all you commenters!

If I can speak generally about the subject, I wonder if we're served by a distinction a few of us here have chatted about before: thinking of faith as a "doctor's prescription" rather than a "job description."  This comes from Jesus calling himself a doctor who came only for people who regarded themselves as sick.  And this is in contrast to how Jesus seemed to think most people, from all religious traditions, regarded faith--as a job description that we undertake in order to get the goods from the god in question.  The job-description world is one of rules, of figuring out what the minimum amount of work is to get the paycheck, of low-to-high-level resentment that so much is demanded of us. 

An Examination of Conscience

About five years ago, one of my college roommates went on a Jesuit retreat and brought back an extra copy of this obscure little book called Hearts on Fire, Praying with Jesuits. It's a compilation of prayers written by Jesuits (past and present) that are "gleaned from the rich tradition of Jesuit reflection on the human hunger for God." At the time, I didn't think very much of it, but when I finally got around to opening the book, I discovered this book is worth it's weight in gold.

Hidden in this book is a short little exercise on the "examination of conscience" which I've found has greatly enhanced my prayer life. I'd like to say I do this every day (or even once a month) but often times I forget all about it. But whenever I feel far from God or discover my prayer life is dry (or non-existent), I remember this exercise and try it again. And without fail, I've found to be an invaluable resource.

Before I share it with you, I wanted to change the conversation of the blog for today and ask "What has helped you connect with God? Do you have any concrete exercises, tips, or advice that we might find helpful?"

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