It's worth noting, first of all, that the cover of this book creates "ONE" between God and Sex.Perhaps that is all you really have to understand in order to dive in.Whitwell writes, "The first human right is to be intimate with our own life, the power of this universe that is arising as the whole body in pristine intrinsic harmony with the whole cosmos."So, as the authors ask, What the hell happened? Why do we struggle to find god/truth (as if they are not already always present to us, as us, within us)? Why is sex (and intimacy) reduced to sanctity or smut? Why is intimacy collapsed away from the world and into one of two polarized versions of sexuality--repressive or exploitive?Whitwell offers us a deep breath of relief as he (and his superb co-writers) invite us into the critical analysis of those institutions and assumptions that have long disrupted (manipulated, degraded, and deluded, and desecrated) our innate, intimate, direct connection with the divine. Recognizing both the connections and the consequences of subordinating power structures (think environmental devastation alongside our own existential orphanage from our own sense of who and what we are), Whitwell et al explore the ways in which we have been bullied and sold ideas about god, about sex, and about our own brokenness. Rather than fostering ways to embrace and experience our inherent wholeness in our ordinary conditions, we have become seekers whose perpetual search for a future ideal impoverishes the present and reinforces the drive to keep looking. And what makes this message urgent is that there are oppressive, repressive, hierarchical systems that actually benefit from this faulty mythology. Whitwell notes, "Convince people they are lacking, and that you hold the solution." From spiritual and scientific to political and commercial forces, we are inundated with a corrosive logic that denigrates the body, the earth, the wild, the "other," the indigenous, the ordinary. We are taught en masse to hate and simultaneously worship our bodies, often at the expense of our own felt connection to our senses, sensuality, or sense of center. Our sexual lives have been distorted, denied, exaggerated, and exploited. God, or the divine by whatever name we call it, has been hijacked from us as some external force we are either seeking, trying to please, or trying to appease. Much as we learn to be objects of desire vs subjects of our own desire, we have been taught to be objects of divine recognition without the intimate experience of our own divine subjectivity. What was once the sacred Sex, birth, and death (which Whitwell reminds us are in the end, in fact, our whole life) are treated as the obstacles to a "higher" life, creating for us what amounts to a "project of dissociation." No wonder we wander around trying to shop or control our work out or fund some better life. The messages are everywhere, and so insidious. "So we live still within a vast hierarchy," he explains, "within which we hope to make progress according to arbitrary criteria. Happier, healthier, wealthier, sexier, more reasonable, more conscious, more qualified, more attractive--this is the new Chain of Being."No wonder we use "God" or religion or spiritual structures to control and deny sex. No wonder we use sex as a way of perpetuating that disastrous dissociation. In the process, both inherent aspects of our natural lives have been damaged.. But as the poet Wendell Berry may remind us, "there are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places."This is a book that is devoted to naming what has been desecrated and reclaiming what is sacred.Through this gentle and conversational (a teacher is no more or less than a friend, Whitwell would remind us all) offering, Whitwell seeks to untangle some of the cultural indoctrination we have inherited that leaves us feeling embattled, dysfunctional, and disconnected from our own innate connection to all of life, as life itself. Our desire to know the divine is not at odds with our desire to connect intimately with the world around us. In fact, as this powerful teacher explains, the two have always been the same. God is not "other," and sex is not "something sleazy, effortful, hard to get, or fundamentally disappointing." In fact, you are the expression and power of both.A powerful read for anyone who has struggled with the distortion that God is above and sex below and ne'er the two shall meet. The healing words within "God and Sex" are gentle, insightful, and empowering. It takes such care and dexterity of heart to write about the prolific belief systems that have made of us vulgar, spiritual orphans. This is a book, in my opinion, for anyone in relationship to their body, to the bodies of others, to the body of this earth, and to the body of divine mystery that births us all, over and over, breath by breath.