Challenging Thoughts on Love ©  1999 Jonathan Zap Revised 2009   Edited by Austin Iredale Many people seem to view love as a feeling, and in New Age circles love often seems like a dose of aromatherapy, a passive, sentimentalized, set of hollow declarations that leaves a saccharine, toxic aftertaste, like eating Rose Bouquet Air Wick Solid for dessert. What many people have pointed out is that love is not so much a feeling it is as a verb. If you have love, that means you take action. As someone once pointed out, if you want to find out what you really love, notice what you spend time on. Anyone can say they love their kids, or in their absence have a Kodak moment of sentimentalized appreciation, but do they spend time with their kids? M. Scott Peck said: "I define love thus: The will ...

Tags: Eros: Love and Sexuality

Some Thoughts on Human Sexuality © 2003, Jonathan Zap Revised 2008   Edited by Austin Iredale Recently, I was called on to comment on a document that attempted, with the best intentions, to come up with a conscious, inclusive, reformed approach to human sexuality. Although there were many good things in this document, I began to have a strong reaction when I noticed that there was an attempt to create a softer-edged template, a model of romantic relationships that emphasized long-term committed relationships. Although my personal bias favors long-term committed relationships, I found that in reaction to the document I ended up going on a rant against the well-intentioned impulse to regularize human sexuality and conduct. My rant, written at high speed, had a life of its own, and the finished product was more of a personal discourse than something that could be ...

collage and text   ©Jonathan Zap You You. I know you. I saw you survive red flames twisting glass and steel burning the dry night air. Saw the heat of greedy fingers on the smooth skin of your youth as you splintered into fragments of light glittering through the dark suction of tunnels spiraling upward to entrance threshold intensity. I saw you and I saw every particle of sand on your naked skin as you awakened in desert night, spirit drawing back into wounded flesh and rousing itself into mosaic perceptions of reptiles, cactus spines, red rock, stars. I saw you, you with the will to survive and to glow upon the open mesa, tendrils of light penetrating the minds of strangers, penetrating me. You. You that awakens me and walks through the alleys and streets of empty cities to stand beside roads as I drive by and ...