Homoerotic interfaith poetry book explores “lust for the holy”

Gay visions of Christ are part of a homoerotic interfaith adventure that awaits in “The Daring of Paradise,” the newest poetry book by Toronto teacher Brian Day.

He writes about what he calls “the lust for the holy” across the boundaries of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.

His latest book features several new homoerotic poems about Jesus, including “Pursuing our Pleasure in the Body of Christ” (reprinted with permission below) and “Krishna and Jesus in Algonquin Park.” (reprinted in full in my previous post “What if Christ and Krishna made love?”) The new book also provides a glimpse of Jesus enjoying a naked interlude with Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism.

Day blends gay and religious themes in a way that illuminates both queer experience and all spiritual expression. Visit Lambda Literary Review for my full review of the book.

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Pursuing our Pleasure

 in the Body of Christ

By Brian Day

There is no further body of Christ but this smoothed aggregate

of human flesh. We are the athletic limbs

of his swimming through the world, the hands of all

his practical acts. But hands and limbs are not all of a body,

and those parts of Christ we might conceal

must elicit from our mouths a particular esteem.

The body of Christ is built for delight, and not one

of its vivifying organs can be scorned. The kindling sites

of our communal body take part in our sacred

and carnal commission, this ignition of flesh in its knowledge

as flesh. We caress the completeness of our one body, explore it

with palms, alert it with fists. We lick a glistening

array of physiques, knowing the foreign and knowing

ourselves, knowing Christ in each of his tissues and hollows,

straining toward completer knowledge in this keen narcissistic

congregation of flesh. We train each finger, each muscle, each

follicle to take its place in the communion of Christ. And we,

so flooded with desire for the countless strong members

of the body of Christ, what should we in desire

strive for? We would strive to be those zones

of the holy within the common body of Christ, the seats

of pleasure where he excites himself

into vibrant and ever more electric being.

***
Biblical references:

1 Corinthians 12.27 and Romans 12.4-5


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Related links:
Conjuring Jesus poems: Homoerotic taste of heaven
(review of the book “Conjuring Jesus” by Brian Day)

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This post is part of the Queer Christ series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

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