The Antidotes

What pleasure and joy are you cultivating in your life?

Matthew 26:6-8

Now when Jesus was in Bethany…a woman approached Jesus with an alabaster jar of very expensive ointment. She poured it on his head while he reclined at the table. The disciples, witnessing this, were indignant. “What a waste!” they said.

Pleasure often feels like a waste in moments of crisis. In this text, Jesus is aware that he’s riled the religious and political leaders and that there are likely consequences coming down the pike. He’s taking time to eat a relaxed meal and then he’s gifted with the luxury of an expensive jar of oil being poured over his body. The disciples are shocked–maybe by the overt sensuality of the moment or maybe, as they assert, by the moral uppitiness of believing that they knew better about how the richness of that gift “should” have been used.

In the current moment, pleasure and sensuality are also often seen as a waste of time or resources. The urgency of fighting facism, war, transphobia, racism, etc. feel (understandably and deservedly) present. And also, as someone on the internet recently said, “No one having soulmate level sex is starting wars, know that much.”

Pleasure, connection, joy, falling in love, etc. are not distractions from the work we are doing. Rather, they are the antidotes to the systems of violence, disconnection, despair, and hatred that we are fighting.

Even now, what pleasure and joy are you cultivating in your life? How can you embrace the ridiculous gift of love and sensuality and bodily good as a continued act of resistance?

— Candace Woods

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