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The Dude Abides

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Progressive Christian

Last updated on: February 20, 2006 at 3:29 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2006-02-20T15:29:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

GODSTUFF:

SOFT-CORE GOD PORN — AND YOU CAN SING ALONG, TOO …

This column is rated PG-13, for adult situations, mild sexual content and lusty spiritual metaphors.

We’re talking about soft-core God porn.

Bible erotica.

Pious passion.

Or, as the folks who produced this nifty CD that arrived at my desk earlier this week, just in time for Valentine’s Day, call it: “The Original Love Song.”

The “original” love song was not penned by Stevie Wonder, the Beatles or Barry White. Props for the “original” love song lyrics go to King Solomon, circa 700 B.C.

The original love song is better known as the biblical book “Song of Solomon” (or “Song of Songs” or “Canticle of Canticles,” depending on your religious predilections), or so says Guy Bickel of Tampa, Fla., the fellow who set the Bible book to the score of pleasantly plinky-plunky ambient tunes (think massage therapy music) and called it “The Original Love Songs: Guidelines for Passion from the Song of Solomon.”

Bickel, 51, a longtime sound engineer in the record industry (he has worked with Frank Zappa and Diana Ross), is a born-again Christian of a fairly new vintage.

“On a Wednesday afternoon two years ago . . . I was just standing there thinking, and all of a sudden it was an amazing event,” he says by way of describing the moment of his conversion.

Not long after, his wedding anniversary was approaching, and Bickel was trying to come up with something romantic and innovative and spiritual. A friend sent him a verse of scripture from the fourth chapter of the Song of Solomon:

Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind!
Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.
Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits.

Oh, behave!

Bickel says he was stunned. He had no idea the Bible could be so sexy. Its violent content is well-known — all those smitings, slaughters, plagues and whatnot — but the Bible’s gentler, more, ahem, adult side is among its lesser-known hidden treasures.

“I thought, ‘What a neat thing. I bet there’s a movie or a CD that would be a very cool thing for my anniversary,’ ” Bickel recalls. He Googled. There wasn’t. So he decided to make his own.

The result is a unique mixture of godly and sexy.

“This is much more a mood CD — wine, candles and your significant other — than it is a drive-in-your-car CD,” Bickel wrote in a note that accompanied my copy of “The Original Love Song.”

Indeed. I felt a little naughty listening to it in the newsroom, frankly. Kept looking over my shoulder as if I’d surfed on to one of Gawker.com’s saucier entries and was trying to read it before an editor sneaked up on me.

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” a woman’s voice on the CD begins. This is “the beloved” (also known as “the Shulamite woman”), the female character in the Song of Solomon. “Your love is more delightful than wine. Mmmmmm, pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes. No wonder the maidens love you.”

Seriously. That’s what she says. Straight out of the Hebrew scriptures. She’s talking about “the lover,” “the king” or “the shepherd,” which is the male character in the biblical book.

“Let the king take me to his chambers. … My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh that lies between my bosoms. … Oh that his left hand would embrace my head and his right hand would caress me. …”

See. NSFW, right?

And yet, totally biblical.

“It’s not to get you horny,” Bickel insists. “It’s to put romantic thoughts into your head and make you see your spouse in a different light.”

He also hopes it will draw a few more people, who might not otherwise be interested, into reading the Bible for themselves.

“I hope that it entices nonbelievers into opening the Bible and realizing that it has all this stuff in it . . . and that Christians aren’t a bunch of fuddy-duddies. That really isn’t true,” he says, then admits, “OK. A lot of them are.”

Accompanying the CD of scripture set to music, where the liner notes normally would be, is a pamphlet written by David Clarke, a psychologist friend of Bickel’s, titled “Rules for Men and Suggestions for Women.”

By way of introducing his collection of “romantic rules and sensuous suggestions,” Clarke says bringing God “into the bedroom” will “ignite the flame of passion and keep it burning forever.”

The following is just a tease of what Clarke suggests. Draw your own conclusions:

*Your wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. Right? Well then, tell her. Compliment her physical beauty. Her emotional beauty. Her spiritual beauty. Do it out loud, right to her face. Do it often! A woman never gets tired of this.

*Once every two weeks, give your dear wife a greeting card with a romantic message. This card must be gushy, mushy and sentimental. Please, don’t just sign your name in the card. Your woman wants to read about how much you love her and why. … Thank her for being who she is.

*Compliment him often. The Shulamite woman calls Solomon a “stag or hart.” In today’s language, stag means “stud.” So once or twice a week when your husband comes home from work, say: “How are you, Stud?”

*Thank him for working at his job. Thank him for the jobs — no matter how few — he does around the home. And the next time he takes out the trash, run down the driveway and high five him: “Give me five, baby . . . you are the trash man!”

All right, so that last part made coffee come out my nose when I read it. Still, there’s a certain sweetness and begrudging truth to it, right?

If you believe the Bible is God’s word — inspired, metaphorical, inerrant or literal — there must be something to God’s version of a bodice-ripper (spiritual or otherwise).

“I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches,” Solomon (the lover) says in the 7th chapter of Song of Songs. “Oh, may your breasts be like clusters on the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your kisses like the best wine.”

So. light some candles, uncork a nice Barolo and crack open those Bibles, lovebirds.

Cheers, and have a happy Valentine’s Day!

“The Original Love Song” CD ($14.95) can be purchased online at www.originallovesong.com.

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