Healthy Sexuality
How do you talk to your teenager about sexuality? For those of you who attended any part of Rockway’s Spiritual Emphasis Week, you learned that conversations about sexuality begin way before puberty and can continue long past it!
Keith Graber Miller, Professor of Religion and Sexuality at Goshen College, led Rockway in a three day chapel series, where he spoke about Faithful Sexuality, Inclusive Sexuality, and Shameless Sexuality. He was bold, he was blunt, yet his words were beautiful and reassuring to students, as he named his hope for them to feel loved, cared for and respected.
Why did we pick this topic? We wanted to open conversation with our students and help them develop a positive Christian sexual counter culture. We wanted to help students recognize how much sexuality and spirituality are interconnected. We wanted to have our students recognize that sexuality is far more than talking about their anatomy. Graber Miller stated, “Sexuality is about our full body-selves, about embracing or critiquing gendered expectations, about living in and with our bodies, about love and connection and attachment and friendship. It’s about men and women respecting the other sex as well as their own sex.” What better place to address this then at a church school where you can bring education and spirituality together? Rockway is place that is not afraid to engage in tough issues and ask hard questions…we are place that forms faith…builds character through listening, engaging, challenging, agreeing, disagreeing, debating and praying together.
I believe that Rockway’s Spiritual Emphasis Week opened a door for more conversations, in the classroom, at home, and in the “car,” about making healthy sexual choices. May God continue to bless our precious youth and may this week remind them they are all children of God!
Ann L. Schultz
Principal
Tags: faith, sexuality, spiritual emphasis week
