Jehanne Dubrow interviews Jill Alexander Essbaum

I'll discard, momentarily, the death bit and talk about sex and God. The trope of God as Lover did not begin with me; look to the medieval woman saints, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard, Christina the Astonishing—they have absolutely no reluctance speaking of their desire for God as if he were a physical, imminently present man. Or even the words used to describe the Christian story. We speak of the passion of the Lord. A saint is said to be in ecstasy. The church is called Christ's Bride. And the words of institution: this is my body, given for you. Far earlier than that, we have both the psalms of David and the Song of Solomon-- neither of which flinch at real depictions of human emotion, including sexual emotion. Why the pairing of sexual and religious expression seems wrong to our post-modern American ears, I think, is because we're all (no matter what we believe or don't) direct inheritors of a Puritan heritage that disdains human physicality (full disclosure: when I typed this, I accidentally typed "hymen" instead of human!) in lieu of pursuits of the spirit alone. But look—I'm hardly spiritual. I'm carnal. And, if you are a Christian, you believe that for a time in history, God was too. And we celebrate that. It's hard for me to explain this because it makes such natural sense to me. And yet, I realize that at times, I am both provocative and outre.