Marriage changes our loneliness but rarely cures it

 .... Marriage changes our loneliness but rarely cures it. There’s a reason the final section of Sigrid Undset’s great novel of marriage, Kristin Lavransdatter, is entitled “The Cross.” 

But for a long time American Christianity has sought to fix loneliness and suffering rather than accepting them as part of the core of Christian experience. We’re a prosperity-gospel, “Go out and get that blessing!” people, enthusiastic and hardworking and unwilling to believe that some things can’t be fixed.... 
- Eve Tushnet, 'Coming Out Christian'  

.... It is not that physical 'sex' is basic and 'God' ephemeral; rather, it is 'God' who is basic, and 'desire' the precious clue that ever tugs at the heart, reminding the human soul - however dimly -  of its created source. Hence... desire is more fundamental than 'sex'. It is more fundamental, ultimately, because desire is an ontological category  belonging primarily to God, and only secondarily to humans as a token of their createdness 'in the image'. But in God, of course, 'desire' signifies no lack - as it manifestly does in humans. Rather it connotes that plenitude of longing love that God has for God's own creation and for its full and ecstatic participation in the divine, trinitarian life.

.... a deeper, and more primary, question: that of putting desire for God above all others, and with judging human desires only in that light. Ascetic transformation, ascetic fidelity: these are the goals that so fatally escape the notice of a culture bent either on pleasure or moral condemnation. And to escape between the horns of that false dilemma is necessarily a spiritual and bodily task, involving great patience and commitment. From 'sexuality' and 'self' to participation in the trinitarian God: this way lies a long haul of erotic purgation, but its goal is one of infinite delight.

- Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self