Sex and the City of God

A Memoir of Love and Longing

By: Carolyn Weber

Narrated by: Nan McNamara

Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

When Carolyn Weber moved to Oxford University to study, she didn't expect to find God there. But she did. As she grappled with her newest and most important relationship, she also found that there was another invitation: to think bigger about love.

In this book we follow Weber through courtship and into marriage and parenthood. Now a literature professor, Weber reflects on her relationship with a sometimes-absent father and how that has shaped her. Through her personal story, as well as spiritual, theological, and literary reflection, Sex and the City of God explores what life looks like when we choose to love God first.

©2020 Carolyn Weber (P)2020 eChristian

Beautiful

An absolutely stunning recollection of God’s love present in longing, and a recalling of our purpose in Him.

Delightful, life-giving, twaddle-free

Such beautiful writing! What delicious storytelling! Truly lovely.

If your looking for how-to's or how to nots, this is not that book. If your looking for preachy affirmations of dogma, this is not that book. If your looking for graceless or Wordless permissiveness, again, this is not that book. But what a treasure this book is!

You have to pull out the lessons, meditate and ponder through the stories. With any great storytelling, she weaves her history like one does talking with a friend over time. Bits and pieces, a bit out of order, but always circling back again to flesh it out.

She addressed our greatest longing to be fully known and yet fully loved. And how we look for that in our fathers and our spouses. But ultimately, it's our deep, intimate relationship with God that fills that role, She's putting real-life story to the imagery we find in Scripture. This book is rich with an abundance of literary references and soul-washing Truth.

However, I will confess that if I hadn’t heard her interviewed with Juli Slattery, I may not have known where she was going. With sex in the title and not being familiar with Augustine's The City of God, I wasn't sure what I was getting into.

As an added note, the narrator was exceptionally engaging in her style. Very talented. I thoroughly and wholeheartedly loved it!

Spiritual truth, depth AND a great story

Loved the weaving of St Augustine's City of God into memoir. Must read continuation of narrative begun in "Surprised by Oxford".

Purity culture recover-ees, beware!

This is mildly watered down, shame-ridden purity culture repackaged. A conversation between the author and her faith mentor about how her innocent crush on her future husband was "idolatry" was particularly triggering for me. I wanted to go back in time and throw my hands over the ears of the poor author and tell her these were not the words of Jesus, before she could internalize them and publish them in a book as truth. ugh.
It's also surprisingly poorly written, considering the background of the author. The stories shared are confusing, contradictory, random and frequently preachy interactions with friends, boyfriends, and parents. Seriously. Skip this one,before. church kids of the 90s, you've heard it all before.
Oh, and the narrator's accents are super cringy.