Those of us who have studied the lives of Gandhi and Dr. King at length might be familiar with my feeling of discomfort when it came to how (or how not) nonviolence had permeated their understanding of their own sexuality. Here is a quote from Deitrich Bonhoeffer, that speaks of how I have come to understand all our energies (be they our powerful experiences of anger, or grief, or sexual attraction) are gifts when transformed. To suppress them, or to be controlled by them, does not honour these experiences and cheats ourselves of the transformation that God longs for in our lives.

‘The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one’s life towards a goal’

-Deitrich Bonhoeffer, (Letters and Papers from Prison)