Earthiness is a virtue.  It expresses the virtue of embracing the physical world.  It is delight in being a body.

Earthiness being an embodied, particular, physical virtue, it is hard to give precise rules for it.  When you are with guys who get crude and ask how your wife is in bed, probably the right answer is to freeze them dead.  Or to smirk and say nothing.  Maybe its “she’s a tigress, what about it?”  Maybe its a gentle reproof.  Much depends, because these virtues are embedded in specific physical situations, none of which are identical, because that’s the nature of physical things.  Much depends on what you have become through experience, blood, and many other things.

But to say that virtues are embodied is not to say that they cease to exist.  It would always be wrong to show pictures of your wife’s nakedness.  It would always be wrong (not necessarily sinful, that would depend, but wrong) to have an aversion to sex with your spouse.

 


Continue reading at the original source →