The whole idea of lust leaves a lot to be desired. I don't like lust, most of all because the word itself sounds too much like lost. And lost, as in being subsumed in the pursuit of an object, sounds like the beginning of the end of being present and authentic.   

Lust, just like envy or gluttony, or pride or sloth, or any "sin" I plan to reconsider isn’t bad as long as no one disappears in the pursuit of their desire. 

However, if you are a child at your third birthday party where there really is no polite way to refuse all the goodies Mommy puts in front of you, the image is of a lusty appetite for fun and frolic. No sin being committed here.

Nevertheless, from a grown-up perspective,  the word itself, lust sounds too much like lost. 

Risking whatever reputation I might ever hope to have, I admit to lusting for objects I imagined would increase my worth. Because I now know the difference between lusting for people once viewed as desired objects and being in  genuine relationship, I will name no names and limit my lust-list to material objects, such as, the paperback edition of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” newly translated. I once desired a large flat screen TV, an espresso maker, I had to own a microwave, I was powerfully attracted by a digital camera, another digital camera, heavy breathing for a wireless modem, a laptop computer. Believe me, this is not the end of the list. However, none of these objects, the pursuit of which felt overpowering and compelling at the time ever generated the joy and meaning I now experience as I fiercely desire to be authentic, pursuing goals not produced by marketplace pressures to conform.

Conformity. Yuck. Several years ago, I watched conformity get a black eye  on YouTube as Susan Boyle sang Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserable” on Britains Got Talent. I am one of millions of Internet surfers who saw Susan Boyle, at that time a frizzy-haired, frumpy 47-year old transform the snickers and sneers of the studio audience and the panel of judges to cheers and shouts of approval for the soaring beauty of her vocal performance.

Watching disbelief turn to wonderment stirred my soul. But it wasn’t only Susan Boyle’s beautiful voice, but how quickly the crowd and the judges recognized the error of jumping to judgment based on appearances and stopped sneering to begin cheering. Later, interviewed on CNN, Susan Boyle said, "I wouldn't want to change myself too much because that would really make things a bit false. I want to receive people as the real me, a real person."

Real people are beautiful when they fully commit to being truly who they are and take seriously, as we do in  the  Unitarian Universalist community, the first and seventh principles which articulate our conviction that all people have worth and dignity and that we are all part of the interconnected web of  life.  Speaking, sponsoring, gathering, attending events, standing behind tables, marching, going to jail, risking foolishness – it’s all a kind of witnessing for what matters, especially as we join forces with many communities to effect change.  In San Francisco, Oakland, throughout the United States and the world, the Occupy Movement exemplifies  lusting for justice and for change that will improve the lives of many more than currently count as the one percent.

For in the throes of such a lust, people trust their actions to spring from deep, though not always popular, personal truth. And thus wittingly and willingly, choose to lose themselves in what they must and most lust for: “tikkun olam” healing the world. So if lust we must, I can see no better use for lust than this.    

Yaaaay gluttony, Yum, Yum. Why the exuberance? It was gluttony after all that plumped me up enough to be hired to instruct people with weight issues on how to practice self-control, portion control, and to say no or “not now” to food, food, and more food.

Of course, the weight control company I work for would never have hired me if I hadn’t followed their program and lost my excess weight, which had been clearly visible in my Sponge Bob Square Pants-like shape. By following the program marketed by my future employer, I shed enough poundage to be trained as a leader and receive an employee number.

I must have been ballooning up for close to 30 years before “gluttony” crossed my mind. What finally convinced me I might be more than occasionally splurging was a birthday spent in intensive care at a local hospital to undergo a test so life threatening, I had to sign a form saying I knew this test could kill me, but the doctor says do it or else. Frightened and suffering from a fierce headache, I agreed to exit this life on the date I entered it if fate dealt me those cards. I had the procedure, which resulted in medical bafflement. Eventually the headache subsided, and some doctor suggested I had been suffering from food poisoning.

Food poisoning? Could that be? Well, a few days before dragging myself to the emergency room I remember thanking my son and daughter-in-law for bringing me their leftovers from an intimate dinner at a Clement street restaurant to which I had not been invited. It’s hard to say what was in the carton they deposited on the table in my living room because the room was dark, it was late, and the grease on the food had congealed hours ago, but I ate whatever was in that carton. Immediately, I was violently sick, and a headache ensued. That could have been a brain tumor, couldn’t it? That could be why the hurry to inject dye into my brain.

So in summary, as a result of that gluttony-related scare and finally acknowledging that unflattering photos of me taken over the years weren’t entirely the fault of the photographers, nor were the doctor’s scales spiking toward the high end due to a flaw in the metric system or malicious health care providers, I accepted the fact of my gluttony and turned myself in to weekly meetings, sage advice and healthy weight loss precepts. And so I lost weight and got that job, but, and it’s a big but, was I cured of gluttony?

Happily, absolutely not. And why should I, or anyone, wish to be free from such a delightful capacity for excess, so closely tied to the experience of pleasure? In the words of the venerable Grateful Dead, “Too much of everything is just enough.”  And my partner, Corky, who is also a glutton, gave me this Mae West quote, “Too much of a good thing... can be wonderful.”

From the hell and damnation angle, gluttony refers to overindulgence in food and drink, but from a happier perspective, gluttony is hunger for new experiences, for warm and caring contact, for eye-to-eye communion with friendly dogs, for speaking one’s mind, for being heard, for listening, for learning, for weeping through La Boheme or Butterfly for the fourth or fifth time, for reading voraciously, books stacked by the side of the bed. If that sounds like gluttony, then that’s what you call it.

My oldest son, Guy, recently undertook an MBA program online from Wales. Blogging about making this choice in an uncertain economy, he called himself a “glutton for punishment.” But he went on to say that in the process of undertaking new learning, he found he is good at it and thrilled that being caught up in what he is doing is still part of his nature.

It’s not my plan to give up gluttony, but to continue to teach that old habit new tricks, tricks that will serve me better than eating past my point of true delight, what I used to do. I will be a glutton for choices, so if I feel like going to a potluck and nibbling chocolate truffles and sipping shiraz or cabernet rather than slogging through tepid garlicky spaghetti on soggy paper plates or chipping away at the cheese ball elbow to elbow with everyone else, thank you, I will. I’ll be practicing gluttony on my own terms.

So let me conclude with this glutton’s prayer: “Yaaaay life!! Yum, Yum.” Keep it coming. Pour it on. “Ayum.”