As much as possible, I try to compartmentalize my “church” life from my sex life. Excluding my brief (and intense) fling with The Deaconess, I haven’t become sexually involved with any woman from my parish. Some of it is probably a mechanism to reduce the dissonance in my life. I try to compensate for my sexual guilt through my work in ministry. In the #MeToo era, relations between church leaders and congregants are especially dangerous. Sexual misconduct is grounds for dismissal from ministry.
“Anne” is tempting my restraint.
Anne’s relatively new to our church. She’s a single twentysomething Christian school teacher who remarkably resembles Shannen Doherty on Charmed. In the classes I’ve taught, she’s revealed herself to be whip-smart. (Tonight she made a long but penetrating digression on The Pilgrim’s Progress.)
Tonight she came up to me after class. She said was interested in forming a young adults group in our parish and asked if I could be of assistance. With church and school, I’m pressed for time as it is, but I agreed to help because
- A young adults group would be an excellent ministry and advance our mission.
- It would give me the opportunity to spend time with Anne.
Was Anne signaling any attraction to me? I doubt it. Still….
What followed was what Catholic moral theology used to call delectatio morosa.
Anne’s welcoming smile turning into a naughty smirk….panties falling to the floor….pushing open her thighs….her nails pressed into my hips, pressing me deeper into her….a shriek of pleasure.
I recently watched the movie First Reformed about the crisis of faith of a Reformed pastor. It got weird toward the end, but the film culminates in the suicidal pastor embracing a young pregnant widow he had been counseling (played by Amanda Seyfried). Implicit in the embrace is the sexual consummation which will follow. One heterodox interpretation could be that even when faith is obscured by doubt, shards of salvation can be glimpsed during sex.
One female pastor confessed that her sexuality was “like pieces of a puzzle that I haven’t put together yet.” I haven’t put that puzzle together, either.
Lutheran Guilt 