An incongruent day

The incongruence of my day yesterday makes me grin a little. I went to a Lauren Winner lecture at a local Theological School. She talked about her book "Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity". I actually liked a few things she said about how the church talks in ways that aren't helpful about sex. She went through fallacies the church has about sexuality. (eg. that men are the sexual ones and christian women don't have sex drives). True, that's a fallacy. How youth groups say "wait until marriage" when some people might not be called to marriage. And I liked hearing her criticism of how the church separates sexuality from the rest of scripture. And how the church treats married people different than single people. I am still pondering what I think about chastity. Mostly because it's not like I could wait until marriage if I am not "allowed" to get married. I really wanted to hear what she might say about gay marriage. I almost asked about it during the question time. But you can bet the people who put this event together were hyper-glad no one asked. Because if you are going to talk about christian sexual ethic, which for her and most evangelicals involves talking about chastity and celibacy until marriage, these days you know there were many people thinking about "gay marriage". And the denomination she comes from is episcopalian. And they are struggling with it.

Then last night on the phone "y" asked me questions like: Did you want to reach out and hold my hand or touch my face... when you visited? Did you feel like you could? It seems we both wanted to and didn't. She was afraid of scaring me. And I'm hyper shy. And I asked her questions like: How do you define dating. There was more than that. Basically for her dating means exclusive. And for me dating means that I might consider kissing. I think kissing is pretty solidly in my future. I'm not up for anything else right now and she knows that.

The lecture and the conversation with "y" both caused me to realize just how much I've changed.