I am planning a high school retreat where we're gonna "talk about sex." And while I try to sort out my thoughts and construct a cohesive teaching from Scripture about marriage and sex (to kids who are not at all convinced sex is for marriage) - I hear the ear-piercing creaking and groaning over my head of churches, denominations, the "catholic" church (in the sense of universal, not Catholic...) unable to contain the multiplicity of views on this very topic. We are breaking to pieces all over the place. Anglicans. Lutherans. Presbyterians.
And why does it matter so much what we think about sex? Because it's indicative. Because the conversation I hear bishops, theologians and pastors arguing about in sermons, on the blogs and in the courts reminds me very much of the teeny bopper website Scarleteen.
Scarleteen's approach is feminist, I think the founder is Buddhist, and though I was delighted to see her advocating girls and women to "chart their cycles" (YESSS), I was quite astonished to see the way the site's premise unfolded in so many witty stories and entries:
What matters when it comes to sex is: your. pleasure.
The cute girly website offers stories to set you at ease about your own "sexYOUality" ...stories about a 17 yr old girl who is in a long term "polyamorous" (three-some+) relationship. Another one is "asexual." Many are "bi-sexual." The vanilla ones are 15 and having sex with someone of the opposite sex.I read a lot of letters today, a lot of lay people, priests, theologians standing up. Saying enough is enough. The cause of Christ is about being a holy people set apart and acting as agents of redemption - the hands and feet of the Savior. Which means something about us should echo that we come from a foreign land. From Eden, a place where sex is great and peace prevails.
On a personal note, I struggle to feel out my place in this discussion. I want to go to school! Want to write a dissertation and join a faculty and get writing and talking and continue working in the church! But I look at Pittsburgh, I look at my age, and I just wonder how it all fits. What to pursue and where and when. No, I know what. Theology of gender. Raising the bar and redeeming our view of genderdness. Being part of the conversation of pastoral care to the sexually broken (ehem...all of us).
As several people have reminded me lately, if I am answering a call, chasing a vocation that God created me to chase, than I will figure out my path. One step at a time.
