Collar Aside

While the choirmaster filled the air with Bach, you served me the finest wine and bread from a silver plate and decorative sterling chalice.  Your hands freely offered me the bread of life as your lips pronounced absolution for sin’s transgressions.

I knelt with others assuming the position of submission, as we opened our hearts and minds to holy mysteries; those intangible moments when we experience a sense of the eternal, where humanity reaches upward and outward and heaven appears to hug back.

So it was in the sanctuary.

But in the parsonage, it was you who knelt; just once, but one time too many.

Even as you slowly descended to your knees, I desired no reversal of roles.  I gave you no hint of wanting our relationship to change.

As your puppy dog eyes, unbecoming of your age, met mine, I saw the question mark in your eyes.  It was as if I could read your mind.  Every thought I discerned was flagged by a flashing warning sign; all I could raise for myself was a flag of surrender.

In those brief moments of time, my mind raced.  I pictured the clerical collar hanging in your closet- a noose around years of private confessions; those soul-searching verbal exchanges I thought you would leave at the altar or take with you to your grave as you promised.

I thought of the ministerial robe you wore to celebrate high and holy moments of baptism, weddings and the Eucharist.  Did it serve only as a disguise to cloak your lack of self-control ? Or was it worn with the intent of acting as a clever diversion?

I wanted to feel empowered, as if I could cast some magical spell to dispel the notion of what may happen.  When would it come? When would that something rise up within me and give me strength to face the sense of violation I was about to feel?

While your fingers graced my chest, fear gripped my heart as your face searched for a nesting place.  The closeness of your breath warmed my skin as reality chilled me to the bone.  With your kiss of betrayal, I experienced an emotion that can be neither labeled nor measured.  The fallout is the only evidence that remains, keeping the memory forever engrained in my psyche.

The you I thought I knew must regret the deed of that day. Maybe I could lessen your pain by inventing excuses for you, but that would be sinning against myself.  It was you who taught me about forgiveness, then sowed a seed that would put that lesson into practice.  Scars are calloused to feelings, ever serving as reminders of healing.

Decades of Sundays have elapsed since that encounter.  Bach has continued to accompany me during sacred moments of contemplation.  The empowerment that once seemed delayed has come to fruition and serves me well.  I’ve found new bread to nourish my soul and new wine to replenish the reservoir diminished by your trespass.
 
Many men have come in and out of my life, but thanks to the gift of Sunday’s lesson, only the invited stay.