Child molesters. Alcoholics. Embezzlers. Principled rogues. Profligate clergy.
I thought more than 20 years as an ordained minister had given me a good working knowledge of human nature.
It wasn’t until I posted an online profile on a dating site that I realized how clueless I was.
A series of parish posts and journalism jobs as a religion reporter had not provided fruitful territory in which to meet eligible suitors.
Married in my 30’s, I quickly adopted the mantle of the suburban parish pastor, and, eventually, mother.
It was not until recently that, newly single, I decided to dip my toe into the online dating pool.
Because I currently earn my keep as a writer, I omitted my clergy affiliation on my profile -- it was tough enough to be a practicing Christian on a site where many of the most educated and articulate men thought religion was a snare and a delusion.
But whether I spilled the beans fast or decided to hold off on revealing my collared past until we met, I soon sought out the role of confessor mom rather than that of hot momma.
I helped men reflect on unresolved divorce traumas. I advised them on how to approach their estranged children. I talked to them about their faith-or lack of it.
In a more esoteric vein, I spent many hours quizzing a swinger in York, Pa., about his lifestyle choices. As I discovered, swinging has protocols as strict as those in some congregations.
It wasn’t that I lacked for swains. Somehow I always found a plausible reason to dismiss them-and return to my counseling “practice.”
The only one who really engaged my emotions as well as my mind was a well-established television industry insider -- another alternative lifestyle veteran. His refreshing honesty, willingness to look at his own flaws, and beguiling irreverence was like a drink of cool water in the heat of the rampant sexual confusion and posturing I saw around me.
I’ve learned enough about online pornography, video sex and various other variations on the theme of self-titillation to write my own manual on the divorced middle-aged male psyche.
As disconcerting, and maddening, as it was to be treated by eminently respectable journalists, actors and salesmen as a convenient excuse to flaunt their virility rather than a woman of substance, I can blame them no more than I blame myself.
For in these same men I saw vulnerability as well as defensiveness, doubt mixed with arrogance, gentleness and disrespect-the whole stew of human emotions that may make us such a maddening blend of sin and possibility in God’s eyes.
More seasoned, and hopefully more self-confident, I find the role of on-call Match counselor no longer suits me.
Wiser to the murk that lurks in the dusty corners of the male mind, and in my own, I am readier to risk becoming real in this virtual world-mother and lover, writer and priest, the pursued and the pursuer.
And if I fall flat on my face and make a fool of myself sometimes, at least I know now that I’m in good company. The kind of company that Jesus kept -- one stumble away from damnation and one breath away from grace.
Elizabeth E. Evans is a freelance writer, columnist and Episcopal priest who lives and writes in Glenmoore, Pa.
