Thank you for publishing Ralph Spence's Viewpoint article [TLC, June 14]. It brought to mind my experience on the Diocese of Connecticut's human sexuality commission a dozen years ago. As with most Episcopalian committees, we were representative of all sorts and conditions, points of view and orientations. For the first year or so, our meetings were characterized by conversation, in the true sense of the passive Latin conversatio, meaning, as in conversion, 'to turn." Literally we turned toward one another, listening to one another's stories, how each of us were "sexualized" from a very young age by the culture and through various influences of family and peer group. In the current vernacular, this story telling was a powerful experience of bonding.

Using Mr. Spence's metaphor, we had undressed in one another's presence, without shame and with minimal fear.

What happened next is telling, and explains for me why we have yet to really see the "new clothes of sexuality." After a year of finding our most common, sacred ground, we shifted to what has been, I suspect, the kiss of death for many committees; namely, "the report." To be sure, it was important that we be accountable to diocesan convention, but as soon as the reporting started, so did the politicking. Contributors to the "final" report were voted up or down. Our prior "nakedness" was covered up with the garish apparel of "political correctness."

God has already revealed that the church's position on sexuality "has no clothes." That is the good news. The sinful news is that in our besetting tendency to triumphalism, this church continues to "dress up" and hide the fact that we have all sinned and fallen short of God's glorious gift of hetero-genesis ("male and female created he them"). Jesus, naked on a cross, died to heal the wounds in our sexuality, be they homo or hetero. Will we keep trying to put a Bandaid on those wounds (hardly a "dressing" worthy of the One who touched so many wounds, cauterized, deeply cleansed and healed them)?

Of such healing, Jesus is still very capable! Do we still believe?

(The Rev.) Michael Tessman

Nashotah House

Nashotah, Wis.