Some questions: What do we do with these bodies of ours? Do we love or despise them? Do they serve or conquer us? And why would God choose to be a body?

I told Jamie Ray, giving myself the pleasure of confession, how, in my despair and bewilderment at being unable to fuck Frankie, I prayed God for the power to have an erection; I begged Him to be my accomplice in adultery, and believe that, had not events intervened, the prayer would have been answered. Our God is a fertility god.

— The Reverend Thomas Marshfield (maybe my least favorite Updike character of all) in A Month of Sundays