In Defense of Small Churches

It's awkward. It's desperate. It's uncomfortable. It often has a disproportionate number of elders, some of whom smell of odd potions.

Bishop Dan of Nevada recently wrote a blog about the unwelcoming habits of churches, many of which are the foibles of small churches. And it's all true. In our modern, and what is passing for polite, society these things are all certainly unwelcoming. There is an underlying assumption, stated as people are closed to outsiders, that youth or new butts in pews is the purpose of church. And if that is in fact the purpose of Sunday morning, oh yes this is indeed unwelcoming behavior.

But is it actually bad behavior? Sometimes.

I've met that usher. Everyone who has stepped into the front doors of a church at least once has. Sometimes that is why it was only once. But while I have been asked on first meeting if I wanted to join the altar guild, never has a small church given me "The Grill." No one has asked me right out of the gate, what my job was, or if I owned my own home, or looked at my shoes with anything other than admiration.

I was chased out the door after the Ash Wednesday service last night. I'd gone as exposure therapy, on the advice of my therapist, who has diagnosed me with mild PTSD after a year in one of those up and coming churches that are so popular these days. I'd done the work, I'd made it to the end, and I'd even found a little teaser that might help me give that whole experience over to God, something I have been completely unable to do for the last year. But I wanted out of there.

I actually made it across the threshold and into fresh air when a voice called, "I'm so sorry, I forgot to introduce myself." Groan. Politeness is an ever present failing, although I am working on it.  So I turned around and eventually the other four attendees of the service and the priest surrounded me, offering me the names of church members who live on my street or very nearby, I got a flyer with the service times, a invitation to the Lenten book series and the classic, "Have I met you before?" from the priest. The thing is, I attended seminary in this diocese for 3 years and there is every chance that is true, but I don't remember if we have.

In that strange awkward moment, I saw the moment for what it truly was - the last moment of real, authentic parish life in America, and perhaps in other places as well. The assumption, so obvious that no one ever says it, that you are a neighbor, and of this denomination, so of course you will attend this church. Some would call this a last hold over of Christendom, and say that in this post-Christendom, post-Modern world, we need to ditch the geographical idea of parish as local worship community and replace it with parish as local community center that has, among it's offerings, religious services.

But that strange and awkward moment, the whole surrealism of it, the culmination of post modern bad manners, is exactly what happens when you meet the extended family at the wedding. You love your spouse, you have decided that the parents are going to be manageable, and then you meet the drunk uncle and the crazy cousin, and you are sure that your videographer is not going to be able to keep them from ruining not only the wedding but the permanent record as well.

Isn't is awful when they love you, right then, without caring at all if you have a good job or expensive shoes. Isn't it awful when they give you an embarrassing richness of gifts you don't really want, but know that you are going to have to keep anyway. And the thing is, unless you are a truly selfish person, you are eventually going to love these looney people back. You are going to hear all about that cousin's time teaching children in Borneo and discover that she speaks 8 languages, often all at the same time. And that drunken uncle, he has great taste in Scotch. He is going to teach you all about mixing cocktails and you will love that tiki bar he gave you. Someday. But probably not at your wedding.

Small churches are families. But they are not like the families you see on TV; they are not beautiful or skinny, they aren't rich or mildy ironic, they aren't even crass and humorously trashy. They are real families, and like real families, they don't come with a sound track to let you know where the funny or the scary parts are. And just like real families, they have a whole different definition of polite than strangers do. I see this as something to cherish and protect. Something to care about and to teach people to realize just how precious it is to find a group of strangers who will take you at face value and on your worst day, and just love you, and invite you in. It may be a bit awkward and desperate, but it is always genuine, and I don't know another group of strangers for whom that is true.

A note on personal integrity

Something that people eventually learn about me, often the hard way, is that I have a really high personal integrity. Oh, I'll cuss like a sailor and run red lights with the best of them, but I've spent actual time in my life figuring out what my ethical boundaries are, and I'm pretty lucky, I've never had to violate them to eat.

One of the reasons I stopped being interested in working in the for profit world is that twice I was asked to forge documents. I can only assume that there is something written on my forehead that says - go ahead, test me, or people really as as morally bankrupt in the business world as the liberal media tells me. I quit both of those jobs, and the only reason I know that some people do violate those boundaries is that my dad asked me why I was too proud to work, and informed me that you do what your boss says. I can only ponder what chips and dings he has from managing to stay in his field, with few employers, for his entire working life.

So, I found a place, that wasn't perfect, but that I felt I could blunder along with my integrity in tact. I think I found a little tide pool of uniqueness. And when the tide came in, I was just not interested in being part of the ocean, or more to the point, I was simply unable to be part of the ocean, and consequently, the ocean spit me out.

I love crazy metaphors.

In any case, I am still a person of faith. My God looks a lot like Jobs' God these days, and I'm perfectly content with a secular summation of that God which amounts to "shit happens." Because it does. And I don't find any comfort in imagining that my limited perspective through the eyes of this meat bag are giving me any real insight into a larger reality. I can make shit up and smash atoms all I want, but at the end of the day, shit happens that I'll never have any reason for. Honestly, does finding a place to put the blame actually make the situation any better? Does a tit for tat response actually make people feel happier or safer?

I can't change that shit happens. But I can try to minimize the amount of shit I spread. It probably isn't much, but it's something to know that in as much as I am aware of and can control my own actions, I'm not protecting the powerful at the expense of the powerless. I'm not trying to create preferential in groups. I'm not complicit in protecting harmful people, and I'm not talking about pedophiles, because that is definitely in the category of shit happens that I can't do anything about, but there are petty ass people walking through the world being bullies so they can feel better about themselves, and I like to think that I don't protect bullies.

The fact that that is exactly what I did when I left St. David's is I believe why I felt so betrayed when the committee decided not to send me to vocations conference. Because I protected the priest, something I swore I would never do, and had I become a priest, would have been really pissed to find people doing for me. And if there is something that I can't forgive myself for, it's that I wouldn't change anything that I did - even though what I did broke my own sense of integrity.

I still don't know if I ever even want to go back to a church. I miss straight up worship, and I miss the kind of sermons I used to write for myself because no one else would, but I don't miss the institution. I miss the rituals and the sinking into beautiful sameness. I think I really need to find myself a latin Taize. Surely one of these multitude of Catholic churches has one.

But I sure don't want to be involved in the political community. How we live together in church is something I just can't swallow right now.

Day Fifty Two

(At some point, this numbering system is going to defeat me if I don't keep writing, at least occasionally.)

It's been awhile, because I've been working on other things.

Things that I am pleased to note with the medication - I can totally cry when I want to, need to, but I don't have to just because I'm feeling overwhelmed. In fact, I don't feel overwhelmed all that often any more. Last week we organized the PTSA, I created documentation for the reorganization of the logistics team, and wrangled a memorial service with over 500 people at it, live streamed, all in less than 48 hours. If I add to 72 hours, my son also spent 12 hours in the ER waiting for an operating room so they could set his broken arm.

What a week. I'd be incapacitated for another week or two dealing with the adrenaline fall out of this before the medication.

The other night, I really can't remember which one now, I had a dream that I think might have been that moment of freeing that I've needed from all the church tr/drama.I dreamed that I was at St. David's, in that way that upon waking it's totally the wrong buildings but whatever, and I was sneaking around and finishing up projects-big stuff like wiring for adequate wifi coverage and stuff, and then went to the rectory, that John and Ellen would have lived in, but still the wrong building, and we didn't have one, so Sara and her family haven't moved into their house, but I was trying to get my stuff out of there before she came home. And I got my stuff together but left a mess and was trying to clean it up a bit and she came in and sat in a chair and didn't even care that I was there. And it was because I was leaving, and the anxiousness I was feeling was just gone. (And Dave Flowers was taking me to the airport in a VW bus and was late which is only surpassed in strangeness by the fact that he posted pictures of his new and first and totally unexpected baby on facebook the next day.)

So, I totally don't know if this is a release. And I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that I didn't go see Lindsay at St Gregory's when she was in town, and then heard later that they got thrown out of the service for having a babbling baby, and it totally cleared up for me that the church is a fucking mess and that has nothing to do with my flaws or awesomeness or anything about me at all. But it might.

Still,  I did awesome stuff this week, including a drunken tweet that Fr Chris liked, lol. And I have still got no idea what is really next vocation or career wise, but the stuff that I am involved in, I have no doubt that I can do it or that I belong there. I think, maybe, in this small way, I finally feel like an adult. Who would have thought that would happen?

Mental Health, Guns and Violence

I'm conflicted.

I think mental health care is extremely important and valuable. I'm currently maxing out my own lifetime limit with Kaiser as we speak. And I hope that my daughters lifetime limit resets at 18 or we are in trouble.

But I will tell you, my quality of life has increased immeasurably since I defied my upbringing and went to talk to the "crazy person" doctor. I'm not even crazy by any measure, my biology is incompatible with my current lifestyle, and since the lifestyle changes that suit my biology mean living on a savannah avoiding lions, I think learning to manipulate, and even medicate, that biology to cope with my current reality is a fantastic thing.

I wish someone had noticed my suffering and intervened so I didn't have to spend half my life avoiding life. How many other young people are going to lose some or all of their one, precious life struggling against themselves that intervention could mitigate or alleviate?

I'm relieved that Congress, that most ineffectual example of democracy in our time, is finally willing to go to bat for mental health care.

But I'm worried that it comes in exchange of a conversation about gun control for our country, whatever that might look like, since we don't seem to be able to have the conversation.

And I am especially concerned that it comes as a seek and destroy mechanism for violent offenders. Scientific research and clinical studies have never been able to find a causal relationship between mental health diagnosis and violence. It's a venn diagram I don't know how to insert in my blog post. All violent people get a mental heath diagnosis, but all people diagnosed with some mental health issue are not violent.

We have very poor education in this country. We don't teach enough hard science. We don't teach enough logic, either in mathematics or in philosophy. And yet, we are going to conflate correlation and causation, yet again, in pursuit of a magic bullet, or a soundbite.

It's been a long journey, one that is by no means over, to overcome Descartes dualism. We are only beginning to grasp, again, that the mind and the body are not distinct, but merely descriptors of a complex whole. We are only just beginning to accept that anxiety and depression and so many other things are part of the human condition and not a shameful personal failing. If we start looking for the links between people who access or need access to mental health resources and their potential for violence, it will not matter that there is more money and access, we will all be afraid, once again, to seek help in our humanity.

Aaron Swartz

A friend of the family committed suicide yesterday. That is what I know. He was also more famous than he perhaps realized, since it's all over the news, and my husband is planning a memorial - one of many that will happen around the country.

Aaron was 26.

I'll admit, I coud barely think of him as an adult, since my best memory is of him jumping on bed with the children rather than hanging out in the kitchen with wine and the adults.

It's in the context of that extended adolescence of our 20's that I can make the most sense of the hopelessness that he must have felt. Facing a possible prison term longer than he'd been alive so far. A prison term that would encompass his entire adult life. 35 years is a barely comprehensible expanse of time. I'm only, at 40, now old enough to think I won't be nearly dead at 65.

I think that the best light I could have made of his situation is of martyrdom. True martyrdom, not the glorified sort of self indulgence but the die for the cause, and the seemingly hopeless cause at that. Because making information free, truly free, and a world where the scientific method is real, and not just manipulated for profit, where thinking is the reason for a college education, not a martini lunch expense account and house in the Hamptons. It's a world that seems so possible, but remains so ridiculously elusive.

At 40, now, I can think of some things that I might be willing to die for, and I'm not proud to say that those things aren't the big principles, but the small and familial things I didn't even have at 26.

I wonder, how many of us, how many of his fans and friends, who knew all the amazing things he had done already, more than many of us will accomplish in all our long lives, thought that Aaron would be that martyr, that Che, that Leonard, that myth. I wonder how many of us didn't think too much of it at all, because of our own small lives, because of our own disbelief in the ridiculousness of the charges.

Ultimately, however, this is only an exercise in making me feel better. For all the pretensions of psychology and genetics and the general round of blame, we don't know why people commit suicide, even a note left behind cannot really explain the unexplainable. In the end, we can only file it under the large category of life called, Shit Happens. And the only thing we can do, is not to explain, but to live our own lives in some way changed, as a response to how that person, now inexplicably gone, has made us more aware of the fragility of life.

For Aaron, I will play more and I will share more. And I will do more for the cause of freedom than I felt I could do before, because I am now, sadly, aware that it is more precious than I ever imagined.

Day Thirty Two

Today was the first day back in the grind. Of course, everyone was up extra early and we actually got out the door in time for the first time in forever. This will be over by Friday, if not Wednesday, I am sure.

I've made appointments for Wed and Thurs to do Red Cross work, which means I really need to do some work in preparation for those meetings.

Tomorrow, however, is for PTSA. I will need to send some email to Michelle, and set some dates for the various things that we need to accomplish in time for the final formation meeting. Hopefully, Michelle will be more responsive now that the holidays are over.

I didn't go like a marathon runner today, but I did actually accomplish some things. Francis got to her appt, Simon got a Clipper card, finally, I got gas, dropped the girl off to collect hand me down from her friend, and the guys and I went out for dinner. I even managed to get the dog walked in there. I took a nap and watched TV between 10 and 2, but, you know, whatever.

Tomorrow night, I think we are going to a party for Emperor Norton's 132nd anniversary or some such, and I need to find beggar Victorian clothing. No idea, but we will surely come up with something.

Oh, and one of the side effects of the Zoloft are tics. I think I found my first one. Or noticed it for what it is finally. My upper lip tics-strangely annoying, hopefully not noticeable, or not as a sneer at least. It's very bizarre.

Day Thirty One

Well, this is yesterday again.

Andy came over to do laundry and crash for the night. He got a loft that I expect we will be spending a lot of time over there in the next few months creating his hacker space.

I spent the weekend cleaning house and doing laundry. It is almost caught up. I'm still uninterested in my room because it is so cold. It will have to be worked on tomorrow when the kids go back to school.

I felt ok yesterday. I tried to take a sleep aid last night. In that I am not tired it probably worked but I felt like I was awake all night. I might ask for something else but we will see after I have been back in the saddle a week or so.