Off the Hook

I love the Naked Pastor. His cartoons and his website invariably have relevance to my life. When he posted this cartoon yesterday, I immediately had this sense of relief.



I generally consider myself a good friend. I am compassionate, a good listener, I have the freedom and means to be helpful at a moment’s notice, I don’t spread rumors nor listen to them, and I don’t thrash anyone, even when they probably deserve it. Most of my close friends have been in my life for better than 20 years and I have never had a blowup or bad ending with any lover, friend, acquaintance or co-worker.

Until these last couple of years. First, I became friends with the interim pastor of my church. But then she showed herself to be quite insensitive to queer people and issues. When I finally got tired of this and confronted her on it, she stopped talking to me. Literally. Would not answer an email. Would not acknowledge me in public.

Then in trying to heal the wound that this disaster created with my church, I began talking to one of the Elders. That was going okay until I asked her why the Elders had treated me so un-christian like. End of conversation. Literally. She will not answer an email either, even when it is only for some basic church info.

Then the new interim pastor got involved. I had only met him once before when he told me he would speak to the Elders and try to get some resolution. But I never heard from him again. Seems he “forgot” to follow up on that. Months later I emailed him because my daughter was mysteriously removed from the monthly birthday list of members. Hmmmm. He apologized for dropping the ball earlier and offered to set up some kind of meeting. Problem was that the language he used was very divisive in that “it is you vs. all of us” way. I wrote him back wondering if we couldn’t try for an “we”. And he immediately sent me an email that the conversation was over. Even months later, when I sent him information about a grant opportunity the church might benefit from - no response.

And I have truly agonized over these failures. Self evaluation. I do that constantly. What did I do wrong? Could I have handled it better? What have I learned? My confidence in being a friend was quite shaken. I did consider each of these incidents as personal failures.

I was talking to my therapist about it when she asked, what do all these people have in common? And I said, I criticized their words or behavior. And she said, yes, but what else? And I realized, they are all the leadership of my church. Ding, ding, ding. And when I got back to work, here was the NakedPastor’s cartoon. So I am letting myself off the hook. Finally. Yes, I know it took far too long to come to the obvious.

Lesson learned: Never, ever criticize or question church leaders. They will smite you. Forever.