When I began attending St. Anselm's Parish in May 2014 I at first thought I'd gone to heaven. I felt warmly welcome and among friends. People there seemed interested in knowing me as a friend and I again fell into that familiar trap: needing community and hoping I would find it in the Anglican Church. In case you are wondering Gentle Reader, I have no family and only in the last eight years have acquired a new network of friends, though I would hardly say that we are much involved in each other's lives and I would have to say that I almost never see any of them oftener than once a month, never on Christmas and certainly not on my birthday.
It turned out that the friendliness was more an innocent ruse to get me involved in the church, not as a friend among friends but as a functionary doing his part to keep the machine running. I tried not to see it and allowed my neediness to blind me to this one embarrassing fact: no one there really cared a shit about me nor were even remotely interested in knowing or hearing anything about my life or background, with perhaps two or three exceptions and two of these people were kind enough to visit me in hospital,.
I had been there two months when one of the wardens made her first critical misstep with me. Following the Sunday Eucharist in the coffee room she swooped by me announcing "You have been hurt and so you shouldn't do anything here, just take it easy". and without showing a modicum of interest in how I was really feeling she disappeared. She did check in with me a bit later to see if I was okay with what she said. Being a newcomer who craved acceptance I of course lied and told her not to worry about it. But it festered and I became wary and distrusting towards this person, having been embarrassed and left to feel vulnerable and confused by her possibly well-intentioned action. Eventually, on the priest's advice I did get her to sit down and talk with me about it one Sunday following the service. She was dismissive and evasive but eventually I squeezed from her a half-hearted apology. She really spent most of our chat complaining about her history of racist treatment in the several decades she has lived here. She also refused my invitation to visit over coffee with this most popular of lame and dishonest excuses: "I'm too busy."
The honorary assistant warmly welcomed me once. After that, any time I would approach him to say hi or chat he would try to get away from me before I could so much as say how are you. To this day I haven't a clue what I might have said or expressed to offend him, and being an Anglican (those most passive-aggressive of Christians) I am likely never going to find out.
During one of his sermons the priest asked us to pair up with someone sitting next to us and discuss together some rather personal information about our daily lives. I paired with a complete stranger, we were both fairly open with each other. Afterward, that same individual generally snubbed, ignored me and refused to give me the time of day (except for a brief thaw when he seemed interested in my travels in Latin America). Since then, I have refused to talk to strangers about anything personal should the priest or anyone else try to get us to talk to each other. It creates a false intimacy and the sense of rejection afterward simply isn't worth it.
I let them pressgang me into joining the choir. A lot of parishioners were after me about this and the choir director/organist would not leave me alone. I reluctantly consented. It was completely unenjoyable to me. I also was unable to make it to choir practice Tuesday evenings for the simple reason that my work (mental health field) can take so much out of me that it is generally better for me to spend my evenings at home. So, I was unable to learn properly some of the anthems, the choir director became impatient and I ended up getting upset. There was also a chronic whiner about the way we were singing the hymns and this became particularly annoying to me.
What really added insult to injury was this most disagreeable woman on the church council who seems to run the parish. I shall name her here "Churlish Obnoxious Woman (COW for short). I at first tried to shrug off her sniping undermining insults. I gradually acquired the impression that COW might have something against me.
One day a friend of mine, a young woman from Latin America, asked if she could visit St. Anselm's with me. She had beautifully coloured hair (various shades of purple, green and blue) and tattoos. Almost everyone in the church to whom I introduced her seemed indifferent and even a little bit unwelcoming. The other church warden alone really gave her the time of day and was very welcoming towards her. I asked the choir to please excuse me for choir practice as I didn't want my friend to feel abandoned. One of the members playfully replied that my punishment would be that I would have to sing extra loud next time. Then COW snapped "He sings too loud anyway," in a not at all nice tone of voice. That was when I knew that my days in the choir were numbered.
A couple of Sundays later, when I politely asked her to lower her voice while she was talking with the choir member next to her during the service about the crisis we might be undergoing since they might be out of milk for the coffee hour, she became belligerent and hostile and twice almost physically attacked me. I was horrified by her inappropriate behaviour, promptly quit the choir and simply avoided her since I didn't feel safe about addressing the issue with her. No one on the church council would even listen as I sent email after email describing what happened and asking for support and some forum for reconciliation since she refused to speak to or apologize for her behaviour.
Around that time I was also raising concern about the church that many of their functions, because of their high price tags, excluded parishioners on low incomes. I wasn't really concerned about myself, being on a low income myself and not interested in any of these events, but was rather a bit worried about this as a social justice issue. Since St. Anselm's has a street homeless ministry it did trouble me that should any of the beneficiaries of St. Anselm's largess, visit or begin attending the church that they would feel shut out and excluded for being poor. It was then that I concluded that the Anglican Church in general and St. Anselm's in particular was really a rich person's club. I tried to raise this issue but the only feedback, or should I say blowback that came back to me was that I should stop feeling sorry for myself shut up and drink the Koolaid. This promptly ended a few friendships for me. When I emailed the church wardens they ignored me. When I asked if we could meet for coffee they ignored me. When I said, with some justification that I was feeling stonewalled, betrayed and silently shoved out of St. Anselm's they continued to ignore me.
In the fall several things happened at St. Anselm's that I was distinctly uncomfortable about. One was a special dance and movement Eucharist being facilitated by a famous choreographer. Despite the priest's claim that she was very spiritual, after reading her website I could see that she was not remotely Christian but quite into New Age spirituality. I didn't feel it would be appropriate and likely spiritually dangerous for me to attend this Eucharist so I stayed away. A week or two later would be the blessing of pets. I am not comfortable around dogs (I have been traumatized by dogs) so I thought I should stay away. A couple of weeks later they would be doing a Remembrance Day Eucharist including the warmongering drivel also known as "In Flanders Fields". For me any justification or celebration of war or the military by the church is a betrayal of Our Lord's life and teachings and I simply refuse to participate. Given the close proximity of these events I opted to take a vacation away from church from September till Advent and then review my attendance. It is now the second day following Epiphany and I'm not only no longer interested in attending St. Anselm's: I have renounced my confirmation and intend to stay away from church for the next three years to give myself a chance to heal from the trauma that church attendance has inflicted on me over the years.
The priest has not been helpful. At first he took a friendly and pastoral interest in me. When it became clear that he refused to help me deal with my difficulties with COW and others, when he said that the best thing for me to do would be probably to leave St. Anselm's, I felt even more persuaded that I was being silently pushed out by passive aggressive cowards not at all interested in considering my input and way too interested in protecting their own status quo.
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