Life As Performance Art 163

This feels like the calm after the storm, or perhaps the calm before the next storm. Maybe the calm between the storms. Or could it be that there are merely storms between the calms? So that it is really the calm that is the norm, with occasional hiccups from pesky and unanticipated storms. CBT 101, Gentle Reader, which is to say Cognitive Behaviour Therapy 101. My issues with the ACC (Anglican Church of Canada), for now, seem settled, if not resolved. Our differences are never going to be resolved. I have come to accept this as fact. This is sort of okay, if disappointing and annoying at times, but I am going to stay as far away as possible from church politics and just focus on relationship building with individuals that I know there. Everything else I will leave to those who are in with the in-crowd, and clearly I am not one of those illustrious personages, otherwise, the priest would not have actually thanked me for coming to an information session about a safe church. She certainly didn't thank anyone else for attending and this simply seals for me my status as an outsider at St Faith's. As well as the passive-aggressive treatment I received last week during a forum facilitated by a wealthy parishioner, who is very much in with the in-crowd. I can live with that. And I am quite prepared to fight my battles if I have to. And I am going to have to fight sometimes, and it is not going to be pretty. Neither is it my business if the pews get filled with new bums, nor to what class of people those posteriors might happen to belong, given that it isn't really my church to begin with. I am kind of a long term visitor, or squatter, if you like, and I am never going to be treated like I really belong, since a lot of people still treat me, even if very politely and cheerfully and warmly, like an outsider, so I had might as well get used to it and go on squatting to my little heart's content. Anglicans can be notoriously elitist and even more notoriously dishonest about their elitism. They can make all manner of lovely and agreeable sounds about inclusion and diversity and welcoming and have also adopted queer people and native people (even better if you happen to be both, or two-spirited) as their official tokens, or mascots of their public repentance and forward march towards being a socially progressive church. Anglicans still do abysmally at including and welcoming the poor, and we will probably always be pariah, given the church's fixation on staying alive from financial contributions, which people like me really cannot offer. Anglicans can sometimes come across as consummate liars, very polite, nice and agreeable liars, but liars all the same, which is why I often feel that I would do well not to trust anyone there, which could complicate relationship building, because how can you really be friends with someone if you are always feeling that you have to watch your back for the next stiletto or sucker punch? I think it's mostly the clergy that find themselves in very complicated and sometimes compromised positions where they have to obscure, bend or massage the facts just in order to keep their job, and for this I cut them a lot of slack. I think it is possible to be an Anglican and still have integrity. I know some of them. And a few of them are also clergy, so I do well not to tar everyone with the same brush. There are also ingrained attitudes of middle class entitlement and social elitism in the church, and those things, unfortunately, change very very slowly. I am not about to leave because I am going end up having to encounter this kind of shadow everywhere I go, partly because i also carry this same darkness. It is almost in our DNA. I still want to cut everyone some slack, just as I hope they will cut me some slack, and I admit that I could be wrong, and I hope I am wrong, and often (or maybe sometimes!) I am wrong. I am still waiting to be proven that I am mistaken, despite all the circumstantial evidence that suggests otherwise. This could also be the impact of the same shadow that covers and taints and pollutes all of us, because, really, I am no better than the rest of them, I have also been called a hypocrite and sometimes unfairly, and sometimes because I am a hypocrite. That is the problem with people who call others hypocrites. They tend to see hypocrisy everywhere but in their own dear and precious little selves. Hello? Herein lies the real reason why this church is shrinking and slowly dying. And this is also why I am not going to waste any more energy helping to fill the pews, because this is not a church that I want to invite others to, much as I like the priest and a lot of the people who attend here. I can stand being here myself, but this is because I am no better than they are, but this denomination, to me anyway, does not really or authentically show the life or the gospel of Christ. Too much middle class and other social baggage. Otherwise, I would not have been treated just recently with such egregious hypocrisy by the archbishop, though her apology and donation are greatly appreciated by me, and if they don't like me writing these things in my blog about them, then they can just go ahead and sue me. It will make for great optics, but won't it, Gentle Reader? Wealthy Anglican Diocese litigates against low income man for writing unkind but true things about them. I can see it now. But I still have a somewhat higher opinion than that of the Anglican Church. So far, anyway, Gentle Reader.