The Peacock 31

"The ill will had of course festered between us over the years. After all the problems with him, I simply didn't want to be around the church if he was officiating or preaching and I also started to refuse the sacraments if he happened to be handing them out at the altar.  And on those Sundays when he was preaching, I would simply go downstairs to the church basement and wait there till he was finished.  His sermons were terrible by the way, they usually revolved around his own exalted self.  A real narcissist, and even though he seems to be finally growing out of this, to this day it is a problem with him.   None of this, of course, did anything to endear me to him, so we basically negotiated like two warring cats around our toxic mutual hate.  

At that time our church had a monthly magazine, called Cornerstone.  It was really a propaganda rag about how great St. James was as a church and how wonderful and Christlike all their exalted hypocrites.  The lady who edited it wanted to interview me and write up a profile about me for the next issue.  I was flattered, and stupid enough to accept.  I hadn't even thought of the possibility that Griffin himself might have planted the idea in her head.

..

In the morning, she came over to my apartment where we could chat while I was painting.  I believe I was just putting the finishing touches on a giant portrait I was doing of Virginia Woolf.  Yes, THAT Virginia Woolf.  She actually wrote a very kind and interesting piece about me.  Flattering actually.  But then I made my huge misstep.  She was walking back to the church, which was about a forty minute walk and I offered to go with her since I was heading downtown anyway. as we got near the church this lady, who had previously been a Lutheran missionary in Guatemala, wanted to know what I thought of same sex unions.  I simply expressed my ambivalence because I still hadn't worked out the theological implications, but I also mentioned my concern that gay marriage should never be used as a pretext for gay promiscuity, especially where clergy were concerned.  She wanted me to elucidate, so I told her everything that I knew about our dear Father Griffin.  She thanked me for the information, then left.  And that was but the beginning of all sorrows....