I had some unpleasantness today with a woman from my church. Following the service she mentioned that she missed the coffee outings we used to have with other parishioners and expressed hope that anything could be done to help us all move forward. There had been a falling out between me and a lesbian couple with whom we were friends. No one told me why, they just didn't want to see me again so I broke off contact for a while. When I emailed them about reconciliation I was ignored and when I saw them in church they didn't seem open to visiting with me. So, without explanation of what had been said or done to offend and no hope of reconciliation we coexist in church.
I agreed with the woman whom I will call Polly (not her real name) and asked if I could treat her to a coffee afterward.
It didn't go well. It seemed that I couldn't say or do anything right by her and she was particularly angry at me for being abrupt with her ( on a couple of occasions I had--politely I thought--asked her if I could finish a sentence when she was interrupting, and this person is a chronic interrupter.) In a nagging, dripping-tap sort of voice she let into me on what an awful and aggressive person I am and how dare I upset her and I must promise to never do this to her again. I responded truthfully that I already do everything I can to be tactful and if this isn't good enough for her then maybe she should try to get over it. This was not good enough for her and she tried to leave. I asked her if she could please stay and we could try to work it out. Big mistake. She continued in her drippy-tap natter and I finally realized we were not getting anywhere, she was angry, holding a grudge, not willing to let go of it, and was already sinking into pure cold hate because I am unable to turn into someone that I am not to please her. I told her that she is going to have to deal with this and get over it because I'm already doing my part. She continued to harangue me and, taking great care not to swear at her, I told her to take a hike and she left imprecating that with my aggression I will never have any friends.
I have left out a few details for the sake of brevity. When I got home I re-enacted on my voice mail what I said to Polly, just the way I said it to her, when she was interrupting me, twice, then played it back just to hear how I must have sounded. There was absolutely nothing wrong with how I sounded. Then I knew that this was not my issue but hers.
I am writing about this as a way of expressing my own despair about a functioning community ever developing in my church. Anglicans do not do community well. Many of us are introverted and socially dyslexic. There is often little interest in real Christian discipleship so there is often a collective unwillingness to allow God to change us enough to make community possible. And many of us are very good at holding grudges.
As hard as it is for me to let go of this I am letting go of this because I have to. Christ commands this and I have pledged to follow him faithfully. I suggested to Polly before she walked out on me that if this is going to be her attitude then we'd might as well not exchange the peace while in church, since this would make it a huge act of hypocrisy. But seriously, if we are going to exchange the peace during the Eucharist on Sundays then we had better be prepared to make it real in the way we treat each other inside or outside of church property. Even though I posed to Polly the possibility of not sharing the peace with her of course if I see her next Sunday I am going to extend to her my hand, not to look good and not because the rector says so but because I really do want to move on from this.
We are all wounded and fragile and we carry tons of baggage with us to church every Sunday. We are the proverbial hospital full of sinners as opposed to being a museum of saints. Many of us want community but we are afraid of being hurt by the whole process of getting there. I will hazard the guess that many of us come from dysfunctional or harmful and abusive families and relationships and we want to see this healed of course, and we would love to be part of a healing community that will soothe away the owie but it doesn't work this way. If we want to grow in healing and close relationships we are going to have to completely disabuse ourselves of this notion that it is somehow going to feel safer and nicer than our own families. In many cases it is not. The only material we have to build with is ourselves and our own lives and this means we will be confronted and embarrassed by our bad attitudes, bad habits, prejudices and wounds. We cannot escape from this and we are not going to and we are not meant to.
Forgiveness and mutual forbearance alone are going to help us move beyond these obstacles. When God builds community he does it with love, but love that has not been tested cannot be trusted. So, my desire is that we do not shrink back from growing closer to one another, but also that we fasten our seatbelts. It is going to be a bumpy ride.
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