elders strike again
after a summer full of exhausting and self-sacrificial service, full of learning and expereince for youth and children, full of beauty and growth, we launched a new year with my friend jamie's youth group visiting. we transformed the fellowship hall to create an expereince. one elder, not ratman or mrs.ratman, but a close aquaintence, we'll call her miss mouse happened in. she investigated and seemed happy with things. at the close of the night, i spent three hours returining the fellowship hall to its original state and making sure everything was clean.
the note i recieved in my box the next day read as follows (interlinear commentary included):
if the food on the shelves in the kitched belongs o the youth (who else would 24 bags of cheetos belong to?), we (who is we, or is this the royal we?) are asking if it could boxed and stored elsewhere (and, if you wouldn't mind, please also plastic wrap and store the youth only bringing them out to sit quietly during the 11:00 traditional service). it (and the youth)is not only unsightly from the fellowship hall, but it attracts ants and mice (how does individually packaged cheetos attract mice? i've never seen a single mouse or even an ant in the church). sally would provide a plastic bin with a tight lid (no, we'd perfer not to treat the youth like legitimate people who might want a cupboard and we'd rather not make things easy for you but instead have a bog box for you to search through to find things each week).
thanks for your help in this,
(crotchety old) miss mouse
luckily no one was here when i found this because i was unable to stop myself from saying, "what the fuck? fuck you!"
on sunday, i'm going to try to talk to her about it with love but still drawing attention to how the youth are being swept under a rug with no room to meet in and not even one shelf to store cheetos on.
why does no one care that the gospel is being taught and lived? why do unsightly cheetos bags mean more than changed lives? as i said, what the fuck!
6 comments:
Man...I have nothing 'brilliant' to offer. No drive-by religious quip to launch at you. But I've been there.
When nothing matters more than the "status quo" church meeting going just so and sister McClutchbutt might see a cheeto bag. Priorities...
That's all. I've been there.
yeah...i talked to my assistant pastor today. i told her i often want to guit. she said "join the club."
it's good to know that the road paved with grumpy old people and their grouchy shouting that makes the traveler forget the destination and want to turn back is a well traveled one.
Sounds like community to me.
a) who are you?
b) this comment is the kindest i've recieved from you
c) why do the rest of your comments go straight to my email?
d) you should know that i believe strongly in a divine other and that relationship with that divine other is life giving - so please stop being an annoying evangelist for athiesm - you will not convert me via rude comments on my blog
e) why have you chosen to invest so much energy in showing me how lame i am? trust me on this, outside of reciprocal relationship the only power you have in my life is to hurt me without changing me. if this is your goal, good on you. if this is not your goal, may i request that you either engage in relationship or cease.
f) if your intetions are pure, i am sorry for the tone of this response, but your comments have been hurtful, distracting, and, as i recieve them, sharply and unfairly worded and pointed.
In the "Communist Manifesto", Karl Marx described the commercialization of every interpersonal exchange, even unto family relationships. In a commercial transaction, all value rests in the commodity exchanged and only in that commodity. The Internet is the ultimate commodification of all exchanges, yet I see, now, that I was wrong in trading here. Yet, a word of advice: find a critic. Not a shrink. Not an artist: artists are all about being open to the Other of self-identified pure expiernece (unless of course that Other is more open than they are, in which case they seethe with jealousy and rake themselvse with self-doubt.) No, what you need is an honest critic. Otherwise you'll be years gesticulating around after a mysterium tremendum et fascinans and the authenticity & wholeness gospel of the psychologists which is but another word for law and the glorification of self. These are no remedy for sin; these are no help to others. The bread and wine cannot come from your body, nor the supposed openness of your soul or the purity of your sympathies. Good taste is all for the sake of hospitality, and no host would set before their guests food which does not satisfy or water which cannot slake the thirst.
following the philosophy of martin buber, i'm trying to move away from interaction as commodity to something so deep, impacting, transformational that its value cannot be labeled a "commodity."
as for critics - there's a choir of them around me at work and inside me as well.
it's not that i can't take criticism - it's that i don't know you and it's not like this is a book i'm publishing.
when i do publish a book, criticism like yours might be helpful, but this is not my book this is my blog.
also, i think that you are wrong as to the remedy for sin - the remedy for sin is a paradoxical realization of your depravity and glory and in that moment, the reception of grace. it is love that brings true transformation and not criticism that shames and makes one hide - pretending to have changed while having only changed actions and, if you read lewis' mere christianity, he explains that a change outside cannot be sustained without a change inside.
the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed or like yeast not like a governmental change.
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