i don't have much to say

it occurs to me that i should say something for the people who keep coming here to (i presume) find out what's going on, because i have not been on the corner protesting, and i have not been writing anything here.

i believe good progress is being made toward a settlement and while the protest isn't over 'til it's over, i think it's pretty much over, barring surprises.

when the concerns are being adequately met, there's no need for protest. this is true both before a protest happens and also once it has started.

i have a hope that something better comes of it, and while it was an acceptable result in terms of setting my life to right after what happened, i recognize that it may be preferable for the solution to be acceptable to a greater number of people.

sorry to leave you hanging, people who are looking for information. there's nothing to say about the protest because right now at least, there's no protest. if things continue to go well, there will continue to be no protest, and we may see an end to it, all wrapped up and official.

until then, i simply have nothing to say.

be well.

BOHICA

yeah, that assault was a walk in the park compared to what you get next.

we're the williston federated church. BOHICA.

it's who we are.

yeah, too bad about that assault thing.

BOHICA.

here at the williston federated church we really care about our church family.

except for, you know, BOHICA.

same song, different verse

"no matter who you are, no matter where you are on your spiritual journey, all are welcome at this table."

except you.

wen you come broken with your soul crushed in the aftermath of the assault in which you are defiled, do not expect us to ray for your wounds. do not expect to be welcome to eat at the Lord's table. do not expect that "church family" means anything other than "loose confederation of smiling hypocrites"

"do you accept the costs and joys of following Jesus?"

only if it's not awkward.

good job, williston federated church.

bright sunshiny day

it's business as usual at the williston federated church.

this morning one church lady passing me tried to sing back at me which was amusing, because she learned real quick that it's harder than it looks to stay with the tune and the lyrics and the central message in that situation.

but she was singing something about how much she LOVES this church and this congregation.

yeah, i did too, right up until and past the point at which i got thrown out of it for what happened to me in the aftermath of finding myself on my back underneath a creepy old pervert.

my takeaway from the encounter: the protest is effective.

and two ladies going by me asked me angrily why i don't just go IN the church, as if going in would magically show me God's own healing.

yeah, well, that's kind of the central issue here.

when i got thrown out of the church in the aftermath of my best friend's husband, the creepy old pervert crawling on top of me and putting his tongue in my mouth, i kind of lost the ability to go into the church and experience God's own healing.

if i had been allowed to heal with the community of the church or maybe competent pastoral care or any of the things that victims of assaults might expect from a faith community that purports to be about healing and love and service, i would have been inside standing in the choir instead of outside with a protest sign.

unfortunate, that.

funny thing: when you get tossed out of a church for what happens to you in the aftermath of your assault and the subsequent stalking THAT TOOK PLACE IN THE CHURCH WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PASTOR AND OTHER CHURCH MEMBERS and you'll be arrested if you step on the lawn, that alternative of coming inside to receive grace of any kind is kind of out of the question.

it would have been nice not to have been ejected and sent away in humiliation and disgrace. it would have been nice to have been inside this morning and every sunday morning, but it's been taken right out of my hands.

it's a problem of the vacuum of leadership.

and by the way, reverend debbie ingraham, the next time you run for office, expect to be asked questions in public forums about why you as a methodist clergyman are complicit in this coverup.

there is going to be a cultural change at the williston federated church.

that is not a choice.

the only thing that is a choice is what form the change will take.

will you, the church, continue to harden your hearts against the injured, or will you start being the body of jesus on this earth?

will you accept the costs and joys of following jesus?

or will you only take up the cross until it's uncomfortable and an old pervert might be embarrassed by what he did?

will you be afraid to look on the face of sorrow? will you be afraid to look on what your indifference has made?

there is going to be change.

which change will you choose?

more bad judgement

i don't know who thought it would be funny to go to a public "community event" as a representative of a protestant church dressed up as a nun for halloween, but i can tell you that catholics in general are pretty sick of protestants thinking that catholic religious figures make funny halloween costumes.

so way to go, williston federated church. awesome way to show you've got your act together to have someone dresses as a nun on the lawn while your catholic neighbors are coming home from mass.

way to be respectful.

no moral compass, no moral leadership. it shows it many ways, large and small.

fall flop

well, i'd call that a smashing success, wouldn't you?

it is interesting to note that the fraudulent pastor went in costume as her true anima: the queen, complete with crown and scepter, the trappings of the power she loves so much more than her call.

it was also interesting to notice some really significant flaws in planning and execution of the event, which probably would have gone better if there wasn't such a vacuum of leadership at the williston federated church.

i mean, just for starters: hey! i have an idea! let's spend some money we don't really have on a public festival on our tiny front lawn right where the protester stands. that will be an excellent way to signal to the community that we really have our act together.

for me, though, it was mostly just the usuals.

tan car man was there, and scripture guy. the usual honks and waves, thumbs ups, and v-for-victory.

a family in a car went by with thumbs up and shouted YEAH! LET 'EM ALL GO TO HELL!

there was one wolf howl and one guy from the church who went by with one very loud aggressive honk and a full arm flipping me off that was pretty stunning in its majesty and anger, which suits me fine.

one woman i don't think affiliated with the church went by and she seemed to be disapproving, but it's hard to tell when people shout things with the windows rolled up what all they mean.

i know from experience that not all people who smile at you are supporters and not all people who look angry are detractors. when you protest a thing that brings out strong negative emotions in people, sometimes your best supporters are wearing angry faces.

so i don't judge intent unless i can hear the actual words or see clear gestures.

i think -but it's just a guess- she was not a supporter.

there was also a disturbing gesture i had never seen before: someone from the back of a stretch limousine stuck out an arm and with pointed finger pretend fired shots into me.

ok, then.

you know, it would not be my first choice to get the crap beaten out of me on the church lawn or for someone to shoot me dead there, but for sure nobody would ever forget it.

talk about profound discomfort.

going into month twelve.

if the williston federated church had had adequate leadership, the protest would have been over before tomorrow.

wait, let's back up.

if the williston federated church had had adequate leadership, the protest would not have gone into one day let alone eleven months.

tomorrow, i imagine, will be awkward and uncomfortable. that's a necessary attribute of protest.

i am prepared for it.

just so we're clear

there was a stepping down of the protest while mediation was in progress.

since there is no actual progress unless you count flowery notes and messages on the sidewalk (which are not progress on anything but only empty noise), the daily protests will resume at full volume later this week.

if the church has not made sufficient progress toward changing its toxic culture before the fraudulent pastor retires, the church will simply bear the protest until i am too damn old.

it is not going away until it is fixed or until i have been laid in my grave.

the leadership vacuum at the church and in the united methodist church and especially in the cheerfully inept and toxic money-grubbing untied church of christ should be brought up short on its chain and truth told until it is made whole.

every person who stood by and let it pass shares in the responsibility of coverup. every church person having knowledge of the assault and coverup affiliated with either church is part of the problem, regardless of their pretense of being about healing or survivor advocacy. that pastor over in south burlington, i'm looking at you.

there is no cure for it but truth telling, over and over as long as there are eyes to see or ears to hear and it matters not one bit if people are tired of it.


until it is corrected, it is not over.

escape hatch

it's be hard for me to be on the corner because i'm out on the road. i had to come home special for the chicken supper last week, and i'll come home in time for the fall fest.

there is an escape hatch that could help settle this before christmas, but i doubt anyone will move fast enough to make it happen before easter.

see, in order to find out what it is, someone would have to talk with me.

chalk messages are not talking. i will share that information with the mediator if asked. it is time sensitive, i think. i think the current window will close soon and the next will not open up until may.

it isn't much, but it's something.

would you rather have the protest be over now, or in january? in january, or in may? in may, or never?

fall fest

i am looking forward to protesting at the upcoming fall fest.

it will be a long day, but i can pack a lunch.

a lot of the usuals

it's the new normal at the williston federated church.

i got to say the words "good morning, officer" again. it's really interesting, because the people who called the police hadn't told the police that they were afraid i MIGHT say something to their children; they told the police i had said things to their children, which is patently not true and also very different in the interests of police.

outside of a close personal friend of the perpetrator and former friend of mine, i did not speak at all unless i was spoken to, and only to say good morning.

yep. because the only people who spoke to me had nothing to say other than good morning. and i got invited to some concerts.

the thing i said to the friend of the perpetrator was "did he do it to you too?" because he might have done for all i know. he certainly had opportunity because he's been alone with her and also taken her sailing, same as me.

so it wouldn't have been a big stretch of the imagination to think he might have had his tongue in her mouth, too.

she's maybe braver than me, maybe not afraid to fight back.

i was too afraid during the assault and too afraid afterward so no for the rest of my life i get to make up for that by fighting back against him and the culture of silence in churches and that church in particular. it will not happen to me again but maybe the next time it happens to someone in that church (and statistically it will. statistically it is happening NOW to someone else in that church somewhere in their lives)- maybe the next time someone in that church falls apart because of an assault on them the church will live up to its duty to be a safe haven.

maybe next time there will be no vacuum of leadership, no protection of the perpetrator, not so much punishment of the survivor who tells.


in any case, no children were present when i said it to her. it was just her and the associate pastor's wife.

but the officer had to come down and watch me stand there quietly and he had to get out and come talk to me. "as always, you're not doing anything wrong", is how the officer starts the conversation. i think this visit with the police makes an impression on the passers-by, especially the part of the visit from the police where the officer wishes me a good day and goes on leaving me standing there with the sign.

as for happy little messages written in the sidewalk in chalk, it's fine and dandy for you to wish me blessings on my day, williston federated church, but when are you going to DO anything to make this right?

we might pray and we might sing but we will not do anything
because we have no moral standing in the church!

awesome.

well, i think that went well, don't you?

the only way that could have been more awesome is if there had been police or something. it was totally worth scheduling travel plans around.

i'll be a little tired in the morning, but if you don't see me on the corner outside the williston federated church, it's not because i've lost interest. it's because i have found which church the perpetrator is attending and any week he's there is a week i have to go stand on their corner.

they're also a UCC church, so it will be really interesting to see how the UCC continues to not cope at all with this, especially under their smashingly successful safe churches initiative. the united methodist church district superintendent at least acknowledged the thing when she wrote that it wasn't any of their business, but the UCC conference minister says she never heard of it, which is an out and out lie since i've been standing on the corner when she goes by.

you think she might ask some questions or something in today's climate, but i think it's just symptomatic of an organization whose main mechanism for dealing with sexual misconduct complaint is a thing called the "insurance board".

i wish i was kidding about that.

uh, anyway.

i sense there is a great deal of fatigue in general surrounding this protest. people are tired of it.

the one thing i know for certain about the outcome is this: we're all going to get a lot more tired of it by the time it's over. the first year of it hasn't even passed, and i am practicing my christmas songs.

productive day

i didn't have to stand on the corner too long today.

i have a few things i like to accomplish in my time and if i get those things done, i can move on. otherwise, it goes by the clock.

today floppy hat lady was there, and i also got to have a talk with a guy about some things.

he said he's been listening to sermons recorded in the williston federated church and he is convinced they need some serious improvement of attitude and leadership in there. he says we will talk again.

and because it was a productive morning on the corner, i got to move early to the second location, where i also had some productive conversations.

i have gotten to the point now that when people ask me who the perpetrator is or where he lives, i just tell them. i spell it for them if they ask.

not that the perpetrator is any concern of the williston federated church.

they make it sound like they sent him away for what he did, but in reality his wife took him away so he didn't have to be humiliated by having to hear about the consequences of his bad actions.

after i got thrown out i got a call from the wife asking if i would mind if they went back since they'd been invited.

so when the williston federated church tells you that the perpetrator isn't there any more, it's not so much because he's not welcome as his wife doesn't want him to be embarrassed.

that doesn't really qualify as making a safe environment in the church.

see you on the corner.

both corners!

twofer

this morning i went out as usual and the usual stuff happened.

a very angry sounding man shouted GET A FUCKING JOB! at me, but i notice he wasn't at a job at the time. i am not sure why people like to devalue whatever it is they don't like about what you're doing by shouting that you should get a job or a real life or asking pointedly if you don't have better things to do.

why, no. i don't have better things to do. this here is the most important work i can think of. if i had something more important to do than this, i would be doing it.

but this here is important work, this pushing to change a cultural climate.

and then when i was done i took my new sign ad i stood for an hour at a different venue, where new people stopped and asked questions and there were thumbs up and stuff.

and in between venues i talked with a nice young man who is a reporter for a news outlet.

that's about all there is.

see you on the corner.

woo! 4000!

we hit 4000 views.
that's a lot of yous
or just ones and twos
lookin' fer clues.



i'm making new posters to celebrate.

see you on the corner.

there was a thing.

yesterday a thing happened.

you'd hardly notice it at all, except that it made me think of maybe being more gentle in coming to the table.

but the thing didn't pan out. i don't think it will. i am still going to have to do the work i have been doing, but always there are choices when there is cooperation about how that work will go.

there was a hidden thing that might have brought unexpected mercies for some unexpected people.

i feel sort of sad.

otherwise engaged

if i am not at the williston federated church today, it's not because i have forgotten them.

today there is a public event nearby where the perpetrator will probably be in attendance, so i'll have to go protest that organization.

it makes me sad because it's an organization i approve of, but their vulnerable population should not be left open to the creepy old pervert. and because nobody else is particularly interested in keeping communities safe from him or even naming what he did, that job falls to me.

someone tried to tell me once that telling what he did in the driest terms was somehow tearing him down.

well, if you think the behavior of sexually assaulting someone is bad, then the problem is with the behavior, not the telling of it.

but nobody wanted to have the creepy old pervert have to be uncomfortable or feel embarrassed for what he did.

instead the blame falls on me for not bearing that more gracefully.

the only thing i can think of to do is to place the shame where it rightly belongs: on the perpetrator himself, on his enabler, and on the institutions that would rather let him and people like him prey on others at will because having a conversation about it would be awkward.

we wouldn't want the perpetrator or the enabler or anyone else to feel uncomfortable.

but you there, the victim: it's ok if you're uncomfortable, but can you please keep it out of our view? your assault is simply too uncomfortable for us to bear. and it would be really, really awkward if we were to have to speak with the perpetrator about it, so can you just be nicer to him? he doesn't understand why you won't talk with him when he follows you around. he doesn't understand why you won't be nicer to him.

this is really making us uncomfortable, and you're going to have to go.


anyway, i have to go today and identify him and his acts at a different venue at an organization i both respect and like. i wrote to them to ask if they were maybe going to not allow the perpetrator to work with their vulnerable population but heard nothing from them, so i have to go with posterboards.

it is frightening and i think the only thing that will ensure my safety will be the presence of the press. i am carrying the cards of reporters in my pocket, and if i have to give them interviews in return for their help, i'll have to do it.

there's always the risk that some asshat will whip up some fear and play the DANGER card and i'll end up arrested and i am totally going to need that news footage to help in the wrongful arrest lawsuit.

see you on the corner.

you know, unless i'm in jail for a legally protected protest in a public space. i have come to trust the williston police, but i do not know the police in south burlington, so it's a crapshoot.

but it's important. somebody has to start making a stand against the rape culture and the culture of silence. we do not get to have the world we want except where we create it.

ambivalence

i saw it probably seventy-five meters away, from the west side of the intersection.

i thought: oh, crap. whatever that is, it is for me.

i was not close enough yet to see what it was; just that it was a thing flapping on the signpost.

but i knew, you know? the same way you hold a letter and know it's bad news or you haven't seen the cop yet but you know he has his hooks into you and you've been busted for 47 in a 35.

so i drove past it to my accustomed parking place.

there was a fear to it, a dread. i do not like uncertainty. that's weird, right? because i do so many things in life where i go purposely into the unknown?

but it's different when you wake up in the morning and think: i am going to face an unknown today.

i couldn't identify it until i had walked past it. well, i could have if i had stopped, but i was wary of the thing and wanted to look at it on my own terms, from an angle where i could see it without having to stop.

you know, like it might be a tiger or something ready to leap out at me.

but yes, an envelope with my name on it. and some kind of gift bag. i did not know what to do, so i walked past it. i will keep walking past it, i thought, until i know what to do about it.


a couple of passes later i could sort of make out that it was probably some fruit, maybe some peaches. i was hungry. they were probably fresh and ripe.

but i did not know what to do.

i thought maybe it represented a good attempt at mending something broken.

i thought maybe it represented a one-time opportunity to accept that token before i am probably forced into talking on the record to news media tomorrow.

i thought: i may not ever have another opportunity to accept whatever possibility is being offered.

i also thought that i did not wish to be open to that, not to be vulnerable to the precariousness of hope.

because let's be very clear on this: the protest is not a means to an end. i am not using it for leverage to a thing i want. it is my last resort, but i am comfortable with it. i know how to do it and i know what to expect with it and i do not have to place myself in the hard position of having to hope for a better thing.

you maybe have no idea how dangerous it seems for me to entertain the possibility that there may be a solution different than the one i have settled on that will suit me as well as what i have.

sometimes i feel panic: what if there is a proposed solution that i accept because it seems like it is as good as what i have, but then it turns out not to be? the protest was not my first, second, or fifth choice, but it is what i have and it is good enough.

while i am walking, and especially when i am having to talk about what happened to strangers who stop and ask, i have a lot of time to think about what i really hope to accomplish here.

it's ironic, because before i got thrown out of the church, my work in it was the most important thing in my life. now my work against it has taken that place.

anyway, some days i wake up and what i really want is to push the williston federated church into being better than they were, to make sure that even though i can never come home again, at least there will be an actual safe harbor and that what happened to me will never happen to anyone else. that would make my suffering worth something.

other days i am the smaller version of myself and i just want those fuckers to pay. i want them never to be able to come into or go from that building without having to think about it forever and ever, amen.

those things, while related, do not rest together peacefully in my soul.

either way, the action that springs from them is the same: i walk the corner.

this afternoon i thought that while i walked i would figure out what to do about the note and the fruit.

i had a long talk with a nice young man about the walk, and about what happened. he thanked me for the work. he said he was sorry for the rest. there's a lot about that conversation and many of the others that you will not pry out of me, not even with steel.

but they're important conversations.

after that i made myself a general irritant to people in the building and entering the building. my presence has to be uncomfortable to be effective. it's sad, but demonstrably true.

in the end i decided not to open the envelope or even look for sure if it was peaches in the bag.

it came down to a thing i said to the pastor in person not long ago: i can accept nothing from you until i receive communion in the church, where i belong.

it is an odd thing, the present tense.

i know it is not my home anymore. i have no home. i can never go home again. i will never again be welcome at that table.

but it was my home. it is my home. it is my exile. i have suffered much for it.

so instead of knowing what it was in the envelope or knowing for sure what was in the bag -and do NOT make the mistake of thinking i am not wildly curious- instead of looking, instead of knowing, instead of having to figure out what to DO with it, not practically, since it would be easy enough to just take it, but harder to know what to do with it here, in my heart; instead of that i paused and i wrote on the envelope:

yeah, let's have a meeting and talk about that after christmas.

and i went home.

i say "fuck" a lot these days.

this morning on the corner was just more of business as usual at the williston federated church.

it was sunny and cool and of course when i went to take off my coat i
had a handy coat stand to hang it on.

since i go there every day more or less to stand with the sign, i have a lot of time to reflect. i used to pray, but now i do this.

"pray" and "protest" both begin with "pr", so for the moment i will call them similar.

i think about a lot of things. i think about the leadership vacuum in which joan newton o'gorman, the pastor who should be fired, is much more in love with her authority than she is with her call. you know, if she actually has a calling at all.

i think sometimes about what it feels like to take the single worst thing that ever happened to me and make a public statement out of it every day. and no, i am not talking about the assault. while the assault was bad, what happened to me in the church as a consequence of it was far, far worse.

when i was still having the nightmares, they weren't about the filthy old pervert. they were about the church.

what maybe you need to know about me is that apart from a year or two during my college career when i learned to swear proficiently but before my junior year when we all cleaned up our language because, hey, the juniors go out student teaching and you want to break your swearing habit before you spend too much time in the classroom under stress-

anyway, i have always been the kind of person who says things like "this is all going to hackensack" or "goodness, gracious! WHAT in the name of all things kind and merciful is going on here?" or "jumpin' jiminy!" or "holy honkin' hounds of hades!" or "it was hotter 'n satan in longjohns".

but then during the time i was being thrown out of the church i started to say "fuck" a lot. not just "fucking this or that", or "those fuckers" or "little fuckaroos", but "fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck", and for no fucking apparent reason.

among my friends we would joke "is it time to say 'fuck' yet?"
"FUCK yes", they would say. "it's never too early in the day to say 'fuck'".

and i sort of wondered why the sudden change in my vocabulary, but i'm mostly a self-aware person and i mostly know why it is i do things. my operating theory is that this stunning change of language is an attempt to try to distance myself emotionally from my life in the church.

it was THAT painful.

maybe later i will clean up my language again. for now it's fucking fine insulation against that damaging clusterfuck, the williston federated church.

you should try it.

it's going to be a long afternoon stand tomorrow. see you on the corner.

leadership vacuum

today it was sunny and cool on the corner.

it was most of the usuals, except with a lot more time talking with reporters than usual.

sometimes it goes that way.

and it was very nice of the church to provide me with a coat rack for when it gets warm and i need a place to hang my coat.

honey, i'm home!

i have returned from my fabulous weekend of maine seacoast vacation and today i was back on the corner.

i had a couple of conversations with some people, including someone who expressed the opinion that surely if a certain person knew about this thing in the church, it would not have been such a disaster.

sadly, that certain person is the lay leader of the church and in the complete vacuum of adequate church leadership from a competent pastor, the lay leader actually wrote the astounding letter that tells me i am still a member of the church even though i'm not allowed on the premises.

i take that letter around to parties so people can laugh at it.

so no, the lay leader wouldn't have changed things much if she had only known about what had happened, because she knew right up front.

it was disappointing, i said, because i would have expected better of her.

but it turns out the williston federated church and its fraudulent pastor joan newton o'gorman and its congregation of sheeple aren't any better than any other large organization with a culture of silence and victim-blaming.


some days i do not know why i bothered to be surprised at this.

other days i am heartbroken about it.

it is an uneasy ambivalence.

i'll see you on the corner.

run-up to the weekend

it was raining this morning and i only stayed an hour or so on the corner.

rainy. and besides, i have stuff to do for my fabulous weekend.

one does not simply walk into mordor.

so it was a lot of the usuals, only moister.

and with a lot more TV cameras than usual. the guy gave me his card. it says "senior photographer". a news organization you would recognize.

i do not not how many minutes of footage he shot, but it seemed like a lot.

not everything is benefitted by news coverage, but in a week or two i will probably start accepting broadcast interviews when i am asked.

i bet my sign looks spiffy next to that expensive open house banner.

yeah, an open house. THAT won't be awkward at all.

i am still laughing about that.

see you on the corner.

light and easy heart

i didn't have a lot of time to stand on the corner outside the williston federated church this morning, but really over time it's not going to matter how many hours a day i can show up, but how many years i can keep showing up.

since i started protesting at the church, i have gained important things in my life: i no longer have the nightmares about the humiliation at the hands of the church. i don't have nightmares at all. i sleep like a stone.

but in the time after the assault and during the stalking and the humiliation and ostracism by the church, my blood pressure and cholesterol and blood sugar all went up. my blood pressure was crazily, dangerously high.

all those things have abated since i have been walking the corner. i don't even have to take the blood pressure medication anymore. and my stamina and endurance have increased dramatically, so it's working out for me.

today on the corner i was photographed twice that i know of, once by a person driving a black sedan with no license plates, front or back.  hey, pal! if you can afford that camera, you can afford to replace your plates when they fall off or get stolen.

a guy in a truck wagged his finger and asked me if i wasn't judging people. he didn't seem like the actual churchgoing type or even the nonjudging type but rather he seemed to be making some kind of joke.

but ok, i'll bite.

i'm just telling what happened. if you think it sounds like a harsh criticism, you are also then judging the behavior and climate of this church. they are their own indictment.

fraudulent pastor drove by on her way east on route two. same unctuous smile.

a woman across the street asked me to show both signs so she could read them. "i'm sorry", she said.

a woman in a blue car rolled down her window and hollered across traffic. "stay strong!" she said, giving a thumbs-up.

"i promise!" i answered.

this sunday is going to be open house at the williston federated church. i wish, oh, i wish i could be a fly on the wall inside that festive gathering!

me, i gotta go. i have things to do to get ready for my awesome weekend. if i have time i'll go back this evening to be on the corner during choir practice.

i don't know- it's so close to bedtime and tomorrow morning will come up early.

i'll see you on the streetcorner.

another day, another protest

i only spent an hour on the corner today, but it was a lovely hour.

it was nice and sunny this morning, which was nice after yesterday's rain.

there's nothing terribly special about the day; just another one of the thousands in the queue.

there were a bunch of wavers, one honker, one steely eyed and angry church lady, and one guy who rolled down his window to shout "they're all just a bunch of hypocrites, ain't they?"

"you got that right", i answered, and we waved and smiled at each other as he passed.

a woman called me over to the other side of the street to tell her the story. "i see you out here all the time and i told my husband the next time i was out here i was going to ask you."

the fraudulent pastor came out for some reason or other and offered to buy me a bottle of water, but the last time i spoke to the fraudulent pastor i told her that i could take nothing else from her until the day i receive communion in the church.

so i didn't have anything to say to her today, but since there were people going in and out of the church, i got to sing.

where i stand on the corner or whether i stand still or walk has a lot to do with how i judge the traffic, and where the message will have the most ears and the most eyes on it.

people using the church within earshot = singing.

there are some very interesting social and communications dynamics involved with protesting over a long period of time. if i were a sociology or communications grad student, i would have a thesis project going here.

it is really fascinating and over the next twenty years or so, i will be really glad that in year one i decided to take notes.

see you on the streetcorner tomorrow.

rain day

if there was something going on at the church i'd go stand on the corner nonetheless, but it's a slow day down there and who wants to stand in the rain?

it's kind of limited return on my investment and i'm getting ready for the weekend.

it's going to be an awesome weekend.

plus over the course of twenty-some-odd years of a protest, nobody will remember if i took off one tuesday in the first year because it was raining.

and oh-by-the-way: if the fraudulent pastor is allowed to retire before this is cleaned up, the protest will continue on.

see you on the streetcorner.

today on the corner

on my way out to play today i spent an hour on the corner outside the williston federated church.

everybody who is surprised raise your hand.

nobody? ok.

anyway, there's not much to report.

there was a guy who honked his horn a lot and gave a thumbs up. there were five very elderly little ladies in a sedan who slowed way down in the intersection and appeared to be pointing at me very firmly, but i was unable to decipher their meaning. it looked a lot like the gesture road cyclists use to point out a deep pothole or other road hazard to people following in a line, but i do not think that wa the intent.

a hipster dude rolled down his window and said something unintelligible while waving a cigarette in front of his face. while the anciennes were probably disapproving in intent, i have no CLUE what hipster dude was on about. i could only make out three vowel sounds, no consonants, and i was unable to parse out any of his body language.

i was asked (again) if i would like to be interviewed for broadcast media but said that for the time being i am still declining interviews. i advised the person to ask again in a week or two.

i am very much looking forward to open house weekend, and i am enjoying the cooler weather. soon enough i will need to start wearing long johns while i stand on the corner, but the time goes a lot faster than i'd have guessed.

see you on the streetcorner.

and upon this rock

here is possibly the best illustration of the lie upon which the williston federated church is built:

the door is open, and yet it is not.

the door is latched open in a rictus of false welcome, but there is nobody to greet you and you can't come in.

Jesus would be so proud.

another day.

there's not much to report. it was the usual sunday crowd.

wavers, blah blah blah.

early in the morning some guy stopped to say he's very sorry what happened to me, but it's getting old.

ha.

not nearly as old as it's going to get.

so everybody just get used to it, ok? nothing's going to change. ever. this is what the williston federated church looks like for the next twenty or thirty years.

i'm pretty good with sticking to a plan.

like a thing i promised i would do and have been doing without fail since 1985.

or that little thing i still do that i promised i would keep doing back in 1976. how long is that? jumpin' jiminy! my, how time flies! 37 years ALREADY?

it's only been nine and a half months on this new thing.

it's a drop in the bucket.

i don't care if it's getting old for you. i'm just getting warmed up.



see you on the streetcorner.

daily dues

surprise! i spent an hour on the streetcorner this morning.

it was fairly uneventful.

before i even got to the corner, a hostile man shouted "get a job!" a little while later he drove back the other way and shouted it again. why is it that these jokers are never at a job when they shout this at me?

scripture man was there. we waved at each other.

there were a lot of people who do not know how to use a four-way stop. maybe there is a remedial class for them, along with those classes on how to use a door.

one grey minivan went through the intersection westbound without even bothering to slow down, and i'd have to estimate the driver was going forty miles an hour, which is pretty firmly in violation of the speed limit in williston village.

there were some waves and some thumbs up. there was a guy who honked the "shave-and-a-haircut" thing.

two thuggish young men went by, hooting and aggressively flipping me off.

there's a feeling to a lot of these interactions. not everyone who waves is a supporter. sometimes a wave is simply someone who wishes to recognize that i am there and to recognize our shared humanity.

not everyone who flips me off are thuggish. i realize that what i am doing makes some people angry. that's to be expected, and a flipped bird from a person who is particularly angry, while it is not a classy gesture for church ladies to be making is not alarming or particularly saddening.

but there's a frat boy mentality to rape culture, the idea that a woman standing up against harassment or assault is an affront to them, an impediment to their ability to own and dominate other people, particularly women.

these guys are the heart of the problem. they are precisely why it is important to make this stand and keep making it until either something is made better or until i am laid in my grave some decades down the line.

but while the scariest and most prominent of the rape culture supporters are mostly men, it is important to note that many of the most outspoken against rape culture are also men.

it gives me hope for the future of people in general.

the last thing that happened before my ride came to pick me up was a man who slowed down coming through the intersection and looking at my sign he said "don't they all?"
"one would hope not", i said.
"yeah, that's the thing, though", he said, waved, and drove on.

tomorrow is the festive opening of sunday school for the season.

i am looking forward to seeing if the fraudulent pastor has learned how to use a door.

i have new songs to sing.

i'll see you on the streetcorner.

school's in!

wooo! sunday school classes start tomorrow at the williston federated church!

in order to celebrate this awesome event, i have taken the liberty of drawing up a sample curriculum.

• we don't have to talk about anything uncomfortable. (lesson on ezekiel 3)
• we are better than the people we cast out! (lesson on  1 corinthians 11)
• god wants us to exclude people. (lesson on isaiah 56)
• jesus only welcomes SOME of us. (lesson on the gospel of luke)

and there will be practical life skills taught, too, every day.

the church will be teaching the young and old alike that when YOU are assaulted, you must keep quiet about it, because while we forgive you for having been touched inappropriately and we will forgive you for being stalked by the perpetrator, we will NOT forgive you if you tell, because it is not ok to cause disturbances in the church by telling what happened.

so you better keep all that to yourself. you better not try to claim any dignity back for yourself, and you better not stand up to the perpetrator when the pastor (who has known about the assault for over a year) decides to have him stand over you during a service with the collection plate.

if only you had kept quiet, not told, not cracked when he followed you around, not tried to take back your own dignity it would have been all right because we forgive you for letting yourself get assaulted, but we will NOT forgive you for speaking up.

we will turn you away and you will be outcast forever. you will not be welcome at the Lord's Table, even though the fraudulent pastor will say the words "radical welcome",  even though the church says ALL ARE WELCOME on all its materials.

it is a lie.

part of the church school curriculum has been the central lie: all are welcome, but they are not.

it could happen to you. you'd better keep quiet about it, because all are not really welcome. you'd better be quiet. you'd better behave.

Jesus loves and welcomes all.

except those who speak up.

it is a dangerous indoctrination.

i'll see you on the streetcorner.

there. isn't that nicer?

this morning i spent a couple of hours on the corner. nobody crashed into anybody else, although a disturbing percentage of drivers were on the phone wile crossing the intersection. one driver did fail to see a cyclist and fail to yield right of way, but the cyclist (who had come to a full stop, signaled clearly, and waited his turn in traffic like everybody else) had a handle on it and tore off a little trackstand so he didn't even have to foot down when he got cut off.

tan car man was out there today. i am always happy to see tan car man, who always rolls down his window and always says good morning.

an old guy in a blue car turned left, making that "crazy" sign. see, now that's really the root of the problem. when you tell what happened, or you demand better behavior, you get called crazy or dangerous or both.

it's a well-known phenomenon of perception of any kind of resistance. there are some very good articles and studies about the medicalizing of the civil rights movement and the classification of both resistance to gender and race inequality as pathology.

go look it up for yourself.

a lady from the church drove by and very discreetly flipped me off in a dainty ladylike fashion.

way to stay classy, church ladies.

there were more waves and thumbs up than i was able to keep track of, and a couple of honk and waves.

the one that really caught my attention was the two women, probably a mother and daughter by the look of them. they read both signs and they waved. they also thumbs-upped, nodding vigorously.

sometimes a wave is just a wave.

sometimes it looks like a promise, like a resolution.

yes, they say. we will demand better.

we will demand it for those who came before you, for you, and all who come after us.

see you on the streetcorner.

scoring rubric

full document

not as funny. still satisfying.

this morning i spent a few hours on the corner. i think i only meant to spend an hour or so at it, but it was an interesting morning.

sometimes just the patterns of the pass are worth the observation.

i made some casual chitchat with a dog walker and a woman who came to put up yard sale signs.

if you spend a lot of time standing there or walking that corner, you get to know the rhythms of the day.

there were some waves and some thumbs up but the thing that about broke my heart was the red haired woman in the blue car. she didn't even roll down her window, but i could see her face when she read my sign and i could read her lips clear enough as if she had spoken right out loud next to me.

"i'm sorry", she said.

i do not know why that one moment was the heartbreaker of the day.

in other news, while most drivers through the intersection are polite and alert, too many of them are on the phone or going way too fast. just as i was getting ready to go home for jam and toast i was watching a westbound car while traffic passed in front of me.

and then there was the unmistakable sound of one car hitting another.

a white car, turning left into the store maybe, had slowed down and a blue car coming through the intersection plowed into him. neither driver was hurt and there looked to be little damage to the white car but the blue car got a crumpled panel.

it all happened off to my right, and after both had passed me, out of my view until i turned my head when i heard the sound, so i'll be no good as a witness.

see you on the streetcorner.

stand up comedy

although the background of the story isn't funny at all, telling the recent developments gets a bucket of laughs, from friends and strangers alike.

today in the hour i spent on the corner, a woman came by to talk. first she pulled up, started to get out of her car, got back in, made a phone call, and then got out and came over to me.

we talked for a long time. we laughed and cried and laughed some more.

it turned out the phone call had been to someone who didn't have the luxury of standing on the streetcorner when it happened to them, who still is afraid to go stand out on the corner.

she thanked me for my courage, for my work. she asked me never to forget that people do notice, and some of them are very grateful.



but when i tell the story of my treatment by this church, this week i am choosing to call it comedy because sometimes sorrow doesn't serve you very well.

and people screech with laughter and disbelief.

no. they didn't!
oh, wait, i tell them. it gets BETTER.
and they howl. we howl together.

we shed a tear or two for the losses, for the silence.

but we laugh where we can find gold.

and this is comedy gold.

this is the gold rush.

see you on the streetcorner.

educational progress

so today on my way to the grocery store i stopped off to walk the corner for an hour.

at some point the fraudulent pastor came outside, maybe to talk with me, maybe as a test of her awesome courage in the face of a song and a poster.

i don't know what she wanted.

but i do know this: in order to come outside she had to correctly operate a door, so that represents some progress in her demonstrated skill level.



outside the williston federated church on the street today i was not looking drivers in the eye, so the only ones with whom i had any interaction were drivers that went out of their way to flag my attention.


there were two enthusiastic wavers, one thumbs up, and a triple beeper.

one pedestrian said hello.

and a guy who may or may not have been homeless stopped and we had a short chat.

"i'm enjoying the countryside", he said.

see you out on the corner.

course listing

little lessons

well, now that i've been taught a nice sharp lesson, i am duly chastised. what a terrible embarrassment.

...for someone, i guess.

but not me.

me, it's business at usual at the williston federated church.

i only spent an hour on the corner today, but it went by quickly.

there were two thumbs up, two waves, one power fist salute, one shout of "get a job!" and one carload of women who stopped long enough to be outraged that a church would throw the victim out.

hey, how's that show of power workin' for ya, fraudulent pastor? you couldn't just shut the door? you needed to really show everyone who has all that authority you love so much? it's nice to see you're all about peace and welcome and a contemplative environment. it's nice to see you really care about people.

armed officers. in the church. on a sunday morning.

to take care of a little lady with a sign, singing songs. was i that out of tune? surely the lyrics did not displease you, since they are your own words.

you've heard of a "doorknob", right? it's that thing you use to close the door. that might could'a' been a handy tool for you and if you were a real leader instead of being in love with your own authority, you might have realized that.

oh, wait.

if you'd been a real leader instead of in love with your own authority, it wouldn't have come to this.

at choice point after choice point after choice point.

so.

more songs, more signs.

in the meantime, i suggest you learn to use a "doorknob".

i am thinking of moving to twice-a-days. that open house is going to be AWKWARD.

remember: "doorknob". if you do not like my musical selections, you can use the "doorknob" to shut the door.

i know, it's a revolutionary concept. google is your friend.


http://www.ask.com/question/how-does-a-door-knob-work


see you on the streetcorner.

this is what sundays look like from now on.

if the door isn't open for everyone, the door isn't open.

i keep saying that here, i keep saying it out on the street, and i have said it to the fraudulent pastor.

this morning all she had to do to make herself and the congregation immune from the terrifying prospect of having a little middle aged lady with a sign sing songs that made them unhappy was close the door.

that's it.

problem would have been solved.

and the lyrics of the song?

no matter who you are
no matter where you are on your spiritual journey
all are welcome at this table.

Lord Jesus would be so proud of you
Lord Jesus would be so proud.

the first part, of course, is simply what the fraudulent pastor, joan newton o'gorman, says every communion sunday. the second part is me making a conjecture.

still, it's just a song. it may be annoying, but all you have to do to protect yourself from it is to close the door.

but the fraudulent pastor was not interested in that. the fraudulent pastor was only interested in teaching me a little lesson.

so at somewhere near a quarter past nine this morning two armed officers of wiliston's finest were summoned to deal with me. after talking with me a few minutes they went inside. i simply resumed my singing.

the officers wished me a good day when they left.

near nine thirty the door was closed.

i imagine THAT set quite a tone for the worship service. did anyone say that thing they always say in the williston federated church? that thing about practicing radical welcome?

i bet that also made an impression out on the street. i bet that looked really cool next to the expensive banner advertising the open house.

we're the FRIENDLY church.

so how'd that go for you? did bringing armed officers into the church at the beginning of the worship service have the intended effect, or was that just more bad leadership?

how's all that talk about love and peace and welcome going?

the protest, by the way, is both legal and constitutionally protected. there is a crapton of case law about that.



if one is forbidden from that table, none are truly welcome.

see you on the streetcorner.

hey, i have an idea!

hey, i have an idea! 

let's have an open house and invite friends and strangers to come and hang out. i'm sure that will really improve the mood around here.

yeah, that's probably just the thing to perk us up. do you think the nine-month old protest on the corner outside the church might put a damper on it?

nah, get an expensive banner printed up. people LOVE open houses at churches in conflict.

ok, then. i'll order balloons.

at least that's how i imagine the conversation going.

and it's certainly amusing to watch the faces of people passing on the corner as their eyes go from the banner to my sign and back.

cognitive dissonance.

i was only outside the williston federated church for about an hour and a half this morning, and it was mostly all the usual stuff, if maybe quieter.

but then as i was getting ready to wrap it up, the gentleman who had handed me the page of scripture last week came and asked me if i had read it.

he did not ask me what i thought of the scripture, which is good, because mostly what i thought of it was that i did not know what he was getting at, mostly because scripture can be used in a lot of ways to illustrate a lot of different points.

it was nice to talk with him and get a better idea of what he did mean.

i am just guessing that even in the days of my best and shiniest most ebullient faith, he and i would have had some theological and doctrinal differences, but it would not have been so different than that day when i visited among conservative mennonites.

the thing we would have had complete agreement in is probably the point that all are welcome and all are forgiven. it is a thing Jesus did not suggest to us, but commanded us to it.

i do not think i believe anymore in a god, but i am certain that i never stopped believing in the rightness of the message: all are welcome at this table. all who knock may enter. all who seek may find.

the man said he had talked with his pastor about it. he had some questions, maybe of his own, and maybe directed by the pastor.

the questions that struck me most were "how did they respect you?" and "how do they respect you now?"

when i told him of last night's email, he suggested i might find "a real church".

"good luck",  he said. "we will talk again."

and he went on his way.

the God i loved would have forgiven my my lapse of faith, and would have only required i come with my whole heart and let the details work themselves out.

i'll see you tomorrow on the streetcorner.

i don't even.

the fraudulent pastor-who-should-be-fired, the same joan newton o'gorman who has the ability to have the order of no trespass lifted has sent me a message through a third party offering to have the third party and an assistant serve communion to me on the streetcorner come sunday.

when a pastor with conscience offered me the same sacrament on the streetcorner previously, he had no other choice. the pastor-who-should-be-fired had taken it out of his hands to allow me to receive in the church, so he himself, man of God and man of compassion, came to me where i was.

he did this without sending an assistant or an intermediary. he did this without asking a third party ahead of time, like the eighth grade girls in the bathroom at the dance.

"hi, you're not welcome at the Lord's table. just to hit the point home, we'll  send out some people with the leftovers after we're done, 'k?"

this is what i want to know, fraudulent pastor: are you still going to have the nerve to stand up before the congregation and before God and say the words "all are welcome at this table?"

blah, blah, blah

so another couple of hours on the line. today i got my first fist pump power salute from a guy in a neatly pressed blue shirt and a snappy looking tie.

that made me smile.

and i forgot to list yesterday the two guys who went through the intersection shouting unintelligible things.

the southbound guy shouted something and the only word i heard of it was "judge" and then a few minutes later a westbound buy shouted a bunch of stuff, the only word of which i heard was "god".

today some guy heading westbound was shouting a whole buncha stuff, and i managed to be able to make out the words "get over it", and then "get over it", which is probably the advice he will give to his children when it happens to one of them.

i say "when" because statistically that's a probability.

other than the guy who went through the intersection while talking on a headset phone and READING, there's not much to report.

it's business as usual at the williston federated church.

oh, yeah. nearly forgot.

spent a few hours on the line today.

waved back at some thumbs uppers. talked to some people. the usual stuff.

business as usual at the williston federated church.

*snrk*

terrifying arsenal

i just checked my bag.

turns out today i'm carrying these items.

















and these.

















and in my car i have a leatherman tool, duct tape, assorted zip ties and bungee cords, some para cord, three gallons of water, a box of snacks, a set of bike tools, an emergency tarp and two spring clamps.

so essentially at any moment i might be able to find my way out of the woods, make simple repairs, perform basic first aid, and camp overnight if i get stranded somewhere.

yep, you should lock your doors when i go by because i might whip out a map protractor or a bandage or something.

flee in terror!

i'm not afraid to use a clinometer if i have to.


oh, no!!! not the tweezers!

run! hide your children! there's a NOTEBOOK in there!!!

QUAKE IN FEAR!

not my problem

there's a lot here i simply can't tell you besides that i had no time to protest today because i had to spend a long time on the phone with the mediator.

tomorrow i have to have some little surgical procedures; i'll try to squeeze the protesting in beforehand, but you know how hectic a day can get if you have engagements on both sides of medical appointments.

it doesn't really matter.

the tone of the protest does not over its twenty or thirty year span suffer if i take a day off to tend to business or go on a vacation. the streetcorner will still be there.

in other news, this blog got its 3000th hit yesterday while i was out on the corner, and in some search engines (not google) you get this protest ABOVE the church homepage in the search results if you use "williston federated church" as your search term.

in the long term rebranding of the church, i call that a gain.

someone looking for directions to the church ten years from now? they can read about this protest.

you don't have to like what i'm doing or approve of it for the negative emotional association with the corner and the church to form in your neural pathways. anyone who's ever read an article about negative political advertising knows this.

the protest is not a means to drum up support nor to compel some kind of action or force a consequence. it IS the chosen consequence.

it IS the present, and it IS the future.

the rest is not my problem.

still collecting data

i would like to table any discussions of stopping the protest until june of 2018.

by then i will probably have collected enough data to have an idea of how well it's working for me.

so far it's going really well but i want to give it a good run before i make any hasty decisions.

twenty-first sunday in ordinary time

it was most of the usuals today: the wavers, the honk-and wavers, the thumbs ups.

at about nine o'clock two young men in a silver compact car sped by, shouting something as loud and crude as it was unintelligible. i guess i'm sort of assuming the crude part, but there's a certain unmistakable tone to the crude things yahoos yell from speeding cars.

at nine twenty on the dot i started my singing, the objective of which was to cause the front door of the church to be closed. if that door is not open to everyone, it is simply not open, period.

at ten o'clock things got a little weird. a man in a dark grey suv pulled up to the utility pad parking place on the south side of the intersection and he lurked, hiding behind the power poles, taking pictures with a camera with a telephoto lens.

i don't know why he felt he needed to do that; most people who want to take pictures of me with my sign either just take the picture or they come up and ask.

can i get you to stand so i can get the church name in the picture? sure.

it was a very busy ten minutes, the five minutes on either side of ten o'clock. a couple in a brown sedan pulled up and the gentleman handed me a page of typed scripture quotations with a scripture bookmark stapled to it. "this is for you", he said.

i read it. i do not know what those people were getting at. i've read the whole bible, several translations, cover-to-cover. a page of scriptural quotations rarely makes a coherent point all by themselves. i'm sure those people had a clear idea what they meant to communicate by those verses, but i was left a little unclear as to their meaning. even if i assume they didn't mean it ironically, i am really uncertain what they were trying to communicate to me, or more likely, what they thought the Lord would communicate to me by it.

because scripture's like that.

scripture, speaking entirely for itself does not even agree with itself on thousands of points, so you kind of have to interpret it if you're going to communicate anything.

here's a random contradiction: in genesis 16:16, abram is 86 years old when ishmael is born. if both acts 7:2-4 and genesis 11:26-32 are correct, he's over 135. it's maybe not an important point, but scriptural quotes by themselves don't necessarily communicate what you think they communicate.

it would have been better for the people to write me a note telling me what they thought and referring to scripture, because then at least i'd have an idea what they were on about, and i'd be able to connect their thoughts with scriptural reference, which i think is a valid form of discussion.

so as it was, i was sort of all, like, "huh?" which i think is not what they intended.

also in those ten minutes a man pulled up in the south side of the intersection and just sat there for a long time looking at me. he did not appear either hostile or supportive, but as if he was thinking carefully. after a while he drove off.

and also in those ten minutes there were two cars going by who did not just smile and wave, but stopped in the intersection, roll down the windows and wave their whole arms until i waved back.

then after the service two young men came up and politely asked me a lot of questions about the whole story. then they appeared to go into the church to ask people there a lot of questions. i have no idea who they were or what they hoped to learn or to do with the information.

they were kind of sweet, though.

a woman waved and shouted "jesus loves you!"

i noticed that this week the elderly lady did not run over the crosswalk sign on her way out of the church parking lot.

an old guy from the church in a red car waved his hand at me in the dismissive way that old guys do when they wish to dismiss you with contempt. i resisted the temptation to wave cheerfully.

and then some stuff happened.

well.

that's pretty much it for today. it's business as usual at the williston federated church.

see you tomorrow on the streetcorner.

fun fact

go ahead and google "williston federated church". go ahead, i'll wait.

d'ya notice that this protest comes up on the first page?

make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'

fun party games

here's a fun party game you guys can play down at bishop booth while you're waiting for me to arrive:

it's called guess which of the smiling party goers scuttled the mediation and then hung the pastor out to dry!

you could play it twenty questions style or hot-and-cold style or even pin-the-tail-on-the-weasel.

because SOME of you had advance warning of what was coming and chose not to do anything about it.

hmmmmmm. which happy smiling handshaking "oh, we missed you" people might it be?

oooh, it's a brain teaser! i LOVE brain teasers!

twentieth thursday of ordinary time

when the deadline passes tomorrow and the mediation has failed for good, i will not suffer one bit. it will be no different than the solution i chose for myself.

but there are people in the church who had high hopes for the mediation, because apparently something about that protest isn't sitting comfortably on everyone.

the person with the most to lose is arguably the pastor.

if you knew the mediation had tanked on tuesday and watched the daily protests resume on wednesday and by thursday you still hadn't called the pastor to let her know what shitstorm she'd just returned to, you'd be a weasel.

if you were prepared to let the mediation fail and toss the considerable investment the church has in it be thrown away, you'd be a weasel AND you'd be fiscally irresponsible.

you're probably the sort of person who sends anonymous letters.

you're probably the sort of person who will show up to welcome back the pastor and not tell her you were going to hang her out to dry.

because by not telling her what you had done, you left her unprepared to face this, and since she's the person with the most to lose in this situation, if you were a faithful supporter or a good custodian of your congregation's resources, or a decent person, you'd have given her a heads up.

but you didn't.

you know how much money this mediation is costing, right?

you know what's at stake, right?

yeah, i thought so.

clock is ticking

today is a free day. the deadline is sometime tomorrow.

since nobody knows exactly what time tomorrow the deadline is, i'm going to suggest that anyone who has an interest in not wasting the church's investment in the mediation might could get busy on the task and make sure it gets done.

if, when i see her tomorrow, the mediator cannot tell me what happened on tuesday and why you understand it was inappropriate, there will be no more mediation and no possibility of starting it up again.

i have to go now. it's time for today's daily protest, because with the mediation dead the protest will be daily and at every church event being held anywhere, and beginning next week i will stop declining media interviews.

it's your move, and clock is burning.

same day, second verse

it was a little weird to go back on the line today with the yellow sign, just like before. same corner, same yellow sign.

WILLISTON FEDERATED CHURCH
COVERS UP
SEXUAL ASSAULT

i do not know if i was on the line for a half hour or for forty minutes or what, and i will get to that in a few lines when i tell you the sequence of it.

today there were a surprisingly high number of thumbs ups. not waves, not honks, just thumbs ups. sometimes the patterns of a day are weird. twice that i know of people took photos with smartphones, which means probably some social media exposure.

when i first got there i had gotten just far enough on my approach to start crossing the street and the clock on that side isn't working so i was making a mental note to myself to check the time on the other side and then i saw standing in the window right there joan newton o'gorman herself, honest-to-harald and i was suddenly so scared that i nearly peed myself.

it's just nerves, right? because there's totally nothing actually physically frightening about her i don't think, but the fear was there all the same.

and she smiled at me the falsest smile i have seen in a long time- like since maybe the last time that joan newton o'gorman smiled at me.

but really and truly, she'd have to be out of her honkin' head to see me with that sign and have a smile on her face that was sincere.

i'm just overly sensitive to the dishonest smile. i do not take it as a sign of offered peace. it stirs in me contempt. it does not matter to me who smiles the false smile; i simply read it as an indicator that the person making it is dishonest and therefore up to no good.

i bring it up here by way of contrast, though, because after another false smile passing me on the corner, joan newton o'gorman went home and then returned. she went into the store and came out and approached me.

this time she was not smiling. this time even though i do not know what was behind her eyes or in her heart, i had a sense that it was genuine, that whatever it was, it was true under the circumstance.

she called me by name and offered me a bottle of cold water she had clearly bought for the purpose.

"i have nothing to say to you", i said, not meeting her eye.
she asked me if she left it there, would i drink it, since it was so hot in the sun.
"if you did, you'd be littering", i said.

and she left me there.

there are some what-ifs to this story.

if it hadn't been for last night, i would have taken the water.
if it hadn't been for last night, i wouldn't have been out protesting today.
if it hadn't been for last night, the mediation would probably be wrapping up in a satisfactory manner in a couple of weeks from now.

that was an expensive thing, last night.

see you tomorrow morning on the streetcorner.

twentieth wednesday of ordinary time

after last night i have informed the mediator that i do not wish to continue the mediation. i will still keep my scheduled appointment on friday, but it will be an exit interview and not a discussion (as it was going to be) of how to proceed gracefully.

full bore daily protesting at the church properties and church events will resume today and continue until i'm too blasted old to hold up the sign.

i will still get what i want out of it and after last night i no longer care if the church can get anything decent out of it, nor do i care about their leviathan timetables.

if - and this is a big IF- someone from the church wants to explain to the mediator what happened and why it was totally inappropriate before the scheduled meeting, i will be willing to entertain offers of what concessions might be made just to get me back to the table.

otherwise we are done and you are all on your own.

business as usual, from now until i'm too old. considering that i am not yet 50 and in good shape, by the time i stop holding the signs on that corner, people will be serving on the official board of the williston federated church who haven't even been born yet.

twentieth sunday in ordinary time

standing on the corner with the sign is physically draining, even if you haven't spent the day previous doing a twelve hour adventure race.

at about twenty minutes to nine, a woman came up and introduced herself. she asked if she might lay hands on me and pray, to which i consented because there was a time in my life when i had such a vibrant and joyful faith that the first thoughts i had in the morning were prayers and the last thought before i went to bed at night were prayer and  a great deal of the in between were prayers, too.

i miss that feeling.

but then she talked with me a bit and she offered to take me to her church, a church that will not blame victims or throw people out.

i'm not so sure about that. before it happened to me, i would have bet my life that the williston federated church would not have done any such a thing, either.

i told her that for all of the foreseeable future, i have work to do here, on this street corner.

she asked God to bless me again and gave me a hug and she went on her way.

at about ten to nine, a man driving by stopped his car and said "i never liked that church anyway!" and he waved and went on.

a couple of people raised their coffee cups to me as they passed.

at about a quarter to ten, a woman stopped and offered to take me to her church, right NOW. "i'm going now, she said. you can hop in."

i thanked her and i said that while i still have work to do on this streetcorner, i have an obligation to stay.

i do not know when this work will be finished. i expect it will take a long time, maybe years.

but i am steadfast and i am strong.

and this is the right thing to do.

i'll see you out on the corner.

nineteenth sunday of ordinary time

it was a nice day for a protest, cool and fair. there were the usual waves and thumbs up.

the scary moment was where a car proceeding through the intersection southbound after stopping was very nearly t-boned by a driver with out-of state plates going WAY TOO FAST who completely failed to stop at the stop sign even though it has a flashing light on it.

but mostly i was thinking: some days i don;t really feel like taking the single most painful episode of my life and putting it out on the streetcorner. sometimes i do not feel like being in touch with that.

but it is important work, and i am in it for the long haul. i will do it, if necessary, until i am simply too old to stand with the sign.

today at the end of my time on the corner a young man came and asked if he could take my picture. and he asked about my story. and he asked if i would mind if he posted it to facebook.

by all means, do.

while it is a personal thing, i am trying to communicate something about a problem not just of the church community of the williston federated church, but a cultural norm in which the victim of an assault is blamed for the consequences of the assault.

"if you had only kept quiet about it", they tell us, "it would have been fine".

"we were ok with it until you started to talk about it", they tell us.

let me be blunt about it: when it happens to your son or your daughter or to you, the problem will begin at the point of the assault, with the bad behavior of the perpetrator and not at the point at which you or your child speak up, or even at the point where they fall apart under the strain of trying to keep it quiet.

the problem is very firmly the act of the assault and secondarily the attempt to keep it all nice and quiet, because people would be uncomfortable.

i was also thinking today about how it will feel at the end of october when the protest will be a year old, and i was thinking about how cold it will feel come thanksgiving and how lonely it will feel standing outside the church on christmas eve.

i was thinking how it will feel to be standing outside while the pastor gives that "welcome home, everybody is welcome" sermon that she aways gives on christmas. i was thinking how it will feel to look at the candle light and the expressions of goodwill and hope from out in the darkness, on the street.

seasons turn. years pass. i am not yet fifty years old. there are a lot of years in me yet.

i'll see you on the streetcorner.

off course

heh. that's a funny title if you know where i was today.

i had some other work i needed to do today, and let's face it: if you're going to mount a protest over multiple years, sometimes you're going to have to miss a sunday or two.

but there will be next week.

and next month.

thanksgiving, christmas, and easter.

and thanksgiving, christmas, and easter.

until i'm too blasted old.

it's funny, because when i started walking the line in november, i thought a lot about how that would go in the cold of winter, if i could stand it.

and now i have walked the line through the cold of winter and through the hottest part of the summer.

seasons turn.

years pass.

i'll be eighty before i even know it, and i'll wonder where all the time went.

see you on the corner.

seventeenth sunday in ordinary time

i can see my pain reflected in the sides of their cars and sometimes in their faces:

I AM
OUTCAST
FROM THIS CHURCH

it's the usual collection of people, the middle aged ladies passing by, the young men with facial piercings, the road cyclists, the quebecois motorcycle riders, the families dressed for other churches.

some people look at me, and look past. some look, and there is kind of a short conversation with me in their eyes. the ones that make me cry are the ones for whom my message holds, i can see too plainly, too much personal resonance.

some wave, some give thumbs up. a very few are tight lipped with disapproval. people from the williston federated church, people with whom i have shared meals and prayers and workdays, people who hugged me tight and called me a gift, people who were my church family, they pass right on by, not even looking at me, but looking through me.

most of them.

there are two men who look right at me and laugh derisive laughs, meant to be seen and absorbed. i do not understand how those men can look on that sorrow with such apparent retaliative glee. didn't they learn anything in church?

the people who look past me, they are uncomfortable. it is a difficult thing to say the words of welcome in the church and have the evidence that not all are welcome right out on the streetcorner. it is a thing of embarrassment to look at someone you have turned away.

today i catalogued the things people said to me, and i will tell them to you, all of them.

or nearly all of them, because what the young man said was lengthy and personal, and you don't need to know all the details.

why are you outcast?

thank you.

why are you outcast?

when it happened to my mother in law, the whole town blamed her. she still has trouble living in that town.

how uncomfortable are they now?

they SHOULD be uncomfortable.

(an unintelligible thing of unknown intent)

WE SUPPORT YOU!

i do not know what to think always. sometimes i think with a clear and rational head, one that does not cling to faith in a world where faith does such damage.

and sometimes i think with my heart of faith, like i had before the assault.

it is a tragedy, i used to think, when even one soul is lost. it is a tragedy when even one soul is made a stranger from God's Own Table, because, i used to preach, no matter who you are or what you have said or done, you are all welcome at God's table, in God's Grace, in God's Time, eternal and infinite.

i believed those words when they said them or words very like them in the church where i had made my home.

i do not know anymore what i believe. i know that my presence on the streetcorner exposes them as liars on the inside of the church.

"we practice radical welcome", they said every week on the inside (do they even still say it?), but here i am, the permanent reminder that it is a lie.

jesus may love you, but the williston federated church throws people away.

sixteenth sunday in ordinary time

it was lovely and cool this morning on the corner.

i hadn't been there but five minutes or so when a gentleman stopped to advise me of a good church i could maybe go to, one that was welcoming and open and nonjudgmental.

i think the people of the williston federated church would be appalled to know how many times strangers passing by want to give me advice about good churches- you know, not like this one. you know, churches where they welcome everyone and are supportive. churches where they aren't into victim blaming.

i kid you not. people actually say this stuff to me.

they say it nearly every time i'm out there.

other things that i hear often, less often that that, but more often than i would like, are well-meaning people who want to measure the legitimacy of my claim on assault by asking what i was wearing, or where i was, or how i might have led the perpetrator on.

today i was asked if i had been leading him on in any way, as if this questioner has the standing to evaluate my personal life to see if i had maybe deserved an assault.

"no", i said. "none of us are EVER asking for it."

it's kind of a more complex social issue than just this, though. it is part of the culture where we not only blame women for their sexuality, but we blame women for men's sexuality, and not that sexual assault has as much to do with sexuality as it does dominance and violence and depersonalization, but it gets all tied in there and it is a multi-layered problem.

the best way, incidentally, for women not to be assaulted is for men to stop assaulting us.

did you guys follow the story out of saudi arabia a few months ago? the story where two men were expelled from the country because they were too handsome and saudi women might lose control?

it was treated in the press like an amusing little side trip, a cute instance of men being subjected to sexism.

but really what's going on here is we are in essence blaming women for that.

because women are not free agents. they are not in control of their feelings or desires and they are so deficient as humans that if men who are TOO HANDSOME come along, we have to protect women from even seeing them because women who see handsome men will naturally allow themselves to be ravished and then we would have to kill them for the honor of their families.

today for a while outside the church, the people inside thought it would be a lovely day to keep the front door open. the thing about that is that i know just where to stand on the street so that i can be seen from inside the church by anyone up at the lectern or in the aisle, facing the street.

none of you gets to forget that i am out here on the street.

I AM
OUTCAST
FROM THIS CHURCH.

they didn't want to be reminded of it.

they closed the door.

fifteenth sunday in ordinary time

i was on the corner again today, but with a different sign.

this one says

I AM
OUTCAST
FROM THIS CHURCH

i went with this new sign because while the church is having any conversation about what happened and what might happen next, it is perhaps not strictly true that it continues to cover up the assault and retain a culture of silence.

during a time when the church may possibly be working to choose now to do the right thing, i don't feel right carrying the usual sign. it is still true, however, that i am not permitted on the church property so it is accurate to say i am outcast.

i feel it is important to be present and be seen to be present as if to say yes, the volume of the rhetoric can be turned down while you are working on this thing, but i am still outside, here, where you can see me.

until you have made better this thing, none of you gets to forget it.

ever.

the day was largely unremarkable, but there were some events.

a road cyclist passed me and said "sorry", and then she came back to the intersection to ask if she might give me a hug.

ok, that's a little strange, but it is an expression of support and it is what she had to offer. there were some thumbs ups and one loud honking guy with a thumbs up and i was asked to explain by several sets of people.

mostly they expressed astonishment that a church would or could throw anybody out.

there's a lot i won't or can't talk about right now, i told them, because this is in mediation and what i am doing today is simply reminding people that i am still here.

one man stopped to say he has read this whole blog and does not see any place to get in touch with me.

mostly i don't encourage commentary here because the purpose of this blog is primarily to keep record for myself and explain to interested parties what happens during the protest. this blog is not a discussion of the assault itself or the aftermath of it.

the ideas surrounding this whole issue both personally and culturally usually carry strong feelings in people and quite frankly i'm not up to having a debate in this forum about what happened to me or what i'm doing about it.

but if you are reading and you wish to comment, i also do not prevent comments because to walk on the streetcorner is to communicate something to people and i feel that intellectual honesty about this requires that i listen as well as speak, and that means being open to whatever comments come.

so commenting on the blog here is enabled. it has been since day one, although only one person has ever used the feature so far.

be advised, though, that while i am open to seeing dissenting views here and responding to disagreement here, this is not going to become a referendum and it's not going to become a dogpile of victim blaming. it just isn't. it's my blog, and i get to make those decisions.

also if you want to comment but prefer not to publish your comment, i can hold those comments out of publication.

one gentleman who stopped today asked me if i had found another church.

i haven't.

i have an engagement at the williston federated church for all of the forseeable future. it is a moral stand and not just one about my personal outrage.

the culture of silence and victim blaming is a dangerous one and if a church or other organization represents itself as a safe haven, one where all are welcome, it needs to back up those words with action when things get pinched. it is actually more dangerous to a community when an organization purporting to be a safe haven is unsafe. it is dangerous to victims and to potential victims, and it does not give to the congregation the ability or opportunity to do a thing they claim to wish to do, which is to comfort and support those in pain.

so part of what i'm doing is to prod that one church into taking a hard look at itself and deciding what exactly it does stand for.

i am certain, though, that this message is not lost on passers-by: this is a church that throws people out.

when people are thinking about where to go to church or whether to go to church, they are looking for a home, not a place where they will feel vulnerable and where acceptance is conditional or the environment is unsafe.

see you out on the streetcorner.

vacation

hello, people.

i can tell by the blog analytics that some of you were checking here to see where i was or at least what i might say this past sunday when i was not inside the church and not on the corner with the sign.

i was simply on vacation in nova scotia.

it will not be possible for me to be in the church with you because there is still an active order of no trespass against me, so i'm afraid for the future it will have to be on the corner, with the sign.

would it were otherwise.

i hope you are well and i hope your homes and gardens are not too much underwater.

all i'm saying about it

because people keep reading this blog i am going to assume that someone out there is looking for clues of some kind.

i will tell you that a thing happened that was not acceptable in terms of honesty even in conflict, and it placed me in some danger.

it was the act of a few individuals.

by the time i even got to have the conversation with the mediator about why i thought the mediation was over, the thing was being addressed sufficiently for me to remain in the conversation.

i realize that maybe it is not fair to simply have left this blog with no clue that mediation continues.

i have been absent from active protest for the time being and this blog is about that protest, so until i return to the line, there won't be much here in the way of updates.

if there's a critical development that happens outside of mediation, i may tell you about it but the thing about process is that you have to let it work.

there's going to be some more quiet here for a while.

it's not from loss of interest. it is about letting the process work.

i only mention it because still every day some people are reading. some of those people may have an actual stake in the outcome and need to hear from me what i think or intend.

hello, people.

i hope you are well.

this is as far as i go for now.

i hope you will understand.

thursday of the tenth week of ordinary time

now that mediation has failed, daily protests will resume until i am just too damn old to hold the sign up.


it's the new normal. let's all just get used to it, ok?

tenth sunday in ordinary time

it's going to be along day, today, with two scheduled marches: one for the morning service and one for the evening concert.

yes, you are the kind of church that punishes people and sends them away.

no, not everyone is welcome.

this is the new normal, me on the streetcorner.

let's all get used to it, shall we? when the mediation fails i will return to the daily protest, and let your corner be a sign to all people for all time.

i am going partly off-message today:

i have two signs. one is the usual, and the other says

HELP FUND
our
EUROPEAN
VACATION

you know, because this church can afford european vacations subsidized by grants fromt he lilly foundation. it's on their webpage. check it out.

so: we punish the victims and send them away forever. we cut them off from community, but we go on european package tour vacations.

we are, after all, a church.


and those things are the work of god, are they not?

didn't jesus say that?

CAST PEOPLE AWAY. USE THEM UP AND WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED, GO ON A EUROPEAN PACKAGE TOUR.