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.