fourth tuesday of easter

today in the mail i received an anonymous letter from a member of the church.

i would call the sender a spineless toad, but it think it does a disservice to both toads and invertebrates. yeah, nancy, i'm lookin' at you.

later on i'll scan that in and ridicule it at length, because it's exactly the kind of lies i come to expect from churches. nice little work of false compassion and rationalization, though.

but that's a penalty clause.

i don't think i have much to talk about in mediation at this point.

today on the line a young man at the intersection rolled down his window and stuck his whole arm out to give me a thumbs up and he shouted "damn straight!" and waved before driving off.

somehow i do not think his support was coming from a place of concern for this specific incident, but rather a contempt for churches in general, which is a thing i hear rather a lot of these days.

one woman on the corner last week wanted to tell me that there are good churches out there and that i should look for one.

i had thought the williston federated church was one of those "good churches", but more and more i think about and hear about the inherent problems of communities that purport to be about moral choices but cover up and overlook assaults, abuses and intimidations.

it is about imbalanced power structure and it is about forced compliance by threat of ostracism and fear of damnation.

it is about the relegation and control of persons with essential dignity in favor of a hierarchical group structure.

when a group of people are willing to cover up and pass over for the sake of comfort, it is an institutional problem. when the churchman says "if that's true, we have to fire the pastor" and then no pastors are fired, it tells us all that we are not safe, that we cannot ask for even prayer from our "church family" else be tossed aside.

it is filthy and rotten from the inside and humiliation by the church can be a whole world of hurt worse than the original assault.

telling the truth and telling it over and over so that it is associated with the image of the church is the thing that gives me back my life.

i sleep soundly at night and i am beginning again to feel whole and alive in my rightful place on this earth.