Tuesday, October 15, 2013

People are strange

I got home after 9 pm from my meeting last night, so I did say (as I was getting into bed) "Buck it. I'm not setting the alarm and not getting up to exercise." I managed to sleep until 6:30, which I probably needed.

I was thinking this morning of a Yorkshire phrase a (London-raised) British friend of the family shared once: "Nowt's so queer as folk." (And it's said with a particular intonation. I can't capture it in text but I can kind of say it, based on how she said it).

In American English, that probably most closely translates as my title - People are strange - but it's said with a sort of philosophical shrug that I can't quite muster up at this point, at least for some values of 'strange.'

Item #1: Watching a few minutes of semi-local news this morning, I see the director of our state Teacher's Retirement System (which is where I allegedly will eventually get my pension from) has been fired for financial improprieties. My first concern is: I hope the health of the system is not worse than they've been making off all along; those two things seem to go together. And while all my nest eggs are not in this basket (I also have an IRA, I also have a TIAA-CREF account, which is also partly why I don't have a smartphone or a blu-ray disk player or take lavish vacations), still, I'm kind of sort of counting on it maybe kicking in at least a few hundred a month when I do retire?

And this is also what makes me frustrated: we hear this kind of thing so often. I guess having power really is tempting. (I don't know. Most of my positions are more responsibility-without-authority rather than the other way 'round. I'm not sure I'd want power; the few times I had something approaching it, I found it exhausting because I worried so much about whether I was doing the right thing for the group or situation). But I guess for some people, give them power and access to money and not a huge amount of oversight and....

Item #2: Discussion after the meeting last night turned to the church split we experienced some 10 years ago.  It was really ugly and really sad (I remember thinking at the time, "Oh, so this is kind of what it is like to be a child in the middle of a divorce"). Ever since then, we've struggled both financially and with numbers (We don't have enough elders. We don't have enough deacons. It's hard to find enough people willing or able to fulfill the responsibilities within the congregation - which is partly why I carry more than I probably really should, because I'm able to, and because I'm okay with doing certain things that some people apparently aren't).

The group that left us went and founded another church. Okay, fine. Doctrinal differences, differences in how you think worship should be conducted. Fine.

Well, now THAT church has split. (As have several others in town, recently.) I wonder if anyone's done a study, looking at historical vs. current rates of church break-ups. It seems to me they happen more frequently now, and I wonder if that's the result in some kind of cultural change - less of a willingness to work to make something better that you're dissatisfied with, or less of a willingness to say, "Well, I don't like some things about this situation, but other things are fine, so I will accept that the things I don't like as well suit other people" or maybe a belief that out there, there's Perfect somewhere, if you just keep looking for it.

Eventually some churches are going to have to either consolidate or close, I think - there's a critical threshold (which I fear we are approaching) where there aren't enough people to do all the work. We have an absolutely gorgeous old building, and we have a few rental properties (which have helped keep us afloat during really lean times) and....I don't know what would happen if we closed. I don't want to see what happens but I fear that eventually I am going to. (The next nearest Disciples' church is, I think, a half-hour away, so I'm not sure where I'd go then. There are a couple Presbyterian churches in town and they are supposedly our nearest neighbor doctrinally, but I don't know....)

So: people, they get me down. I wish I were better at shrugging philosophically and saying "Nowt's so queer as folk" but maybe that's easier to do when you're a crofter or something who only sees people once a week on market day.

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