So there's this

1. No announcement of the "additional" pastoral relations committee meeting that was supposedly scheduled for Wednesday so I assume it's not happening. Either the people leveling the complaints withdrew them, or (more likely) several people could not meet that day. I will be unhappy if it winds up falling on my birthday. I'll go, I'll not say ANYTHING to complain, but I won't be happy. (I am also telling myself I am allowed to not open my mouth at all during the meeting if I can't think of anything helpful to say).

2. One of the woman - this is yet another person who belonged years ago, moved away, and rejoined recently - came up to me and told me she was "proud" of me for standing up at board meeting and talking about the "kitchen talk" and how people needed to go to the person they had a problem with if they had a problem. And she thanked me for it. I thanked her and told her it took a lot of guts (literally, all the "spoons" I had for the week) for me to get up and say it, but I felt like it needed to be said. So there's that, I guess. I don't know. I still suspect some people are angry with me for having said it but whatever. As someone who's been the victim of behind-the-back smear campaigns in her past (not at church but elsewhere), it's ONE thing I will call out when I see it happening, because I know how destructive it is.

3. The scripture this week was 1 Corinthians 12, about the spiritual gifts. And darn but this passage didn't strike me today:

"¹⁵ Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹ If they were all one part, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”"

Ouch. And yeah. That's kind of me, like the foot there. Maybe not in the sense of "I'm not a part of this body" so much as in the sense of "I am not good enough and I don't matter" - all the times I compare myself unfavorably to other people and overlook things about myself that are arguably good. (Though I would also argue that part of that comes from the fact that the world often values things I am not so good at or interested in, and the things that matter to me are seen as less valuable) 

4. The thing that nearly made me cry today...well, it was sort of close on the heels of M. telling me she was proud of me for saying what she thought needed to be said, but it was from "Gather us In," a newer hymn (late 1980s, I think?) that we sometimes sing.

This line:

"Call to us now and we shall awaken
We shall arise at the sound of our name"

That always resonates with me. The idea of being called by name. Of others knowing your name and calling you by the right one. (Madeline L'Engle talks about this too, in some of her books and her essays: about how being Named (as she puts it, she means something like "specifically being called by your right name as an indication that the one calling knows who you are" and that also being un-named or only referred to as a number of collective term or something is dehumanizing; that it's a way some make you feel less-than. Like the abusive guy who refers to his spouse/girlfriend as "Woman" instead of calling her name)

And I don't know. Maybe some of it is the echo of being that rejected little kid who was called stuff like ....the r-word that used to be used to indicated someone who was intellectually challenged....and stuff like that in the halls of the school. And I did have a few people in my past who used to regularly get my name wrong....called me Jessica or Rebecca or some other woman's name ending in "-ca" rather than my proper name. And while I never got upset about it and usually wrote it off as someone having a poor memory, it does bother me a little bit, because part of me does wonder "Am I not even important enough for my actual name to be known?" 



So I don't know. A day of mixed feelings, I guess. I need to get myself some lunch and do something and maybe later today do a workout. I'm glad though that I'm home for the day and I don't have to talk to anyone else - unless I want to - until tomorrow morning. Last week was harder on me than I realized until just now.


I also have a couple of Amazon packages that appeared on my porch today. I don't remember ordering anything (though if I ordered something a long time back that was like a used book that took a while, I might have forgotten - last week was hard). It's possible they're gifts? Or it's possible they went to the wrong address (will have to check before opening to be sure they're mine) 


Edited to add:

Yup, mine. And not something I ordered and forgot, or something sent to me by mistake.

BIRTHDAY PRESSIES. From a blogreader. (A little early, but that doesn't matter):

Oh my gosh. (And there's a clownfish in there, and my niece's new favorite critter is clownfish....so she may get a surprise clownfish present at some point in the not too distant future). There's also a really cute moose that I will probably make for MYSELF. (And also some cute owls.)

And a Moominvalley map mug - I find the shape and the weight of it very pleasing; it might almost be as good a "soup mug" as a "tea mug."

Thank you!