2019 strikes again

I've spoken before about how my congregation is small, and generally pretty broke, and for years we've limped along with a part-time minister because we can't afford a full-timer (We only could if it were someone retired, or with a well-paid spouse, who was willing to work for peanuts0.

We were incredibly lucky in having a wonderful guy, a professor at Brite, who would drive up every Sunday and when needed. Oh, there were tensions; there are always tensions in churches and it's frustrating some times. But generally, he was well-liked. We grew a bit with him in the pulpit.

Well, you probably know where this is going. He got offered a full-time position at a church of our denomination closer to him. Money will doubtless be better, maybe there will be fewer headaches.

And so....he's moving on. Two more months here, and then he's gone. He seems regretful about leaving but yeah, i get the reason. (I told him: I understand why but I don't have to like it).

So I don't know. I don't know what we do. We've had fill ins, some good, some not so good. One of my university colleagues filled the pulpit for nearly a year before the current minister came, but that's a really hard thing for someone already employed full-time to do. (I couldn't do it. Well, I'm not ordained. And also I can't deal with the interpersonal conflict that can arise in a church. I'd fill the pulpit once in a while if needed, but I'd never do the full set of duties. I am not good enough at not taking responsibility for things that are not my responsibility, and I'm too prone to brood on other people's disagreements or problems even if they are not my fault)

So I don't know. I hope we can get someone. I hope the vote isn't just to disband and scatter. I don't know if I'd go where the most of my friends in the congregation go, or investigate the couple of closest-to-being-sister denominations (Presbyterian, and possibly Methodist - we don't have an old-line Congregationalist church, nor what is sometimes called "American Baptist" to differentiate itself from the Southern Baptists). I know the mainlines are on the ropes, but I don't agree with some of the positions of the more-evangelical church (simplest example: the whole evolution thing) and I'm not sure I could be as happy at one. There's a Catholic church but.....not ready to make that great of a leap. (Though who knows? I once dated someone where I thought "If this goes a lot further, and he asks me if I'd convert, I'll have to make a decision and it might just be yes")

I don't know. I don't like change, that's a big part of this. I've been a DoC pretty much my entire life, but then again, my brother and sister-in-law moved over to Anglican/Episcopalian churches happily enough after they wound up in a place that didn't have a mainline type church (Well, I guess Episcopalian IS) that suited them.

(We have a small Episcopalian church; I know the rector slightly from Wesley Center Board. I could...perhaps be happy there, though I think it would take a while for me to learn the from-memory prayers. They tend to have more set prayers than we do)

I shed a few tears but my reaction feels strangely more muted to me than I thought it would be. Almost more one of resignation: "But of course 2019 will deal me this awful change; wonder what others are coming next." We still  have four months left in this cursed year and a lot of bad stuff can happen in a single week, let alone four months.

I will say, if we fold, and the old church gets turned into a "wedding center" (as the Methodist church across from us did when the congregation moved to a new building) or some kind of hipster art-gallery incubator like the Nazarene church here did, I will never patronize it. It would be too painful. Even driving by it would be painful, and that would be hard to avoid given my location.

And I know, I know: we're a post-religion nation now; people don't commit to groups any more. If you aren't part of a "nuclear family," you're on your own and you're screwed. If you're a shy person who doesn't like bars or loud music or sports you don't get to have a social life. So some of us don't just fall through the cracks, we get pushed into them. For some of us church filled the social role and without that....I don't know.

I don't want to have to audition a new church but I fear that's coming. I'll try the Presbyterians first, I guess, I think they're theologically closest.

And yes, there are other Disciples churches in the general area but I do not want to maybe drive an hour's roundtrip for services every Sunday; I don't have that kind of time and I had the additional wear and tear on me and my car. And when you live that far, and you wind up stuck on the Board, then you have nighttime Board meetings, and....ugh.

But why does everything in my life have to be on "hard level" all of a sudden? I want to reset the game and play on "easy level" for a while. I never did "git gud" enough to hack constant unpleasant surprises and changes.

Edited to add. Thought of the day, though the hopeful bit at the end didn't fit on the signboard:

Full quotation is: "One can never remove all the thorns from the world, nor cover the entire world with leather to make it seem less thorny. However, by covering one's foot with a leather sandal, it is as though all the world has been covered with soft leather, and all thorns removed."

(It is from Shantideva, who was apparently a Buddhist writer)

And yes, some people have discussed this koan, asking if "isn't that tantamount to sticking your head in the sand" (if, figuratively, you are talking about "thorns" being the unpleasant things and uglinesses of the world) but I also think we all have to guard our hearts (as the figurative seat of the emotions and the soul) against getting so battered by the world that we are scarred up and hardened. I feel like I'm seeing a lot of people "harden" now and lose empathy for other people - claiming, for example, that some of the victims in Texas "deserved it" because their state had lax laws. As if a seventeen month old kid had anything to do with it. And I can't deal with that kind of hardness; that's the thorns that make me hurt and bleed - the original events are bad enough but seeing people's reaction of closing themselves off, seemingly, to showing love and empathy for people who might be like them (or might not be, it doesn't matter, we're all people...)

So yes, I will be putting a little figurative soft leather in my shoes these coming days to keep myself from either becoming hardened and cruel, or (as is far likely in my case) to melt down into a puddle of sadness where I'm not able to do much but brood about bad things.

I remind myself that there's that saying attributed to Mother Teresa (I guess now St. Teresa) that goes something like "We can do no great things; only small things with great love" and I admit I get frustrated at how little I can do to make things better...but I can do things, they're just really small things and might be reaching out to one individual instead of helping a whole big group.

But I have gone through and done a lot of selective muting on Twitter for now, so I don't have to see things I will find particularly upsetting (some of the low-empathy tweets dunking on people in the hurricane's path because.....I guess that's how you show you're #blessed or something, that God has seen fit to give you a job and a dwelling out of the path of a major storm?) and that's my form of putting soft leather shoes on so I'm not disabled by the thorns I walk on.

***

No, now I'm struggling, once again feeling the utter futility of everything I try to do. There's no point short of the selfish one of "I need to demonstrate scholarly productivity to keep my job" in going out and collecting soil samples and examining the soil invertebrates. No one besides me cares, it doesn't help anything, knowing the effect of flooding in one limited place won't make anything better. Very little I can do matters, and I wish I could break on through and accept the pointlessness of everything because then maybe I could be happy but instead I figuratively rage and beat my fists and not-so-figuratively cry and wish I felt like something I was doing was helping, instead of me just taking up space.

I did my workout because I need to for my health but short of starving my body into submission (which is deeply unpleasant) I'm not going to lose any weight and I need to and frankly pretty much the only sensual comforts I have these days are food and sleep.

Man, I hate Sunday afternoons. I always wind up feeling sad and just hanging out online but most of the people I communicate most with aren't really online and I figure people I could call are busy or doing something with their family so I don't even try to call.

(Hah. Someone did a joke horoscope using cat breeds, and one for mine - Pisces - listed the characteristic of "secretly lonely but doesn't want to admit it" and it's not even so much of a secret for me but I don't want to "bother" other people....Part of this is living in a small town where pretty much the only thing (other than going to the lake, which you can't really do alone) to do on Sunday afternoon is like going to the wal-mart. And that would just make it worse)

Sometimes I wonder if all the unpleasant things happening in 2019 is a push, if I'm being pushed to do something. I don't know what. If living here gets increasingly unpleasant, like, if the congregation folds and if something big goes wrong at work, well.....maybe I'm being pushed to just quit and move back home with my mom? Maybe not, I don't know, but...I just feel like this whole year has been a punishment. I don't like change. Change feels like a punishment because nearly every change in the past few years has been a bad one.

Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow, I don't know. I do know I'm a "reactor" - when stuff happens that I don't want to happen, it throws me into a funk and throws me for a loop for a while and I'm frankly surprised I didn't get more upset over the news this morning.