More of the same
Jul. 2nd, 2023 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealI guess I haven't posted about church in a while. Shortly after this post (February 2022), the interim mentioned was basically...fired because the council didn't like him making any changes whatsoever. (Interims are supposed to make changes and sort of drag the congregation out of inertia/ruts they have been stuck in. But when you have the same person in charge for so long, like this place had, there gets to be a lot of inertia.) Anyway, they didn't have an interim, so we had to go with an interim-interim ("supply pastor") for a while, and now it's 2023 we're caught up to where we were in 2022 by having a "real" interim. The person who retired, and the "new" interim, are both some of the longest-tenured women pastors in this region and this denomination. So it's a cool record/statistic, but also in terms of "it would be good to have someone new," that's...not really what we have.
Part of the reason I don't like posting about church stuff is because most of what I would have to say is petty grumps. And like with math or Winnipeg, there are a lot of people who don't come from this tradition who would be like "organized religion, huh? yeah, you're right, it is terrible!" and I'm like...no, the stereotypes you're probably imagining do not apply here, the things I am frustrated with are not the things you're frustrated with.
Anyway.
There have been groups that meet sometimes to discuss poetry/prayer/Bible study/etc. and some of the conversations can be interesting, but the "let's go around and say how our week was" aspects are extremely tiresome. I am really not someone who likes being social for its own sake, I put up with being social for the sake of something else, like, discussing poetry. And people's understandings of captive audience/attention span just don't align with me. (This probably makes me a bad person too! In "Screwtape Letters" Lewis-as-demon writes about "the most evil thing you can do is to convince people that they're entitled to 'spend time' how they want and they're allowed to resent other people for 'wasting time,' this will make the sum total of human evil and malfeasance skyrocket." Guilty.)
There's a man who is probably some form of autistic and...deliberatively practicing his social skills on me? Being very intent about shaking hands at "peace" time or trying to start a conversation afterwards? I understand that some people need help practicing their social skills, but I don't understand how or why I got chosen as practice fodder--are other people more blunt and able to say "knock it off, I'm not your test dummy"? I don't think so, but...Or is he like this with everyone?
But the reason I'm finally getting off my butt and writing some of this up is because for the last few weeks, the pastor has been preaching from the story of Abraham. There's obviously a lot going on in the story of Abraham, the lectionary readings skip chapters so she sometimes supplements it with "by the way, Abraham and Sarah were in Egypt at one point, that might have been where they met Hagar..." So some of that is interesting, but trying to tie it into "and what this has to do with your interimship/call process" can be a stretch.
Anyway, this week the sermon was, "Sarah gives a monologue about her POV on Genesis 22 and what the heck was God up to there." Called it!!
Part of the reason I don't like posting about church stuff is because most of what I would have to say is petty grumps. And like with math or Winnipeg, there are a lot of people who don't come from this tradition who would be like "organized religion, huh? yeah, you're right, it is terrible!" and I'm like...no, the stereotypes you're probably imagining do not apply here, the things I am frustrated with are not the things you're frustrated with.
Anyway.
There have been groups that meet sometimes to discuss poetry/prayer/Bible study/etc. and some of the conversations can be interesting, but the "let's go around and say how our week was" aspects are extremely tiresome. I am really not someone who likes being social for its own sake, I put up with being social for the sake of something else, like, discussing poetry. And people's understandings of captive audience/attention span just don't align with me. (This probably makes me a bad person too! In "Screwtape Letters" Lewis-as-demon writes about "the most evil thing you can do is to convince people that they're entitled to 'spend time' how they want and they're allowed to resent other people for 'wasting time,' this will make the sum total of human evil and malfeasance skyrocket." Guilty.)
There's a man who is probably some form of autistic and...deliberatively practicing his social skills on me? Being very intent about shaking hands at "peace" time or trying to start a conversation afterwards? I understand that some people need help practicing their social skills, but I don't understand how or why I got chosen as practice fodder--are other people more blunt and able to say "knock it off, I'm not your test dummy"? I don't think so, but...Or is he like this with everyone?
But the reason I'm finally getting off my butt and writing some of this up is because for the last few weeks, the pastor has been preaching from the story of Abraham. There's obviously a lot going on in the story of Abraham, the lectionary readings skip chapters so she sometimes supplements it with "by the way, Abraham and Sarah were in Egypt at one point, that might have been where they met Hagar..." So some of that is interesting, but trying to tie it into "and what this has to do with your interimship/call process" can be a stretch.
Anyway, this week the sermon was, "Sarah gives a monologue about her POV on Genesis 22 and what the heck was God up to there." Called it!!
