Yesterday I was so upset by church I wondered if the time has come to go. How can I stay in an organisation that "forgets" the killing of 49 people? How can I go somewhere week after week where I'm not hearing people speak up about the hideous consequences of homophobia? Would I be better placed using that time to be part of a different community? Do I need a space that is more comforting and less challenging and isolating? And yet I keep coming back to the notion that if I leave I can't change it - that change comes from within, and that if I go, then who will be there saying hang on a minute, haven't we overlooked something important here? And I'm not such an egotist to think that no-one would do it, there are good people in my church, just it's maybe me at the moment who has the particular calling to stand up and say stop, we need to be doing something about this. The message in my head at the moment is "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" Only I substitute the word church for country.
Of course this same argument can be applied to the referendum debate du jour. This week somehow I need to make it a priority to put out on social media how important I think it is that we see if we can keep working together. I'm sickened to the stomach by the leave campaign slogan "I want my country back" and can't understand how this doesn't contravene rules we have on not stirring up racial tension/hatred.
Thoroughly miserable today so here is my antidote:
also 'take back control', which again is IMHO the complete opposite of growing closer to god, involving as that does our letting go of various elements - self / ego / control.
ReplyDeleteI used the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury on Sunday (at Rishton), which explicitly named LGBT as a persecuted people.