Et Tu Indeed

We’ve all experienced the post-breakup pile-on.

Remember in your salad days, when you were so willie-pete In Love with someone of the opposite sex, and so many things suffered? Your appetite, your attention span, your conversational skills, your ability to hear songs without relating them to The One?

And remember the First Betrayal? That awful day when The One showed true colors and did something so unforgivable, so horrific, so eternal that you just had to break up with ‘em?

And then a few days or weeks later, your well-meaning friends came to you singly or in pairs and whispered to you, with earnest Clearasilled faces close up in yours, “You’re better off without that bitch/bastard. Screw him/her! He’s a scumbag/she’s a whore. Best thing you ever did! Now let’s go buy a bag!”

Remember how willing your friends were to pile on in the wake of your breakup? More important, do you remember the utter lack of comfort such words provided?

What your friends missed was the fact that you were hurting, and you were hurting because The One meant something to you. What they callously dismissed was once a sizable part of your teenaged heart n’ soul.

Tell the truth, now. Weren’t you a part of a post-breakup pile-on, at least once in your life?

Tell the truth one more time, now. Don’t you wish you could un-say those thoughtless words to your friend whose heart was crushed? Don’t you wish your well-meaning but stupid-ass friends had kept their wise counsel to themselves?

I’ve been skirting around this issue of my departing from my congregation for some time now. I’ve touched on it and started several essays about it, but I haven’t disclosed a lot. But I’ve disclosed enough to provoke a few comments and a lot of emails, and these comments and emails are all in the same post-breakup pile-on vein:

“SCREW the institutional church. You’re better off being away from that crowd. What’s to like? Get the hell out of there…you’ll be glad you did! How could you have stayed in those pews so long, anyway? What’s wrong with you? Wake up and smell the opportunities! Move on!”

And while there’s truth in these sentences, the well-meaning writers are missing a point. I love the people in my little congregation. They are like family to me. They’ve been kinder to me than some of my blood relatives. They’re simple, direct country folk who work hard and play by the rules. But because I am moving away from the institutional church, I am supposed to forget these people and their many kindnesses to my house and my love for them?

I can’t do that.

And so these “You’ll be glad you left that bunch!” statements, while sent with the best of intentions, ultimately look sour and foul when applied to this little flock of people whom I personally know.

There’s no doubt in my mind – I’m leaving the institutional church. I am led and compelled and impelled and drawn to leave it. But it’s not helpful to read “Good riddance!” remarks when the remarks are aimed at little overall-wearing farmers and their ninth-grade educated wives, and when the people writing such remarks don’t even know these dear ones.

I say all this because I am at a crisis crossroads in my life. Not only am I in the slow, gradual process of leaving my congregation, I find myself in the singular position of having been recently betrayed by someone very close to me.

This “someone very close to me” has decided to go to the other elders in my congregation and inform them that one of their fellow elders (that would be moi) is a vile, wicked racist who not only wantstokillsixmillionjews but who also has the temerity to believe what every White Christian believed prior to 1950.

This may seem like small potatoes to those who fancy themselves as warriors on the front line (when they’re not playing video games and consuming gasoline and snacks purchased by mom and dad), but the inquisition that will soon erupt will not only mean my excommunication (which will publicly humiliate my dear, sweet wife), but also the very distinct possibility that I will lose my job as a result (a notoriously gossipy member of my congregation happens to be dear friends with someone who works in my office…and the “someone” is a particularly disagreeable Jew).

So my planned quiet exit from the organized church has been ambushed, and I’m about to become theologically infamous. For a few days or weeks, I won’t be posting much on this blog.

For those of you who are my faithful readers, please be patient; I shall return. But please don’t feel the need to offer me words of bitter comfort. Please don’t pile on in the wake of my “breakup.”

Such words hurt much more than they help.

~ Wheeler

Forsaking The Assembly

Life never goes as we plan it, and this day is solid proof of that statement.

I was sitting on the back steps, sipping my coffee and watching the sunrise with my red dog when Mrs. MacP came to the door and called to me.

“Something’s wrong. We don’t have any water pressure.”

My subsequent investigation revealed that something was in fact wrong with our water pressure. I went down into the cellar to check the well pump, and sure enough, where there should have been the sound of the motor running, there was diddly-doo-dah.

Later, I stood washing mechanical diagnostic grime from my hands when Mrs. MacP came up and took my elbow. When I turned to her, her eyes were grave.

“I think something’s wrong with another one of the chickens. A white one this time.”

When I got to the pen, I saw what I didn’t want to see. Nellie, one of the good white layers, was standing with the same fixed look that Myrtle had displayed when I first noticed something wrong with her. Her tail feathers, usually upright and proud, were drooped to half-mast. The other chickens were watching her. And as I watched her, her eyes slowly closed and stayed that way for about a minute, until the sound of a bull in the next pasture startled her. I went to her and picked her up and put her down by one of the waterers. I pushed her head down and she drank and drank and drank. I left her standing at the waterer, where she lowered her head about every minute and took a long drink.

My dog was sitting nearby, watching Nellie. She whined, low in her throat.

I returned to the house to call the pastor of our congregation. I explained that I had a mini-Job situation brewing, what with the well pump and the death of two chickens in just a few days. I explained that we wouldn’t be coming to the service this morning and that I needed to get busy separating the chickens and sterilizing feeders and waterers, etc., as well as trying to figure out what was going on with the well pump.

And then he asked me the question.

“Would you like one of us to drive up and get y’all? You could come here and shower and dress, and that way you wouldn’t have to miss church.”

A black rage crawled over me. I choked out, “No. I need to take care of my birds and my well, not sing hymns and listen to a talk.” I hung up the phone. It took me several minutes to regain control of my temper.

This is a familiar feeling. Two and a half years ago, we were hit with a major winter storm. We lost power for over a week, and at one point were snowbound. No electricity, no water (the well pump is powered by electricity), no generator, no wood stove (those two things were remedied within weeks of the thaw, though). No one – and I mean no one – was getting through on our roads. We live back in the holler, on gravel roads, and the snow drifts were mammoth. From our front window, we watched several four-wheel-drive trucks and Jeeps founder in the snow, the drivers being forced to abandon their vehicles and trudge to our door or stand in the blizzard, trying to use their cell phones. We even saw two tractors (one a powerful Massey-Ferg) get stuck on our road.

So that particular post-blizzard Sunday morning, my cell phone rang and I heard the cheery voice of one of the elders in my ear.

“Are y’all buried in the snow?”

I admitted that we were in fact pretty much buried. The elder laughed.

“Well, not to worry. We’re on the way to pick y’all up!”

I stared out at the white wasteland and then at the phone.

“What did you say?” I asked.

He laughed again. “I said we’re coming to pick y’all up! I figured you wouldn’t have any power, so you can bathe at our house and go to church with us. We’ll feed you and bring you home tonight.”

I was so angry I was almost incapable of speech. “Look…”

He interrupted me. “Won’t hear of it. We’re glad to do it!”

“No, you look. This isn’t a good idea, Charles.”

“Why not?”

I gripped the little cell phone harder. “Because you’re going to get stuck.”

“The roads are fine. They’ve been plowed. We’re only twenty minutes from your turnoff.”

“Then you need to turn around now. Once you leave the highway, it’s a different world. Four-wheelers are abandoned all over our road. Tractors are stuck on our road. You can’t -”

He interrupted again. “Oh, we’ll be fine. This tank’ll make it through everything!”

That’s when I exploded. “No, it won’t. You’ll get stuck, and then what will you do? I can’t get you out if you get stuck. And even if you do make it, then what? You think our going to church is that important? We have animals here. I’m not leaving them all day to go to church and then coming back tonight to have to take care of things before morning with no electricity.”

He was quiet for a minute. “You really want me to turn around?”

“YES, I REALLY WANT YOU TO TURN AROUND! We are not going to church with you! I have to stay here and take care of the place, and I can’t get you unstuck if you slide off the road, Charles! Turn around and go home!”

And so he did (he and the deacon he hijacked into making the trip with him). He went back to his home. And later, I heard that the word “ungrateful” had been used to describe me.

Many things have been occurring in my life to make me realize that my time in my little country congregation is drawing very short. Not only theological things, but everyday things. Things like this view that attending church is more important than seeing to the state of your home and family and animals.

It’s as if today’s “Christians” believe that some magical power resides in the pews and carpet of the meeting house, some magic power that I can’t obtain if I’m not physically present. It’s as if they believe that to miss a church service for anything other than debilitating illness or injury is, well…forsaking the assembly. Perish the thought!

This is, of course, utter, unbiblical horseshit. Just like the idea that a pastor or priest must administer the elements of the Lord’s Supper to the people is utter, unbiblical horseshit. Just like the idea that some pompous pulpit pope can unilaterally pronounce excommunication or heresy against someone who dares to disagree with him is utter, unbiblical bullshit. Just like the entrenched belief that sitting passively and listening to a “sermon” that it took the holder of a Master’s Degree an entire week to cobble together is somehow going to help me grow in my pursuit of Christ is utter, unbiblical horseshit.

I’ll be writing more on my exodus from the institutionalized church and her Religious Professionals in coming days. For now, I need to go check on my chickens and wait for the repairman from the well company to arrive. I won’t forsake the flock or the water, not for anyone.

~ Wheeler

A Little Life

My hen Myrtle died last night.

I know that the rugged agrarian types out there would chastise me for feeling tender towards one scraggly little chicken. “It’s a part of life,” they’d say. And they’re right. Still…

As I wrote to a friend this morning, I hate death. I hate seeing it in any form. This present world is so in love with death, it’s sickening and frightening. So when it approaches me in my little world, even in the cozy confines of the coop I built, it unsettles me.

For the record, I have witnessed and participated in human death and despair. I have seen things that no Jew in Hollywood could ever conjure for a script. I am no stranger to suffering or violence or the moment when the breath leaves a living body. Still…

I’m sad because I was fond of my little hen. She used to run to me when I called the flock and push the top of her head against my leg as if saying, “Pet me!” You flintier types will forgive me if I miss her and rue her absence in the meadow.

Life does go on. May yours be full of Christ today, kind reader.
~ Wheeler