They'd asked me back to my Place of Former Employment this morning, so that they could present me with an azalea. It's a good thing that someone across the room exclaimed "oh what a beautiful azalea", otherwise I'd not have known what it was. And it's a good thing someone else exclaimed "oooh that'll look lovely planted into your new garden", otherwise I'd have kept the azalea on the dining room table in its pot and probably killed it. Nobody has ever given me a garden plant as a gift before. Nobody around my Place of Former Employment where I used to live ever planted anything into their gardens*. Or if they did, they were nicked by the bairns climbing over the fence. So now, yes, they're telling me I've moved away, that now I live where you can plant an azalea. I'll wait until the rain has stopped, then I'll ring my mum who will explain exactly how I plant my azalea.
They were all getting nostalgic and I couldn't. However, I suddenly realised that I'm not angry with them any more. Ten years of my life there, yes... but I cannot fault their motives. They're working in such a complex, such a deprived and daunting place that they simply don't have the energy for the self-reflection they'd need to realise what they're doing, how they're unwittingly turning their backs to people, how they're inadvertently generating a dependency which perpetuates all the problems of the community... at least they've spent the last 400 years trying, which is more than can be said for anyone else. The state has spent the last 30 years putting the community into every regeneration scheme, initiative and intervention going... various New Deals, Sure Starts, all the Action Zones... with few discernible benefits simply because none of the sundry professionals have taken time to get to know the area or build relationships with the people before they demolish flats or remove children. So, yes, the church can sometimes relate to people in the very most crassly colonial, us-and-them, servant-recipient, saved-Unwashed** dichotomies, but at least they keep trying. And that, surely, has got to convey some love.
And now, having ceased to feel fury towards my Place of Former Employment and the church and the Church, I just want to find somewhere else that's worship and community and love. But this time, somewhere where there's a bit of freedom and independence and autonomy and free-thinking allowed, too...
* One summer, many, many years back, the previous management organised me a day trip to an azalea garden, in the way that one apparently does in such circumstances. I experienced the worst case of phenothiazine photosensitivity I'd ever seen, and they all got a bit scared.
** See Jeanette Winterson, "Oranges are Not the Only Fruit".
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2 comments:
Grace,
I'm thrilled that you have been able to forgive and find peace so quickly. You must be an amazing woman!!
But...my stroppy side always comes up with a but...
"because none of the sundry professionals have taken time to get to know the area or build relationships with the people before they demolish flats or remove children."
Isn't that the same this church is doing in other aspects of life? They did not get to know you, they did not take your questions and your searching seriously, but they smothered you with answers that weren't yours and did not accept your protests. And just like the professional relationships fail, this one failed too, for the same reasons.
And just like the professionals would say they are too busy to take the time to get to know their community better, so you are allowing your church's business in the community to be an excuse for a lack of spiritual awareness.
Because unless we're truly open to the other, both willing to learn, and unless we stop pretending that we're the only ones with the right answers, we will continue to fail.
[i]Isn't that the same this church is doing in other aspects of life?[/i]
You're right. I've seen a lot of people they've failed. But I think that, generally, their ways of relating to and engaging people work around 50% of the time and that, about 5% of the time, people even get brought to faith. So what they need, I think, is to be far more specific about who they want to work with and reach out to: that is, people who are (by UK standards) very poor, marginalised, not excessively free-thinking, seeking "help" and a relationship of dependency. To be fair to the church, I think they've been trying (because for funding purposes they had to) to express this. However, they then needed to go a step further and be open and upfront about the sort of people they wouldn't welcome: basically, people of ethnic/cultural/faith/family backgrounds they didn't understand and people who, yes, wanted to think for themselves. And in saying that, I know I'm proposing revolution. Evangelical churches keep saying that they welcome everyone. And most relatively-aware people know that the don't. And it never, ever gets said in public.
"so you are allowing your church's business in the community to be an excuse for a lack of spiritual awareness"
Am I? Yes. I am. And that's not fair, no. All I can, I suppose, is that they just seem so incapable of the necessary level of reflection into what they're doing.
"Because unless we're truly open to the other, both willing to learn, and unless we stop pretending that we're the only ones with the right answers, we will continue to fail."
Entirely true. And that's where I'm losing my way as an evangelical!
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