Church Search 666. Grace causes offence and doesn't want to apologise

They're very nice, those gloves of mine. They were given to me by a friend of my mother's who, as well as also being nice, is very much a respected, respectable and respectful member of a high Anglo-Catholic church. And so, given how cold it has been here recently, I wore these gloves to the church we attended this morning. I greatly admire those for whom being cold is a spiritually enriching experience, but for me it isn't. And I was told at the communion rail that, until/unless I removed these gloves, I would not be permitted to partake of the eucharistic host. And I was not told this politely, either.

I mean, WTF?

If a veto or taboo or prohibition on hand coverings were well known throughout certain echelons of the Church of England, I'd have been aware of it by now. It'd have been liturgicalised as follows

"Draw near with faith and remove your gloves.
Receive the body of our Lord Jesus which He gave for you
and the blood which he shed for you.
Eat and drink with bare hands in the remembrance that he died for you.
And feed on him, in your hearts - which though your hands by now may be stinging with cold, will be warm - by faith, with thanksgiving..."

Wouldn't it come across as rather, somewhat... legalistic? Pharisaical?

I mean, I had purple nail varnish underneath my gloves. I've been in African Indigenous Pentecostal churches with such a veto or taboo on painted nails that I'd have been instructed to don gloves in order to take communion. And if I were ever to have made First Communion in a Roman Catholic church, I'd have to have worn gloves. And it goes without saying (I hope) that Jesus has nothing to do with this. It took a few years after Jesus for the Church to consider its theological bases for sharing bread and wine and a few centuries for the Church to develop this into such fixed rituals.

So essentially, they were offended that I wore gloves. And they thought that I should have known that they'd be offended.

And that, for me, is the nub of the question. Should one, when visiting a place of worship, approach in fear and trepidation of how one might offend, be seen as inappropriate, not fit in? Or should one approach with openness, warmth and a readiness to engage with the people and their g/God/s?

And should one, when welcoming a newcomer into one's place of worship, scrutinise the finest points of the way s/he is dressed or behaving? Or should one just take them as they are for the time being, and leave the finer questions of their hand coverings as a matter of secondary importance to the gospel of Christ?

'Would you mind explaining for us the gaps in your CV?' Part Two

It’s not that I’m not still loving New Job, but the workload is overwhelming. And at seven o’clock on a Sunday night I’m still worried about arriving at the office tomorrow looking horizontal with exhaustion...

Prior to my interview for New Job, I was having the usual what-will-I-say-if-they-ask-me-to-elaborate-more-specifically-upon-the-gaps-in-my-CV panic. In the event, they didn’t ask, which is of course why I got the job. So I’ve told New Job as much as they’re legally entitled to know and New Job has asked me no more than they’re legally permitted to ask. Perfect. But that’s only in relation to the management.

Colleagues, however, are being all friendly and interested. And one would never want one’s colleagues not to initiate friendship and take interest in one another. And it’s not that I have a principled objection to them knowing all about how all my youthful education and career plans were shot to pieces by the years in a loony bin. It’s just that many people either;

a) will lack the maturity to understand such things and will therefore be forever terrified to come near me in case I interfere with their kiddies behind the bike shed

and/or

b) will feel such pity for and a need to help me as to preclude any real friendship developing between me and anyone there anyway

with both a) and b) risking

c) all sorts of conflated, irrational, totally unnecessary and possibly even malicious rumours, panic and allegations

This is why I struggle, then, to know how to respond to genial yet inquisitive questions. Maybe I should worry less. But maybe I should also take heed of the way in which a) and/or b) led to c) no less than three times in the last five years.

My initial tactic was to be as vague as possible. This worked until a few of them found me on Facebook and realised me to be significantly older than they’d assumed me to be. (Flattering, that, nevertheless...) Since then, it seems, a sense of intrigue and mystique has begun to coalesce around me. One or two people are enjoying being increasingly assertive in asking me to detail everything I’ve been doing for the last ten years of my life. And then, last week, I heard that someone had told someone that the reason Grace talks a bit posh like that is because I was born in Botswana (don’t they believe my Lambeth-issued birth certificate I provided to verify my identity?) and is here in Britain because she escaped Mugabe (who was doing what to drive people out of Botswana??). So, it seems that Precious Rambotswe may have a franchise agreement with the Rumour Department at New Job.

Whatever, however, I may have fled to get here, I’m very glad it wasn’t Robert Mugabe. From Botswana, Lambeth, Zimbabwe or anywhere else ...

in which Grace is shortly to become the next great subject of internet ridicule

The moral of the story being, if there's a camera around, insist upon them waiting for you to change. But they'd all so earnestly and gently requested a gigabyte apiece of digital photos of themselves with an Indigenous Person. The photos are already plastered across the internet. And whereas everyone else is neatly, appropriately dressed, Indigenous Person is still in her cycling attire and desperately requiring of the services of a hairbrush.

So, if you read anywhere online that the traditional folkloric robes of Grace's City of Residence are reflective, slightly muddy and worn with grotty trainers... it was me wot started it. And you heard it here first.

Ah well. At least I wasn't naked. Small mercies...

Normal service resumes

Phew. All the dramas and security threats surrounding our church search and my blogging have, I think, finally dissipated. I'm sorry for all the chaos. Hello again.

Normal service will shortly be resumed...

... but for the moment, I need a few days away from blogging here. In light of all of the offline fallout from our Church Search* and my blogging about it**, it feels somehow wrong that I should carry on blogging here without doing anything about it. Not that I know, however, what to do about it... but I'm hoping that God might have some suggestions.

I'll be back Tuesday, after the Bank Holiday weekend. I'll still be lurking, paranoidedly checking for sudden clusters of local pageloads and troll comments... but in the meantime, I'll put all of the non-contentious "church search" and "place of former employment" posts back.


* basically, Beloved and I visiting a lot of local churches with a view to finding one in which he as well as I is welcome to participate
** not that (I'm fairly certain) any of our detractors have read even found this blog to read anything I've written

what happened to all those mysteriously disappearing posts tagged "church search" and "place of former employment"

I've only archived them for now. This means that I'll be able to put them back up whenever. I don't know whether taking them offline for now was something necessary, wise, advisable or crucial to prevent my eyeballs being gouged out... or whether I'm simply manufacturing yet more boring, self-indulgent emo-shit drama to detract from the real troubles of the world in South Ossetia and Mauritania. But I've turned on Comment Moderation and installed a titanium-plated statcounter, too.

Basically, I've just had yet another fairly explosive discussion about my decision to leave Place of Former Employment and our Church Search endeavour, this time from someone who I'd thought to be a friend... and my blogging about it all came into it, even though she'd obviously not read my blog. My concern following our altercation is that one or more people nearby may currently be googling themselves into a frenzy attempting to find my blog.

Or maybe they're not. Maybe I'm just being paranoid and should get offline and onto my marital duties. Or maybe they're really out to get me because I deserve it. Maybe I do have demons impregnated in my soul. Maybe I am an agent of Satan predestined to desecrate the Body of Christ or at least the odd ecumenical partnership round here. There's a fluffy red blob-like creature sitting at the end of the bed as I write this, stroking the cat with a shiny trident..

in which Grace receives yet more evidence of how blogging about Satan will desecrate your pageload activity

Yes, it has happened again. After the post I put up about Him Downstairs this morning, my hit rate plummetted in exactly the same way it did last time I got posting about Satan. Oops.

in which Grace learns the hard way that blogging about Satan will severely diminish your pageload activity

D'oh. Nobody, other than me, has clicked here for nine hours.

Was it that musing about things that go bump in the night which scared people off? Or was it Satan himself, physically, literally, demonically preventing you from clicking here? Am I still scaring you?

If so, here's a classic piece of religious feelgood kitch. Anyone else into the Veggie Tales?

Grace thinks about Satan

[Post now at The Crowded Handbasket]

Grace reads some books instead

From my undisclosed hideout-from-the-world, I've been reading.

The Rabbi's Daughter by Reva Mann
Though marketed as fluffy chicklit (and vilified by a red-faced London Orthodox rabbinate as such), this is a book of huge spiritual depth and subtle, gentle humour. But whereas some of the sex scenes were sufficiently funny or shocking or outrageous to genuinely add to the plot, some seemed fairly gratuitous. We all know that sex sells, but Mann has a compelling enough of a story to tell without needing to rely so heavily on its sexual elements. I was struck by the way in which she has lived through and seen the very worst of organised religion, and yet remains deeply and vibrantly Jewish.

Losing my Religion? Moving on from Evangelical Faith by Gordon Lynch
It all rang very, very true. But what I couldn't quite work out was whether Lynch's "I know I'm an intellectual but I'm going to make sure I explain myself in very simple terms so I can be sure you understand me" style was an ironic attempt to emulate evangelical preaching at its worst, or whether it simply reveals his view of evangelicals as a bit dim. Either way, the tone and style of his writing didn't strengthen his argument.

Madness by Marya Hornbacher
One of those good-but-not-as-good-as-the-first-book sequels, all somewhat lacking in plot. I didn't agree with her framework of philosophy of mental illness, but I knew even before reading that I wouldn't. What I really admired about it was the style and skill of Hornbacher's writing. I wish, I wish I could write that well.

Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey
Yancey's always been a brave figure amongst evangelicals for his telling-it-like-it-is. I first read this a while back and it reminded me of what I've always been sure: it's not God I'm disappointed with, it's the Church. So maybe (despite my comments above) a sequel might be in order?

Power for God's Sake by Paul Beasley-Murray
The title, I suppose, says it all. I think the methodology of the study is a bit dated and somewhat tediously-explained and overjustified... could he not have snuck it in an appendix at the back? But some very good points about Jesus, and what he was like as a church leader.

I can see my page-stats taking a nosedive. I'll come back to life soon, Dear Readers, I promise...

hello new visitors

Ooooh, lovely to see new people here, mainly travelled via the ASBOjesus site, which I've been enjoying discovering.

What am I going to do to keep people here and reading and commenting and excited? What would anyone like?

I've been spending the day being shuttled from pillar to post in my Proper Trousers whilst trying to sort out arrangements and contracts and the like for my New Job. But I'm still so ardently grateful to have a New Job that I'm still amenable to a gentle bit of being slightly pissed around, and they do have a free and low-carbon-emitting minibus service which efficiently shuttles the 16 minute journey between Pillar and Post at 13 and 43 minutes past every hour until 1743. And on one of the journeys from Post back to Pillar I got an email on my mobile asking if I'd like to apply for a job at one of the partner organisations of Place of Former Employment. So definately, I'm very glad I've got a New Job.

But honestly, what am I writing about? What would keep people reading? All contributions welcome...

more self-pitying whining...

I've just realised that I know one of the men on my next interview panel. His name had always sounded vaguely familiar - but then, as Jim Smith, it easily could have. But last night, one of my friends-from-way-back informed me that, several years back, Jim Smith offered me a job and I turned it down. Given that I am able to recall sending my CV to someone else in what was then Jim Smith's organisation, and given that I know I remember virtually nothing about this period of my life, I'm prepared to accept my friend is probably right.

But what my friend doesn't know, and what I totally cannot understand is what the job was, why I turned the job down, how I turned the job down and thus whether I have met, spoken to, conversed with, discussed the job with, emailed or written to Jim Smith.

D'oh.

Grace and Beloved's ChurchSearch Week 2: Grace starts crying halfway to another new church and decides to come home instead

That says it all, essentially. I'm at a point where I don't want to walk into a new church looking all emo and snivelly and dishevelled, where I don't want anyone's first impression of me to be one of patronisingness or sympathy or pity or a pastoral care assignment. That's not to say that I'd never cry or get upset in front of church people (it's not something I have a great deal of control over, much of the time), but I want to do all I can to start off with people seeing me as thoughtful, intelligent and aiming to serve, affording me equality, crebility and respect. And so, at 10.23am, we returned home.

Beloved says that people in churches should learn to accept the fulness of one another's life experience and that if I'd gone into a service crying that it shouldn't have mattered. Jesus, from the look of the gospels, would undoubetdly agree. But I just don't want any more messy and [*Grace struggles to avoid use of a four-letter word*] church relationships. But the whole point of Christ's message of grace is that all our human relationships (whether inside or outside of church structures) will be messy and imperfect yet endowed with the potential for healing and joy. So if I cut myself off from other Christians because I fear their sympathy and their pity, then I'm cutting myself off from God, too. And yet, even knowing that, yesterday I continued to ealk home.

Ultimately, then, I'm concluding that perhaps the question of being inside or outside the church becomes a secondary one. Perhaps instead, it's about the quality of the relationships developed, and the way in which God and faith and community are expressed through those relationships. The nebulous evangelical concept of a personal and individual relationship with God is fine, but as Teresa of Avila points out, Christ has no body on earth but ours...

Once we were home, Beloved and I sat on the sofa eating leftover fruit salad. And Beloved said "I just want a way of worshipping where we can talk to people, where we can be with them."

Yes.

‘Would you mind explaining for us the gaps in your CV?’

The dreaded, dreaded interview question... and one in which I have come unstuck in at least half a dozen job interviews in recent years. Basically, I believe that honesty is (generally) the best policy and I would (probably) never lie... but that still doesn’t mean I want to be entirely open. For the following reasons

1. Whenever I’ve disclosed in a job interview that the 4 years of gaps in my CV have been through not being able to work or study because of having been a bit mental, I’ve been turned down for the job in question... every single time*. When I’ve not been asked, I’ve been offered around 40% of the jobs for which I’ve been interviewed.
2. I don’t want to use, adhere to, align myself with or define myself by the conventional, medicalised constructs, categories or diagnoses of mental health or illness**. And to talk about being unwell or in distress still sound all twee and drippy. So I don’t really have a clear frame of reference from which to talk.
3. It’s generally not something I’m hugely comfortable talking about, even to friendly and open-minded people***.
So, given that I don’t want to lie, don’t want to disclose and don’t want to fail every interview I attend... where does one go from here?

Applying to work for a Christian organisation provides several options. As follows

1. ‘Praise the Lord, I’ve been healed! Hallelujah!’ If the interview panel responds with a resounding and collective ‘A-Men! Praise the Lord’, you know you’ve got away with it, hallelujah. This relies, though, on the interview panel all holding to a dogmatic theology of a God who heals instantly, with a healing never to be questioned. And on them not hearing the tone of irony in your voice.
2. ‘I’m being healed through the grace of Christ.’ This may satisfy an interview panel with a more nuanced, integrated eschatology and may make you come across as all deep and spiritual. However, they may be aware that, theologically speaking, it’s a fairly meaningless statement. For the world into which Jesus was born, the concepts of salvation and healing were linguistically and conceptually indistinguishable from one another. Therefore, as we’re on a journey of salvation, we’re being gradually healed, because we’re all of us in need of both. So ultimately, to say ‘I’m being healed through the grace of Christ’ is simply to say ‘I’m a Christian’. And they’ll know that.

But it’s not a Christian organisation for which I’m about to be interviewed. This is, then, relatively new territory for me.

The Organisation For Which I’m About To Be Interviewed (OFWIATBI) is big enough to have its own confidential employee helpline. And so I rang them, putting 141 in front of the number to anonymise the call and declining to provide the helpline advisor with my name, prospective job title or geographical location. She reassured me that the helpdesk receive ‘several calls each year’ from people applying for their jobs worrying about how or whether to disclose ‘a history of mental health issues’ (her words not mine) to explain a ‘lack of past employment’ (again, her words). Her advice was, ‘Just tell them that you were ill. And go online and have a read of our Equal Opportunities Statement.’

I thanked her, and rang the Careers Service at my old university. They asked me to email them my CV so that they could see for themselves the glaring holes. The advisor rang back to say ‘look Grace, you’ve probably got to be upfront, or else they’ll assume you’ve been in prison and aren’t telling them, especially as it’s a post they can’t CRB check you for. I accept your point that you believe your chances for this job might be better if you had been in prison than in hospital... but, now how to put this, wouldn’t you rather be regarded as mad than bad, really Grace...?’

Next, I rang the JobcentrePlus. After telling me that they could not handle my enquiry without my National Insurance number and not-quite-listening to my questions, the patronising arsehole of an advisor butted in with ‘but honestly, could you even cope with the job? But you know dear, you’ve got a lovely voice, and you know they new call centre they’re setting up behind Asda, maybe that’d be more realistic....’ I thanked her, made my excuses and hung up.

Finally, I rang the EHRC****. As much as I don’t do labelling or diagnosis, their helpline advisor was utterly textbook ADHD. Our conversation went something as follows

HIM: Well, given that you spent so long off work, you could probably claim DLA on the grounds of the stigma you must be suffering will severely disadvantage you in any future workplace*****.
ME: OK, but in terms of my question. In terms of the interview...
HIM: Yes, but you’ll need to be thinking now about what Reasonable Adjustments you might need to carry out the job.
ME: But the only adjustment I’m seeking is to be treated fairly at the interview. The job itself, I’m not asking for anything else for.
HIM: Yes, but suppose you had diabetes...
ME: Er, sorry?
HIM: Yeah, like, suppose you had diabetes and needed breaks throughout the working day to inject yourself and you’re colleagues were objecting.
ME: But I don’t have diabetes.
HIM: I’m just trying to get you to think, about what it might be like in the job.
ME: But all I’m asking is for advice for the interview, about...
HIM: What, they’ve offered you an interview?

I still feel, then, no further forward. I rang a friend, who said ‘buy yourself some new nail polish and remember to keep smiling.’ Possibly the clearest advice I’m going to get...


* The Mental Health Foundation survey of 2001 found that 63% of employers would categorically refuse to consider employing a person with gaps in their CV caused by ‘mental health problems’... though how the survey defined/conceptualised the phrase ‘mental health problems’ (a phrase I hate) is unclear. A Mind survey from around this time (I can’t find the reference) found that people who’ve been in prison experience less hassle in obtaining work than those who’ve been in mental hospitals. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 2005 tries to say this shouldn’t happen. However, a 2007 study from Durham University managed to statistically demonstrate that the DDA has done nothing to combat discrimination against job applicants. The problem being, that you need to disclose that you’ve mad (or have ‘a past history of mental health condition/s’ ) in order to claim DDA protection, which doesn’t even in itself work.
** Think Szasz, Laing, Engels, Ilych
***This does not apply after 2.4 units or more of alcohol. Give me a glass of crisp, dry chardonnay and I'll tell you anything. But I would never drink before a job interview.
****The Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
*****As far I ever I am aware, this is not true. Being afraid of workplace discrimination is not a valid category under which anyone can claim state benefits. A somewhat incontinent friend once tried, and was instructed by the DWP tribunal to wear more deodorant.

"We'd had a lively discussion in the office about whether to buy you book tokens for a Christian bookshop or to buy, you know, secular book tokens"

One of those throwaway comments that inadvertently manages to encapsulate a decade*.

They'd decided for my last day to buy me tokens for the local Christian book shop to thank God for my hard work for them.

I'm sitting with the cat, the laptop and a bottle of wine, browsing the CLC website**.


* The explanation for this statement has been removed by the blog administrator as it may have led to Grace's former place of employment launching libel action against her. Please address all queries to God instead.

** How 'bout this for a purchase?

grace grabs headlines?

I had a call on my mobile this morning from a journalist wanting to know all about our wedding, wanting to write about us.

I can't decide whether I'm reading too much into the questions he was asking, or whether he was fishing for scandal, controversy and a backstory I was refusing to provide. But if he were looking for intrigue, there'd be other wedding guests less discreet than I who might be happy to bring it on.

As disappointed as I am by how badly my current church and place of employment has responded to our relationship, I don't want to see them shamed by the media for it.

Though it might give them something to think about...

Dreading it.

Fiance has invited for a meal tonight

1) the leaders of one of the churches which refused to marry us
and
2) the leader of the church who has agreed to marry us
and
3) the children will be there
and
I'm extremely nervous.

But I suspect they may all be, too.

Coward.

One of the volunteers asked me today why I wasn't getting married in my own church.

I replied that the question wasn't mine to answer.

There was a member of the management team behind her. He hasn't been able to look me in the eye all day.

Mercy Ministries. A strange definition of mercy.

I've been spending the last three days furtively watching Mercy Ministries of Australia slowly unravel under the glare of the Sydney Morning Herald.

It all sounds sickeningly familiar. The "girls" (ie young women)
1. were punished for talking to one other about why they were there
2. weren't allowed outside the front door without triplicate permission
3. weren't able to speak to medical professionals without "supervision" that meant they were afraid to be honest
4. were endlessly told that it was their fault and they were beyond help
5. were arbitrarily kicked out onto the streets even though they were worse than ever

Been there, got the T-shirt for each one. And not the Mercy Ministries T-shirts, either. Such things happen to women and men, young and old, every day in the mainstream psychiatric and mental health systems. And nobody out there expects any differently. They just expect Christians to do things better than everyone else... because Christians themselves claim they can.

It's a case, firstly, of too many expectations having been placed on Mercy Ministries. But what then makes the behaviour of Mercy Ministries so exceptionally evil (and I use that word deliberately) is that they bring God in to justify the control, oppression and condemnation. Or not God, so much as Satan and all of his powers and principalities and legions of demonic sidekicks. Which surely feels far, far worse than simply being told you're mad and untreatable for mere organic/psychological/emtional reasons. It's theology gone so screwy that it causes its proponents to lose sight of all concepts of human sanctity or dignity, or of love. Which poses the question, a la Laing, of who exactly is the mad one.

At some point early this millennium some deeply Pentecostal friends were trying to persuade me to apply to the Mercy Ministries place in Bradford. What saved me was the opening of the Bradford House being delayed until I was both well past their upper age limit and no longer wanting of any such "help". I wonder what delayed their opening. A lucky escape, I think.

rant.

*Grace has deleted it. It wasn't very kind, or not for a blog, anyway*