Why is Church Cliquey? Part 4

I broke up with my church.

In fact, I haven't really been going to church at all, lately.

No, it wasn't because of anything I wrote in "Why is Church Cliquey?" Parts 1-3.

And I know, breaking up with your church or your religious faith in general is the trendy, millenial thing to do (my soul, my choice). And yes, I keep telling people that it's because I'm too lazy to go church shopping: I want to roll out of bed, put on yoga pants and a hoodie or shorts and a tank top, drive to the same part of town, arrive the same 15 minutes late, drink the same coffee, see the same people, sing the same worship songs that I've sung for roughly three and a half years. 

But you know what, that's not the truth. Or at the least the whole truth.

The truth is, I'm emotionally devastated. And with all the emotional motility of a snail who has just consumed an entire cheeseburger, it's taken me more than a few months to even get to this point. 

As this blog will attest, I've always been ambivalent about Church in general and my church in particular. I've always felt like an outsider and like I don't belong, etc. etc. But at the root of all that ambivalence and outsider posturing, I think there was more to it than that. Hope. Expectation. Longing. Maybe even love.

Hope. 

That this time would be different. That this time I would be loved and accepted as I am now, right here, in this moment. 

Painful, vulnerable, terrifying hope. 

Love.

That's the only way I can explain the grief. 

So if there was more to it than I thought, and if I cared more and felt more and hoped more than I ever admitted to myself--what's the point now that it's over?

There's that familiar narrative we tell each other after a breakup: Time to move on. You can do better. There are plenty of denominations in this diocese, or something like that.

And I feel a bit silly. Like I'm all torn up over a breakup where the guy was never really that into me in the first place.

This is what hurts the most: 

When I felt threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend who also happened to be in leadership at my church, I wanted someone to stand up for me. Scratch that. I wanted someone to give a ****. Like, just a little bit. Just a little tiny bit. 

And when that didn't happen, or didn't seem to happen--

I feel let down. I feel horribly abandoned. 

...emotional motility of a snail eating a cheeseburger.

So I broke up with my church.



Why is Church Cliquey? Part 5

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - The Coward

Aristotle on bravery in "Nicomachean Ethics," from a translation by Terence Irwin

Welcome to my series on dented cans AKA single Christian guys who are undateable (to me!). 

After tackling the fluffy, soft as a guinea pig's butt cheeks topic of misogyny, we are now moving onto a much less potentially inflammatory topic: cowardice. 

[I swear, I am literally drawing these topics out of a jar. Swear to Blog.]

Now, you may see "coward" and "cowardice" and think, "I know where she's going with this!" And I bet you two pounds of canned beets that you're wrong (I hate beets. Hate 'em). 

You see, I too am familiar with the diatribes, written and otherwise, urging Christian dudes to just step up to the complementarian gender roles plate and ask a girl out already. I mean c'mon! How hard can it be? Think of all those lovely, eligible, extremely single Christian girls who are not too busy writing wistful letters to their future husbands to say "Yes" to dinner and a PG movie with you (and who if you play your cards right, might even agree to marry you after the third date!).  

This is not that blog. If you want to read (or hear) about how Christian men should stop being such [women?] already and just ask a girl out, you can go here, here, or here. And good dating to you, sir or madam.

The truth is, I'm as ambivalent about this topic as a single Christian woman could possibly be. I feel like the "Be a man and ask her out" and "Be a woman and wait for him to make the first move" setup smells awfully like the traditional gender roles that have traditionally kept women in a one-down position of power in adult relationships (such as those between a boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife). 

Just speaking personally, if my church wants to reinforce these gender roles--you know, the ones where men get the final say on all decisions, men lead and women follow, men love and women submit, etc.--then I also want a "real man" who will carry me 20 miles in 5 feet of snow so that I don't get my dainty feet wet, who will bring home the bison while I sit at home sipping tea and refining my embroidery skills, and who has the physique of Chris Hemsworth and goes shirtless at all times. Just saying. 

So, no. This is not a blog about how Christian guys are cowards for not asking girls out. I really can't speak for any one guy's motivation for not asking any one girl out. The closest I can get is that he doesn't want to. The whys beyond that are beyond me and my personal scope of knowledge. However, if someone wanted to write a blog about this, I would support him or her at least 101%. 

And now to get back to my subject: Cowardice. Merriam Webster unhelpfully defines cowardice as "the absence of courage." I have a different definition, which I will expound here, at length (you lucky readers, you).

I define cowardice as deliberately hurting, humiliating, abusing, harming, putting down, or bullying someone from a position of power, privilege, or advantage (usually because you can and because it makes you feel good, (read, more powerful)). 

A story: 

I was working in a small business packing and shipping books for a living. I had long thought that the office manager had a crush on me (it wasn't reciprocal). 

So one day we were particularly busy, everyone was present, and I was packing and shipping the heck out of some books. The OM became irate and started yelling at me for overpacking the boxes. 

He took out some of the books that I had already packed and threw them (well, maybe he placed them) on my desk. 

He yelled at me in front of everyone: in front of my boss (his boss too) and in front of my coworkers. 

I was so angry. I confronted him the next day and told him I was not okay with what he did. He admitted to "being a huge jerk" and said he had actually been angry at another coworker who was not me.

This incident has always stuck with me for some reason. I think it's because when I thought back to the power dynamics of the situation, there was no one else in the room who would have been safe to yell at. He couldn't yell at our boss. He couldn't yell at my married female coworker or either of my male coworkers. 

I was it. 

The only way I can explain it is that liking me gave him some kind of carte blanche to vent his anger on me--

Or perhaps I was just the least powerful person in that room. 

I wish I could say that this was an isolated incident. That I've never before or since had a male boss/coworker/supervisor with romantic interest in me treat me with disrespect and anger because I rejected him. That I've never again had a man humiliate me, abuse me, condescend to me, or shame me under the guise of "just doing his job." 

I wish I could say I have never felt trapped in a job in which a man repeatedly violated my boundaries and made me feel profoundly unsafe. 

You see--here's what I don't get about abuse in our current culture: 

All the shame accrues to the victim: "Why didn't she leave him when he hit her?", "Why didn't you walk away?", "What were you thinking dating him in the first place?"

Why are we neglecting to call out the abusers and the bullies for the cowards that they are? I see nothing as more cowardly than punching out a woman who is half your size or using your position of power as a white, male, conservative blogger to further shame rape victims into silence (I'm looking at you, Matt Walsh). 

I fail to understand why Ray Rice dares to show his face in public while Janay Rice fields questions about why she stayed.

Somehow the definition of "being a man" still includes dominating women and treating them as objects to be controlled. Slap her around and you're a "man," not a coward.

After the incident above, I left that job soon after. I was afraid. I didn't want to become OM's emotional punching bag merely because he had a romantic interest in me. I felt like the most likely target, and I had no way to predict that there would be no future incidents--what if he had a really bad day? What if the mice ate all the books or I packed books into boxes in a way that just didn't suit him or the sound of me hitting the "s" key repeatedly started jangling his nerves? These things are impossible to predict. 

This is what I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. That abusers abuse because they can, because they want to, and because it makes them feel good.

He yelled at me because he could.

[Little to no risk to himself: If he yelled at the boss, he would risk getting fired. If he yelled at a male coworker, he might risk getting punched.]

He yelled at me because he wanted to.

[Anger feels bad.]

He yelled at me because it made him feel better.

[Letting anger out feels good.]

In the nearer past, a man viciously attacked and shamed me at work. I'm still traumatized by what happened. 

But here's the thing: 

He used what power he had to punish me, to put me down, to degrade me and "put me in my place" and it made him feel good. If not that, I'm sure it made him feel better--more empowered, more in control.

I also knew, based on past experience (I'd been to this rodeo before), that this was part of a pattern of abuse: His actions signaled to me that this could and probably would happen again: anytime he felt disempowered, received a nasty letter from the IRS, or felt angry about something else going on in his life--

It wouldn't matter. How I did my job wouldn't matter. What I said or did wouldn't matter. If he wanted to take out his anger out on me, he would find a reason.

Imagine that being your everyday, working reality: stretches of rainbows! and sunshine! punctuated only by abuse for no other reason than he "felt like it."

A coward will not confront his boss about injustice or mistreatment, but he will take it out on someone weaker than he is. In fact, he feels justified in doing so and often feels like a victim himself.

That's the problem with cowards. They are too smart to attack someone who has more power than they do, because they know they will suffer the consequences. They don't even much care for engaging an equal. But someone who is "weaker"? Perfect. 

For whatever reason, cowardly men also seem to feel perfectly justified taking out their anger on women who have romantically rejected them. Often, they take on the mantle of "victim" (of society, women, the government, their boss) to justify their behavior and deny their own power and culpability:

"I wouldn't be such an asshole if a woman hadn't broken my heart."
"I was a nice guy until I got rejected for the 20th time."

So, that leads to the question, how do you deal with a coward? 

Directly. To his face. Tell him in no uncertain terms that his behavior is unacceptable.

There's a great book called Verbal Judo about conflict and communication. In it, he talks about three kinds of people: nice people, difficult people, and wimps. You can guess who the cowards are. He recommends calling wimps out in public or confronting them in private (not recommended unless you are in a position of authority). 

Faced with real power, a coward will back down 100% of the time. It's that cliche you see in movies: the underdog can't take it anymore and fights back, leaving the bully a blubbering mess. 

There's some truth to that.  

This is not about playing nice, conflict resolution between equals, or fighting fair. Cowards never fight fair, so watch your back and enlist the help of an older brother or sister if necessary. Here are some possible responses:

"I will not tolerate being spoken to like that."

"Stop it."

"Back off."

Make yourself look as big and threatening as possible. Pretend you're at Yosemite and he is a brown bear. Show that you will not be intimidated and he will scuttle away with his tail between his legs.

Remember, he is not looking for an equal fight. He only abuses those he perceives to be weaker or more vulnerable than he is and will probably be shocked if you actually fight back.

Or you could just punch him in the face (I take no legal responsibility if you decide to take this route but I'll probably be cheering for you from the sidelines).

I jest. But in all seriousness, watch out for the coward. I had a lot of difficulty processing what happened to me until I started looking at it from the lens of power. To you, it might be a conflict between equals, but to him, it's all about making you feel small by any means available (shame, condescension, repeating negative things other people have said about you, attacking your character and personality, blaming you for everything, etc.). You become an object of uncontrolled hatred and rage.

The crux of what makes Christian guys undateable is that their actions often indicate that they don't view women as human beings worthy of equal respect.

Cowards don't respond to rejection very well (how would you feel if some inferior object rejected you?). And neither do some Christian guys. More on that later.

The glass jar has yet to speak on what I'll be writing about next. Till then.

Next: The Myth of Persistence

Friendship & Grief: Holding the Story Only

I've always been perplexed by how effortless female friendships are supposed to be--as portrayed in movies, books and TV shows. Friendships were never that easy for me.

As a kid, having an incredibly fun, outgoing and winning twin sister didn't help matters. One time I invited a classmate over for a sleepover. We must have been around 9 or 10 years old. By the next day, the classmate and my sister were as thick as peas in a pod, chattering away as I trailed behind them, alone. I may or may not have been crying. Wow, this is a horrible story. Moving on.

Things certainly haven't always been as bleak in the friendship department. And after I moved to LA almost four years ago, I've seen and felt my close friendships deepen and grow.

Friendship is easily one of the best things about life.

I've found that there's an element of mystery to friendship. I'm not sure I can fully explain why I have the friends that I do. [Yeah, not completely buying the genetic similarity explanation, sorry.]

There are some people you meet and everything points to the fact that you should be bff's, but you're not. You have it all: shared interests, mutual friends, the same social group, shared beliefs, a similar sense of humor and appreciation for the finer points of medieval Norse, but yet there's that certain something that's missing.

As one friend explained to me once over tea in a trendy (is there any other kind) LA coffee shop:

"There are some people that you miss when they're gone. You feel it here."--holding her hand to her heart.

That's probably the most accurate definition of friendship I've ever heard. 

And that's the thing--you don't necessarily choose this feeling. You can have it for someone you've just met or someone you've known for 15 years. You can experience it after one conversation or 20. You can have it for someone who could be your personality twin or someone whose ways and means are as mysterious as the origin story for french toast.

To recap: Friendship. Awesome. Mystery. French toast.

All that to say, I'm currently experiencing something that feels a lot like grief.

More recently, friendship has felt a lot like the memoir class I took last year, a class in which each week, several people brought in their living, breathing, gasping-for-air stories.

And Samantha reads her story out loud. And the room falls completely silent in the presence of such naked, vital vulnerability.

And I'm sitting in my seat holding the story in my cupped hands--trying to--struggling so hard not to crush it. And the air is electric and thick with beauty, loss, grief. And I'm completely still as I hear about losing a child, becoming a mother, caring for aging grandparents.

It feels sacred. This story-cradling.

And I don't know how else to describe how friendship feels sometimes.

As if I'm holding my friend's story. Awed by her beauty. Crushed by her fragility. Desperately hopeful for her future and protective of her past.

There is pain in the tension of not yet.

I have these moments. I think everyone has these moments.

All I can do is hold the story. Without altering it to make it easier to take, or trying to "fix" it, or pretending that the painful parts don't exist, or going on as if everything's okay when it isn't.

Sometimes it's just not okay. 

Why is Church Cliquey? Part 3

A couple months ago I was praying and the story of Zacchaeus came to mind. So I found the story of Zacchaeus in Luke and read it. If you haven't read it, it's extremely short. It didn't particularly resonate with me, but I was like, cool, whatever. There's a short dude who is also a hated tax collector. He climbs a tree to see Jesus. Jesus singles him out and invites himself over. They party. Zacchaeus repents of his scummy tax-collecting ways.

The next day (or soon after), I went to church. It was a Sunday morning service and I found myself weaving in and out of the people in attendance. It was bright and sunny (this is Southern California). There were couples and families and children and babies and people I knew and people I didn't.

And I did something I don't think I've ever done before.

I took a backseat in my brain and just observed what was going on in there (do NOT try this at home, kids).

It wasn't pretty.

It was dark. Judgmental. Shallow. Vile. Ugly. The worst kind of petty envy and jealousy.

And in that moment I realized: I am Zacchaeus. I am the short, ugly (?), hated tax collector and I feel so much self-loathing that I put other people down internally in order to elevate myself.

But rather than feeling only shame I felt something else--I guess you could call it pity or even compassion:

I feel more uncomfortable and unsafe and not-at-home at church than I do almost anywhere else.

That's such a strange sentence to write. And I could, if I cared to, explore the history behind that sentence--the different experiences that have led me to both love and hate church.

But right now I'm more interested in this dynamic of feeling comfortable in the discomfort, at-home in the not-at-home, safety in exclusion.

That being loved--actually loved without condition--is excruciating for me.

That being at home--not a stranger, or a guest, or a foreigner--is unthinkably painful and more than I can bear.

My church recently did one of those research surveys, conducted by an external organization that does these kinds of things, to explore our strengths and weaknesses.

The survey found that there was a significant statistical "disappointment gap" between the sense of belonging desired by the people attending and the sense of belonging experienced. I did not fill out this survey. But I can relate. 

I long for acceptance and belonging--the unconditional kind of belonging that I think most people long for. However, I attend a church where this longing goes unmet and denied. 

Just to be clear, I am not blaming the church that I attend for unconsciously or consciously (doubtful) failing to accept me or meet my needs. I'm saying I feel more comfortable living in a space of ambivalence, and so I choose to attend a church where this ambivalence grows and thrives. 

If I'm really, truly honest, I would say I feel more comfortable living in a place of rejection than of love. 

That is so painful for me to write. 

Previous posts: Why is Church Cliquey? & Why is Church Cliquey? Part 2

Next post: "Breaking up with church"