Respectable

Categories: church

Date: 05 February 2011 10:51:03

So, work really does seem to have settled down. I'm happier with the current way of doing things, more myself as I know I can be at work, and in the last week have been getting some out of nowhere, spectacularly blush-making comments from some very unexpected folk at how good I am at my job. I'm well aware in the fickle, unstable world I work in I could well be getting it all spectacularly wrong in the next dew days, but for now I'm taking it as affirmation I've made the correct set of decisions, and am peaceful with that.

Having watched the speed at which change and replacing me in my old team have occurred, I'm also more than content to be out of it. I've done my bit in moving it from a one person job to a several person team, to helping get it more organised in what it does, but I've got a different approach to how I believe I best do that kind of work, and it's not one the rest of the team go for. When there were just two and a bit of us, it worked. Not now.

The assignments are still hovering over my head, but in a less menacing fashion. I'd done more than I'd realised to getting it all finished, and really only need to print out and proof read it this weekend.

Unlike the "What the heck am I going to do about church?" question of doom and gloom which has now forced itself to the front of my mind, and is going to need more work. For, after over a year of more or less faithfully attending my parish church, it just isn't working for me. It's a perfectly respectable, middle of the road, Anglican parish church, with lots going on, lots of social activities, variety of services, plenty for me to get involved in - it's been made really clear that all I have to do is say so, and I can do whatever I want.... but, um, I don't want to.

And, it boils down to the fact I'm not a respectable, middle of the road kind of Japes.

Let me explain! Yes, superficially I am. I work in a respectable middle class profession. I learnt long ago to blend into whatever group I found myself in, trying hard to be what ever was needed, or required. Eventually, it became boring, and things would go wrong, and I'd be moved on, or I'd need to move on, and the cycle would start again. The default Japes' setting is "If it's all gone wrong, it's my own fault, I need to try harder."

Now, for a very long time in church settings, I had a set of assumptions assigned to me, because of who I was assumed to be, based on a group I belonged to. I no longer belong to that group -  for lots of excellent reasons, but for  remarkably similar reasons for choosing to relinquish my smaller role at work. I'm beginning to wonder if I belong in any church at all.

I could, of course, "come out" at church as this disreputable type, who doesn't fit the norms, who won't fit in, who's an awkward so and so, who only wants to come to church to worship God, and see how best to fulfil his purpose for me in his world, which I would seem to do best with my scruffy, awkward, bunch of kids, most of whom have been well and truly failed by the respectable, middle of the road world system they don't fit into either! And we are all in the scruffiest end, of the most disreputable part of  the system!

Oddly enough, since changing my work, I'm actually doing the kind of stuff I thought I'd be doing in original smaller role, far better...just not hiding behind that role any more, either. Since leaving the group, and learning not to hide behind the role assigned, which was becoming more constricting and confining for me, I'm doing all the kind of things I thought being a member of that group was all about, but somehow wasn't.  How interesting!! God, you are flipping devious.