Friday, June 30, 2006

We assume our gifts are others' gifts.

I don't understand people.

Why is it that when you tell someone that you are unable to do something or that you do not do something well, they don't believe you?

Case in point: I have never claimed to be well organized. I have made a cross-country trip by packing up the car and my tent and going. The finer points of organization are totally lost on me. I mean it doesn't even register on my radar screen. So suddenly people get upset at me because things were not planned properly.

I have tried my best, but I guess my best was not good enough. Of course I do not find people volunteering to help me. Mostly there is just the feeling that if they can shame me enough, maybe I would not be so lazy and do something.

Can one be "lazy" when one does not do something one doesn't even realize they are supposed to do? Just because something is higher on your priority list than it is on mine, does that make me wrong?

I get the feeling that in churches that people feel that their offering is their payment for services rendered by the church. I am a theologian, not a cruise director. You would not go to a cruise director and ask him or her for the meaning of salvation, why then should I be expected to know how to plan a large trip or a large banquet?

People seem so much more willing to bemoan a situation than to change it. (is that what I am doing here?) Maybe, if the parents are upset enough, they will be willing to DO SOMETHING!

What is also frustrating is that most of the congregation does not know about my leaving. The personal upheavals that have been a part of my life for the past year are totally hidden to them. So some of these things that are important to them are not very important to me. Not that their cares are not important, but that I have other things pressing on me.

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