Monday, April 09, 2007

Those Nagging Anniversaries



It was interesting yesterday morning: Here is was Easter and I was not responsible for making sure the Easter Breakfast was going to happen. This breakfast was part of the "other duties as assigned" that are part of a job but are not anything they tell you about when you take the job. This breakfast consisted of getting people to donate pans to use, donate food and to help set up, cook, and take down. As you my know, I am a TOTALLY organized person. (Yep, and how 'bout some swampland in Florida.)

Now I also had two LOVELY assistants who always found it better to complain than to help. They would sit back and watch, not offer any help, and then complain when things did not go as they had wanted. But do you think they would help me? In my opinion, that is the definition of crazy-making.

Letter to my LOVELY assistants:

Dear Sybil and Veruca,

How was Easter Breakfast this year?

Did it go well? That is good. I am glad.

You are probably thinking that it went so well bause Pr. Ben wasn't there
to screw it up. But let's think about it. It went well this year
because you had control and could do things the way you wanted. So, it
must have looked like it was all my fault.

But, you know, I would think that something else happened. This year
you didn't sit back and wait for me to fail. This year you got in there
and helped. So things went well. You also know, if you had helped
for the past three years, things could have gone much better. Instead of
waiting for me to fail and then saying, "See, he is lazy and inept", you could
have helped me and things would have been better all around.

Unfortunately, you will not see this. All you will see is how much
"better" things are now that I am gone. And you will feel all
self-righteous that now that I am gone things can be back to where they
were. Well, I hope you enjoy the feeling. But hopefully you can feel
the twinge that maybe if you would have helped, things could have been better
all the way around.

Your former "lazy" pastor,
Ben



Well, the child in me would love to send that. But again, they probably wouldn't understand. The child in me wants to hurt them as much as I allowed myself to be hurt by them. I would hope that in the future, I would have the nads to tell them that they can either be part of the solution or to just get out of the way.

Oh, well, live, learn, and grow.

3 comments:

steve'swhirlyworld said...

LOL - "Sybil and Veruca" very funny.

Ur-spo said...

Veruca was a bad egg.

Steve said...

Yeah, Ben, I found it hard not to sneer at my former congregation's pastor when I saw his attendance numbers steadily declining after he drove our little band of liturgical misfits out of "his" territory.

I hoo-haa'd even more when (about six months before he left) there was a sign advertising a contemporary service at what he had declared as "the church of the pure Lutheran liturgy."

Of course, now he's gone, the people are gone (especially the people with money, who'd been propping his world up), and the congregation is essentially dead.

All I can do is feel sorry for them.

The hardest part for me has been moving from anger to pity, and from regret to the chorus of the old Fleetwood Mac song - "you can go your own way..."