The Great Parental Lap

People lie. Why don’t I get that?

People lie, or maybe just don’t care, or are having fun at your expense or are angry at something else that has nothing to do with you. It’s random, like getting caught in crossfire.

This is how I’m finally pulling myself together after these terrible experiences this past weekend with the unscrupulous tower and response of our property manager. There is no sense to this. And there may not be anything we can do to recoup the money. Unless we have a really big bakesale, we keep joking.

People lie. And I forget this, over and over again. When things like this happen, I resolve not to trust people again, to become skeptical, to always be ‘on my guard’—this is responsibility, after all, we’re told—but I always soften up again.

Trust can be costly.

But, at the same time, I don’t want to lose my capacity to trust, precisely not so in this world where there is so much hurt and harshness already.

In some ways, maybe the money doesn’t really matter. Money is lost and comes again. What hurts is that we were instructed to do one thing, we followed the instructions, we got hurt and paid the price. Why didn’t they just tell us the truth in the first place?

Still, after the storm, a foothold. After being through the wringer in even a relatively small system which I couldn’t understand or over come, it was good to find friends, hugs, an offered glass of wine, a call. Pain is eased in small gestures. Calming voices, the wisdom of experience: “These things happen, and yes, they do hurt.” Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to heal.

In the meantime, this week I had the experience of being the young one at the table, breaking the news that our congregation isn’t really all that welcoming. I believe they are good people and they really do try. But visitors don’t stick around long. Our service is somber, with male-dominant language. And sometimes it’s hard for a visitor to feel welcome at social hour. You can’t ask a Presbyterian under 40 to come on a regular basis for that. Some of the folks were defensive, and I managed to gently talk them down; others, actually, were surprisingly not. “You’re right, we really aren’t.” This actually catches me off guard more than anything. I wonder what will happen next.

The thing about change is, we don’t have to do away with those things which we love. But we can experiment with new things—we might realize we love these too.

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I have been hoping for, in all these bumps and mistakes and falls and uncertainty, a sort of ‘Great Parental Lap’ –a place into which you can crawl and cry and hide and be comforted when everything goes wrong, when someone harms you.

How does one re-create this? Perhaps so many feather pillows and comforters might do. But I’d overheat and suffocate, I think.