Fight the Power
A psychologist I listen to once said that children take up the tasks that their parents left undone. If your parents didn't learn kindness, you pick up that task and figure it out, for example.
My eighteen year old son wants to know why I still bring him to church. He doesn't really get how it's his community. I explain that he needs to have traditions under him as a base from which to grow. That he needs to listen to Old Men's Stories and build from there. Today illustrated that.
The regular minister is on vacation this week and we had a member of the congregation volunteer to be lay minister. Joe is an old man and his sermon ended up being basically a story from his brush with fame working a minor role in the defense of a Navy Chaplain accused of adultery with two Vietnam era POW wives on a Navy base in Florida. The women complained that they'd sought counseling from their chaplain and he took advantage of them for sex instead. The old man telling this story laughingly said that the accused's first character witness referred to the chaplain as an example of moral turpitude. Why is that funny, I wondered? And then I realized Joe assumed the character witness used the wrong word on the stand. Joe got righteously indignant on behalf of his client, the accused, because the Chaplain's bosses in the Chaplaincy did not give him moral support, what sort of Christians were they, until after he was pronounced not- guitly.
I'm listening to Joe tell this story and realize that he's a young man on the defense side and never for a moment considered that the women might be telling the truth. He mentioned in passing, half a Trump-like sentence, that the defense found some testimony that women accuse pastors of molesting them, it's just a Thing. The man giving my sermon today didn't consider whether the women were being sexually harassed by the patriarchy. Instead, he worked to oppress them actively and he DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE IT. To him, this story was about his brush with fame. They made a TV movie out of it. He got interviewed.
This story was tangential to the rest of the sermon, which is that everyone deserves pastoral support as they turn from evil towards light. It was mostly about how the army supplied pastors to care for condemned Nazis after the Nuremburg Trial. The premise was that Navy Pastors are doing God's work helping everyone turn from evil towards light.
On the way home from church I told my son that I've spent my life smashing the patriarchy, but it'll be all I can do to get that piece done. He's going to have to dismantal white supremacy because I just don't think I can fit it in. Maybe get it started, but he's going to have to take this one. Because, honestly, I don't think my work as a feminist can be put down yet.
My eighteen year old son wants to know why I still bring him to church. He doesn't really get how it's his community. I explain that he needs to have traditions under him as a base from which to grow. That he needs to listen to Old Men's Stories and build from there. Today illustrated that.
The regular minister is on vacation this week and we had a member of the congregation volunteer to be lay minister. Joe is an old man and his sermon ended up being basically a story from his brush with fame working a minor role in the defense of a Navy Chaplain accused of adultery with two Vietnam era POW wives on a Navy base in Florida. The women complained that they'd sought counseling from their chaplain and he took advantage of them for sex instead. The old man telling this story laughingly said that the accused's first character witness referred to the chaplain as an example of moral turpitude. Why is that funny, I wondered? And then I realized Joe assumed the character witness used the wrong word on the stand. Joe got righteously indignant on behalf of his client, the accused, because the Chaplain's bosses in the Chaplaincy did not give him moral support, what sort of Christians were they, until after he was pronounced not- guitly.
I'm listening to Joe tell this story and realize that he's a young man on the defense side and never for a moment considered that the women might be telling the truth. He mentioned in passing, half a Trump-like sentence, that the defense found some testimony that women accuse pastors of molesting them, it's just a Thing. The man giving my sermon today didn't consider whether the women were being sexually harassed by the patriarchy. Instead, he worked to oppress them actively and he DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE IT. To him, this story was about his brush with fame. They made a TV movie out of it. He got interviewed.
This story was tangential to the rest of the sermon, which is that everyone deserves pastoral support as they turn from evil towards light. It was mostly about how the army supplied pastors to care for condemned Nazis after the Nuremburg Trial. The premise was that Navy Pastors are doing God's work helping everyone turn from evil towards light.
On the way home from church I told my son that I've spent my life smashing the patriarchy, but it'll be all I can do to get that piece done. He's going to have to dismantal white supremacy because I just don't think I can fit it in. Maybe get it started, but he's going to have to take this one. Because, honestly, I don't think my work as a feminist can be put down yet.