75 minutes

Well, as long as I'm sharing my whiny complaints and woes, I might as well tell you about the men's breakfast.

The breakfast was pretty standard.  I don't eat, since I'm trying to diet.  (One of the attendees asked, and I told him that, if he ever saw me eating at the breakfast, it was because I had completely given up on the church and the breakfast "fellowship."  He pushed it, so I ate breakfast.  He apparently hasn't noticed that I haven't been back.)  Guy breakfasts, with lots of buttered toast, pancakes, with syrup, bacon, and sausages, are not exactly diet food.

Oh, sorry, I have to back up.  I have to mention that, a few days earlier, someone was actually listening to my situation and tale of woe.  And opined that the reason that I am here in Port Alberni, undergoing all this grief, and being open, and honest, and vulnerable, about it, is to encourage the congregants of the churches of Port Alberni to be more open, and honest, and vulnerable.  And I started crying.  And when I started analyzing why I was crying, it was because I was seeing no evidence of anybody being open, and honest, and vulnerable.  So this was a rejection of me on a very deep level: not just a rejection of me personally, but a rejection of, if this fellow was correct, my entire purpose in being here.

So, I'm sitting there with my cup of coffee, which has too much cream and sugar in it, but at least it's not a stack of pancakes, and talking with some of the other guys.  After most people have finished eating, the speaker gets into his devotional.  Today his theme, if, in fact, he had a theme, was on the difference between living according to the flesh and living according to the spirit.  Don't worry if you don't understand that, all you need to know is flesh bad spirit good.

He's the type of guy who really has quite a command of the English language, and all the correct answers out of scripture.  He also has a very solid fund of cliches that he can use when necessary.  He spoke for at least half an hour, and, well, you know the joke about the guy in the balloon who gets lost in the fog and spots somebody on the ground and asks where he is and the guy on the ground answers you're in a balloon and the guy in the balloon knows that the guy on the ground is an economist because what he has said is true, but completely and utterly useless?  The devotional was that kind of word salad.

So somebody else in the group admits that he's having a problem with anger.  And the speaker launches into more flesh bad spirit good stuff, and I say, but I'm still angry.  This focuses attention on me.  (I was really only trying to support the guy who had asked the question in the first place, but ...)  Anyway, that leads to about twenty minutes of attacks on me.  I suppose I have to explain that these attacks were all "done out of love."  Yeah, it's weird, and painful, but it's acceptable if it's "done with love."

Then one of the guys that I knew slightly better than some of the others started in.  At first I thought that he was attacking me too, but eventually I realized that, although he wasn't being terribly clear in what he was saying, he was in fact trying to defend and support my statement.  And then the speaker seemed to get the point.  He started talking about the fact that idea that it wasn't good enough just to come to men's breakfasts, or Bible studies, or prayer meetings, or even the church services: we had to get deeply involved with each other and care about each other's specific situations.  And I was listening to this, and thinking, I was wrong! I am having an effect here!

And then that completely stopped, and we got back to attacking me, and not only attacking me but tag teaming the attacks so that there was no space for me to even respond to the various attacks.  They also added the bit about if I was angry it was because I didn't have enough Faith to ask God to give me the Spirit, and therefore couldn't live in the spirit, which was *way* too close to the "if anything bad happens to you it's because you don't have enough faith" garbage that my parents were hit with when Fiona died.

That's maybe an illustration of what I mean about not being a safe space.

I do not want to leave the impression that I think these attacks are, in any way, personal.  Likely none of these people care whether I live or die.  Their reaction is our overall societal reaction to any problem, and particularly intractable problems with no possible resolution, such as death, grief, pain, or depression.  It is the societal farce that causes us to reject any mention of them.  It is the same force that drives us to cliches and immediate and simple answers to complex problems.  We are afraid of problems for which we cannot see an immediate solution.  So we fight against any idea of them.