sad and dream

Well, I found out something kind of sad last night.

One of the members of my church is having an affair with another member. (One of the people involved is married; the other is not).

And this kind of thing just makes me kind of sad. Oh, I know it happens. I've had a number of friends over the years who either had affairs or whose spouses/long time boyfriends or girlfriends had affairs.

Mostly, in the case of my friends, they were the ones being cheated on. Maybe that explains my reaction.

I'm sad, and I'm kind of angry, and I'm not quite ready to forgive the people involved yet.

When you've had a friend come over and cry on your shoulder because she thinks her husband's cheating on her is a symptom that she's "not enough of a woman" or has "let herself go" (when neither of those seem to be objectively true), it's sort of hard to hear about another person cheating on their spouse.

And I've seen what affairs do to marriages, and I've seen what they do to friends of the couple - sometimes you wind up being kind of forced to choose, and no matter what you do, you wind up losing a friend. (But that's a selfish consideration on my part and really doesn't come into play here; I'm not super-close friends with any of the parties involved).

The one blessing I guess is that no children are involved; they won't have that pain.

I'm also kind of angry. My first reaction on learning this fact is to think that I'd like to go to each of the parties involved in the affair, grab them by the shoulders, shake them, get all up in their faces, and yell at them "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!?! You are adults! You are older and more mature than *I* am for God's sake! You have leadership positions and people look up to you!"

I may also be reacting the way I an in that I can say I've never been seriously tempted by someone who's already "taken." I'm not saying this as a boast; I'm simply making the observation that it's a part of my personality. If I'm interested in a guy, and I find out he's even dating someone semi-seriously, my interest goes away totally. There's something in my brain that only lets me "pursue" guys (not that I ever really "pursue" anyway) that I believe to be totally unattached. And yeah, I realize, everyone has different temptations and reacts differently to those temptations and just because I am not tempted in this particular way, that doesn't make me any better than other people who are. What it does do, though, is give me a little blind spot that makes it harder for me to understand how people could do this thing without thinking about the consequences and without thinking about how they live in a small town where some people LIVE to gossip...

Another part of my anger is this: this is going to hurt my congregation, possibly hurt it badly. I think I mentioned before how we were involved in a congregational split a few years ago? And how it was really pretty ugly? And how there are a few individuals who, it seems, would love to see us "taken down" and will spread rumors in order to make that happen if they could?

And I'm sure there are people outside the congregation who know about the affair. And I'm sure there are people who are going to spread it and make it sound salacious. I already had one woman in my church call me (I'm an elder) to warn me that there are individuals who are implying that we as a congregation condone this kind of behavior.

We don't. We're praying for the people involved. We don't throw people out of the congregation just because they screw up. If they consider that "condoning," then, I don't know, there's nothing I can say that would make things better.

I talked with this woman at some length - she said she was concerned and didn't know who to talk to and she called me because she said she knew I'd keep it in confidence and not tell other people in town or in the congregation, and she also knew I'd listen to her concerns. And I also guess she called me 'cos she wanted to talk to another woman about it.

And yeah, I suppose I should be glad that other people feel that way about me and I should be honored that I can provide that kind of help to someone, and a lot of the times I do, but this information - especially about the rumor mill churning to life, I just felt a whole lot WORSE about the situation after I hung up the phone after talking to her.

I thought about it the rest of the evening - while doing my laundry, while cleaning my house - and I prayed about it (because, what else can you do in a situation like this?). I still don't feel much better.

I had a dream that I think is kind of related to it last night. Now, I know it's some kind of bad-blogger stereotype: the woman who reports her dreams on her blog. But bear with me here. I have some vivid and memorable dreams, and I DO believe that sometimes I solve problems or I work things out that I need to in my dreams. You can call it God speaking to me if you want, or my subconscious talking to me if you want (I tend to lean towards the subconscious explanation myself).

But anyway. My parents were visiting me and it was Sunday and we were going to my church together. On the way, for some reason, we had to drive by the "new" church - the group that split. As we pulled by - slowly, there was a slow speed limit there - I saw the daughter of the minister of that church (who used to be the minister of my church) and a friend of hers walking up towards the church. She saw me and waved and walked towards the car like she wanted to say something. "Should I stop so you can talk to her?" my dad asked. I waved at her but kind of said out of the other side of my mouth to my dad, "No, she'll just want to ask me 'why aren't you coming to a REAL church'" I said that last bit in kind of a singsongy snarky tone.

In my dream, I felt kind of bad about stereotyping the minister's daughter in that way, but also I knew there were people in that church who, on some level, had that attitude.

We arrived at church and my parents sent me in while they were parking the car. (Oddly enough, in the dream, the church was in a different place in town, and architecturally different from what it is in real life). When I walked in, I was startled to see that an alternate hymnal - I remember they had sort of greyish tan covers; the hymnal we usually use has dark red covers - was laid out all over the entryway. Each hymnal had a slip of paper stuck in it. There was a sign saying that the sermon today was going to be kind of "interactive" and that the slips of paper were our "labels" - it was going to be about how people label us.

I started looking around for a "good" label (you could kind of see what they said, sticking out of the hymnals. And almost everyone else was picking and choosing, so if there was a rule that you just grabbed randomly and took what you got, nearly everyone was violating it). Strangely, I remember one of the labels was "Jackson Pollack" and I thought, "That's a strange one."

I tried to find a label that was good but not too good. I saw one that said, "Superstar" but I didn't want that because I felt like it was boasting and I don't think of myself as a superstar at anything anyway.

There were some pejorative ones - I remember seeing a couple that said "bitch" and I thought, "I should take that one; everyone will know it really doesn't fit me." but I didn't.

Finally, I began to get a little frantic - I could hear the first hymn starting and I was still out there trying to choose. The section I was in now - the labels were totally nonsensical if they were labels to be applied to people, and I remember thinking that some of the really young children must have helped with them. One said, "Burnt bread" and there were a few childish drawings of comic book characters.

Finally, I just grabbed one. The label I got was "okra."

Then I woke up. And I kind of went "Huh?"

I don't know if the message is, "hurry up and choose, dammit, or you'll get stuck with something bizarre" or if it's "don't be so quick to judge people and label them" (like I'm kind of sort of doing about this affair and everything that's swirling around it). But I think it does have something to do with the news I got.

And, here's something else: I had also been casting about for this coming week's youth lesson. And I'm actually thinking, if I can come up with an appropriate scripture, of doing something on "sticking labels on people" and bring post-it notes (I use a lot of post-it notes in Youth Group) and showing them how some labels that get stuck on people are neutral (writing out, "professor" on a label and sticking it on me), how some are good (I might use "Christian" for that or I might use "smart"), and how some are bad (I will probably go with something like "four-eyes" that will make the kids laugh a little; I wear glasses). I won't actually stick pejorative labels on them; some of the kids are pretty sensitive and although some would laugh it off I'd not want to hurt anybody. But I'm trying to think some way of working it into a lesson - maybe have three posterboards, "Neutral" "Good" and "Bad" and let them write out things and choose where the different labels "stick."

And if, as I expect, the "bad" board fills up first, make some kind of object lesson out of that.

I will say it's not the first time a dream I've had has inspired a youth lesson. (I still need to find a good Scripture though).