Too Much Drama

A rant, with a moral in the tail:

Got a call early this afternoon from the mechanic's, saying my car was done and I could come get it.

I've known since late Saturday afternoon that my neighbor was right, the front brake rotors needed replaced. And since I pulled the codes off the car myself on Thursday, I knew that the check engine light was on because of something wrong with the knock sensor and because the car was misfiring on all cylinders. Yesterday, the mechanic called and said he'd located a Technical Service Bulletin from Chrysler describing this problem and recommending tackling it by replacing the sparkplugs and wires and installing (reflashing) an update onto the engine computer. This turned out to work, and now the car was fixed.

I'd picked this local garage-- I'll call them O'Brien's*-- over the dealership because the latter is several miles up the Interstate and I was nervous about driving the Little Red Dragon far and fast with an undetermined misfiring problem. True, last time I dealt with this mechanic, he'd expressed some odd and alarming opinions on the moral wrongness of customers bringing in parts for him to install, on the principle that to deprive an auto serviceman of the markup was to take food out of his children's mouths. He thought the same about shade tree mechanics who fix friends' cars very cheaply or for free: not that it might not be wise in terms of getting a good repair, but that it was actual theft from the professionals. But this time there was no question of bringing in pre-purchased parts or letting an amateur have a go at it; I needed a shop that had Chrysler diagnostic equipment and didn't require too much driving to get to, and O'Brien's fit the bill.

So I walked over to pick up my car. As I wrote out the check to pay the bill, I asked Mr. O'Brien some questions about what had been done so I understood it. Everything seemed to be amicable and informative. One thing I inquired about just before I went was, should I expect anything different about the way my PT drove at first, since I'd read that a computer reflash could necessitate its needing to "relearn" some things about how you drive and all. He told me it might be a little rough on idle for a bit, or maybe stall out when I stopped at intersections. But it'd get over that soon.

Good, that's the kind of information I needed. I took my keys and my paperwork and went out and got into my little red car. No check engine light on, great! but it was making a high-pitched jingling sort of noise!

What is this? I know it wasn't doing it when I brought it in. Was this part of the computer's relearning things? I nearly reparked it and went back into the shop to ask, but thought well, maybe it was.

I had to go by the Post Office to get stamps, and by the time I got over there I decided I had to find out. The noise could be heard on idle or while driving, and it wasn't going away. I got out my cell phone and called.

Mr. O'Brien was put on, and when I comfirmed that yes, it sounded like crickets, he said, "That's probably a belt."

"Is that part of the computer relearning things? It wasn't doing it before."

No, he said, it wouldn't have anything to do with reprogramming the computer, and I should bring it back and he could take a look at it.

So I did. By the time I got there, it wasn't jingling at idle anymore (maybe because there had been slightly-rough idle, which now had settled out), but when I revved the engine, there it was. He located the problem belt for me (found out a little later it's the one for the alternator), and that's when things got very bizarre.

I can't guarantee the chronology of the conversation, and maybe it doesn't matter. But Mr. O'Brien proceeded to inform me that he'd been very offended when I'd told him that "It wasn't doing it before," because that was as much as to accuse him of having caused the belt noise himself. That it probably was doing it before, I just hadn't noticed, and now I was noticing only because he'd worked on it. That when he used to work for a dealership, customers would bring cars back with issues like this and they'd put a new belt in for free, but he couldn't afford to lose that kind of money on things that most likely had been going on before anyway; indeed, he said, he'd noticed the noise but I hadn't mentioned it for repair, so far be it from him to run up my bill by being like the dealerships and suggesting it be replaced! And, he said, he has Asperger's Syndrome so he's very precise and does everything in a very set, determined way and now I was bringing my car back and implying that he'd done something wrong by-- by what, I'm not quite sure. Close as I could tell, he thought I was accusing him of some incompetence that made the belt suddenly start to jingle and chirp.

All through this, I'm in conciliation mode, telling him no, not at all, it's just that it was new to me and that I wanted to make sure all was well with my car before I got it too far away. I tried to adduce an example of a time when something unrelated did go wrong with a car just after I'd picked it up from the repair shop, thinking to say, "Hey, it happens, that time I was glad I brought the car back, I learned from that experience, so now I'm doing the same."

He wouldn't hear it. "That makes as much sense," Mr. O'Brien said, "as me saying I had a bad experience at the dentist when I was five years old and now I won't go to the dentist." I could not get him off his idee fixe that by noticing the belt noise I was somehow insulting or condemning him and his work. And once he mentioned his Asperger's, I went into pastoral care mode. Let's be understanding and gentle and all the rest of it.

It did no good. He kept insisting the noise had been there all along and to "prove" it, told a story of how his sister-- his own sister!-- had started hearing some noise or other right after he'd fixed her car for something, and the noise and the repair had been totally unrelated! If his own sister could do that, why then, certainly I--!

His anecdote was even less to the point than my story about my old Mazda twelve years ago in Fremont, Nebraska, but no use in mentioning that. Especially not when he was growing ever more defensively emphatic that I had deliberately insulted him by bringing the car back when he'd said it was the belt. There was nothing wrong with the belt, he said; his own car has been making noises like that for a long time, and, he was sure, so had mine!

I nearly got angry back at him as he kept on like this, imputing thoughts and motivations to me that were grossly unfair and untrue. But I remembered who I am, and I considered his Asperger's, and kept my anger down. But when he wound up by saying that he's a trained professional and he knows what he's talking about, I couldn't help it-- I said, "Well, I'm a singer, and I would notice if my car was making a high-pitched noise like that."

"You're a singer?" he said. "So am I." And he goes back into the shop and brings me a CD of country-western tunes penned and sung by his brother and himself. I haven't listened to it yet.

But back there on the street, I was so busy playing pastoral counsellor that I never got around to saying, "Never mind when the noise started, how much would it be for you to make it go away? How much just to replace the belt right now?" Maybe since he thought it was actually still good . . . He certainly never suggested that solution, he was too busy questioning my motives and assumptions.

So I took the CD in the PT and drove away. I had errands to run. The belt noise was a maddening, headache-inducing whine. At the supermarket, I decided, no, I didn't want perishables in the car until I'd dealt with this. Screw Mr. O'Brien's attitude towards customer- bought parts, I was going to the neighborhood AutoZone to do something about it.

The nice clerk there first tried to set me up with a can of belt conditioner. He even came out with me and sprayed it on.

It didn't work. The belt chirped and jingled as much as ever.

He looked more closely at it. "It could cut soon," he said. (The clerk, by his nametag and appearance, seemed Persian in origin. So it didn't surprise me that his English was a little creative.)

"You mean, break?"

"Yes. Break, cut. Especially out on the highway. It's getting worn."

Now, you could say this is just the opinion of a guy at the auto parts store. But let's say he's right. Mr. O'Brien said he didn't do anything with the belt because I hadn't mentioned it. Well, I originally booked the repair session because of the engine light only. I only mentioned the brakes because my neighbor said something to me about it later on. You mean if I hadn't said anything about the brakes, Mr. O'Brien wouldn't've fixed them, either? I'd been thinking I wouldn't go back to him because I can do without the defensiveness and the drama, but if he's going to use his Asperger's as an excuse to overlook unsafe situations, I don't want to go anywhere near his shop again.

I bought a replacement belt. The auto parts guy said it would be easy to put on, pointed out how under the hood, and even printed me out a diagram on how to do it. He said the area repair shops get their parts from them anyway, so it'd save me time if I had it already. And if the shop preferred to get it themselves, I can bring it back. Sounds fair to me.

Then I called another repair shop in town. They didn't seem to mind me bringing the belt, but they couldn't get to it till Friday. Friday! I've got places I have to get to! Maybe I know some guy that'll put it on for me?

After that, more errands (no highway driving). Noise still there, drilling into my brain. And the feeling of depression, weighing into my soul. Damn! a week later, and my car still isn't fixed, I'm having to spend more money on it, and here I can't insist on sensible treatment from the repair shop because the owner has an autism spectrum disorder? Why don't I just start whining about having cancer? (Oh, yeah. Because I don't want to go on the assumption that I still "have" cancer-- the chemo is only for "just in case"). Or maybe I can justify being a pain in the ass because I'm going in for chemo this next Monday? Does having Asperger's absolve a person from trying to see something from another's point of view, especially when the one who has it is aware of his condition? I hated being falsely accused! I hate being broke! I hate that my hair won't lie right and looks awful all the time! I got more and more depressed and had to make a special effort to smile and be kind to the people I encountered as I finished my shopping.

Getting home and making a meal of lots of fresh fruit and tons of (homegrown) lettuce elevated my mood. But now that I've had my rant, I have to remember that defensiveness is not pretty or productive, no matter what causes it. I have to buck up and remember that in the weeks to come, my feeling pleh from chemo will give me no license to inflict my discomfort on other people. It's not their fault I'm fighting cancer. May I refrain from doing drama unto others, as I would not have them do drama unto me.

Thanks for the Warning

I got a call the other day from an elder at the Daniel's Run* Church, where I preached a few times last winter. They need me to supply their pulpit for their next Communion Sunday, since IrmaLou*, their graduate minister, still hasn't been cleared by the Presbytery South of Here* to do the sacraments. We settled that I'd fill in, and then the elder said, "We're having our Strawberry Festival next Wednesday evening. You ought to come."

It assuredly is Strawberry Festival season in southwestern Pennsylvania. I don't know where the strawberries come from, California or Uncle Charley's back patch, but the ruby fruit is going to be fêted. One should go to at least one Strawberry Festival in a year, so I decided to drive down to the one at Daniel's Run.

I'd say they did well out of it . . . profuse attendance, loads of willing helpers, and enough pie and cake (strawberry and otherwise) to replace Hoover Dam.

I made myself narrow down my choices, and took my food to a table in the deeps of the fellowship hall. Where, in the fullness of time, I noticed that the people across the table (who were all unknown to me) were talking about the process of calling a new minister.

One woman said, "I feel so sorry for the poor pastor when he does his sermon before the congregation so they can vote on him! He must be so nervous!"

The man in the group disagreed. "Oh, no, by that time he's gotten through the interviews with the pulpit nominating committee [PNC] and he's preached a neutral pulpit sermon at some other church and no, he shouldn't be nervous by that time. Maybe if he's fresh out of school . . . but no, he wouldn't be nervous!"

I gained permission to enter the conversation and said I agreed. Besides, you should be over your nervousness about preaching by the time you get out of seminary. However, I said, "It isn't fair on the candidate when you preach a certain way before the congregation and they vote you in, then start complaining afterwards about the way you preach. After all, they saw what you were like when you preached your candidating sermon!"

I asked him if he were a member of a PNC. No, he said, he was with the Presbytery South of Here and his job was to work with nominating committees and pastor-candidates to make sure the process was going right.

He said, "We're making a list of questions the PNCs should ask pastors to prevent that."

"Actually, I was thinking more of questions pastors should ask PNCs to make sure they understand what's really going on in a church."

We discussed that a little, then he reverted to the matter of candidating sermons. "We advise PNCs to tell the candidate what the congregation is used to. Expositional, topical, theological, social, whatever. He [the candidate] should preach his candidating sermon like that."

"But shouldn’t he preach the way he’s used to? I mean, isn’t it cheating to do something just because it’s what the congregation wants to hear so they'll vote him in, and then revert to his usual style afterwards?"

"Oh, no," replied the official of the Presbytery South of Here. "After that, he should only give the congregation what they want. If he can’t or won’t do that, he shouldn’t take the job."

In a perverse way, I have to agree with that. If a congregation is that narrowminded or set in their ways, a pastor-candidate should know it ahead of time and run as fast as he or she can back where they came from. But when it comes to the Christly duties and responsibilities of the man or woman of God-- good grief! Mr. Presbytery Guy, are you telling me that if a congregation only wants fluff and ear-tickling, the preacher has to give them fluff and ear-tickling till the Trump of Doom? Or if all they want is mind-games with academic theology and no action or application of it, the obedient preacher has to keep on spinning out the theories? Or if the congregation's appetite is voracious for the latest sentimentalized self-centered Gnostic heresy or if their cup of tea is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the pastor is obliged to let them have it?? And what's more, your presbytery will require the pastor to let them have it, or leave?

I didn't put the question to him quite so boldly. What I said was more like, "Well, like, my habit in preaching is to give them law and gospel, in that order. Are you saying that if the congregation wants nice little stories that'll make them feel good, I should give them the nice little stories?"

"Yes," the Presbytery Guy responded. "That's what you should do."

What could I say after that? But I could think: Ye gods, sir, whatever happened to the Book of Order article that says it’s up to the pastor to decide what to preach on and how? More than that, whatever happened to the Biblical injunction to preach the Word in season and out of season, to warn the flock day and night, to rightly discharge the duties of a minister of the Word of God, as one who will have to give an account before Jesus Christ Himself?

Whoa! it's good to be warned. I'll keep this in mind if a church in that jurisdiction is ever interested in me. I guess when it comes to the ministry of the Gospel in the Presbytery South of Here, them as has, gets.

Or in the case of some pastors, gets out.

And if the PNC has told the incoming pastor that the congregation only eats coconut cream pie, he'd jolly well better not offer them strawberry shortcake!

Domestic Comedy

This evening I was at the local WalMart to pick up a few things. Even at 9:30 PM, the place was a madhouse, with not enough cashiers to check out the long lines of customers.

But oh, look! The "10 Items or Less" line was pretty short! Only one customer between me and the person being served! And I had . . . let me count . . . five, six, only seven items! Bingo! Should be rung up and out of here in no time!

Uh, maybe not. Just as I approached, two young women pushing a cart filled to the gills with food, household supplies, flowers, and clothes pulled in right ahead of me.

Oh, good grief, I thought. Two precious products of the modern-day American educational system. For obviously, they could neither read nor count.

I was wrong. Let us say, rather, two shining examples of modern-day American ethical education.

Young Woman 1: Here we go!

Young Woman 2: It's "10 Items or Less" . . . but hey, there's three of us, right? That's like if we had three carts, ya know?

YW1: Yeah! We can each do ten items at a time! You do ten, I'll do ten, and when Charlene* [the third member of their party, presumably; off somewhere in the store still shopping] gets here, she can do ten!

YW2: Great!

While the customers ahead of them were checked out, these enterprising young persons passed the time changing the prices on a display of DVDs. This diverted them so well that a great gulf opened up between their cart and the cash register, while behind me the line was extending back and back and around into the walkway. Spoil-sport that I am, I stage-whispered "Excuse me!" and YW2 quickly put down the price card she was fooling with and pushed their overloaded basket up and started putting things on the belt.

Cashier didn't say a thing, didn't bat an eye. (She might've been the one who got through twelve grades unable to count or read). Just stood there stolidly scanning the items as they rolled down the belt.

While I had a front-row view of the unfolding comedy. It was amazing. YW2 counted off ten items; cashier rang them up; YW1 paid for them. She counted off another ten items and paid for them herself. Then another ten, rung up separately again, which her friend paid for.

And not just any ten items. They had to be chosen carefully. Wouldn't want our orders getting mixed up, now would we?

Meanwhile, the line is getting longer and the atmosphere is getting tense and restless. I'm thinking, "For goodness sake, could you please hurry up, I'm about to be sick standing here! Come on!"

YW2 was deliberately and selectively pulling another ten items from the communal cart when I noticed something odd about her clothing. She was wearing a white and black sundress over a tee-shirt and slacks, and the top of the sundress was hanging down around her midriff. Is this a new style?

No . . . the tags were still on it. She must've tried the sundress on over her clothes to see if it fit, then couldn't be bothered to take it off. I wondered if she would be bothered to remember to pay for it, or if the cashier would have the wit and perspicacity to notice and get it scanned.

But I didn't get to see this part of the comedy played. YW2 was pulling out the cash for the fourth group of ten purchases, there were maybe fifteen or twenty articles of clothing still lying in the cart, the mysterious Charlene* had not yet appeared, and the natives in the queue were getting not only restless, but downright irritated, when YW1 exclaims, "Oh! I have to get a card!" To the cashier: "Where are the cards?" Cashier gives her directions, while I'm thinking, "Ye gods, they're going to go pick out a card and leave their basket here blocking the line. I know it ! I know it! Now I am going to be sick!" But YW1 says to her friend, "This stuff is mostly Charlene's*. Let's go get a card and find her." With that, they pulled away from the checkout and disappeared back into the maelstrom of the store.

Hilarious [she says grimly], just hilarious. Talk about adhering to the letter of the law and stomping all over the spirit! When is it okay to take fifty or sixty items through the "10 Items or Less" line? When you hold up the queue for ten or fifteen minutes paying for your haul in ten- item groups!

Not ethical, but oh my, how clever!

What was it that Jesus said about the children of the world being shrewder in their generation than the children of light . . . ?

Not Too Pastoral

When I was studying at the theological college in Oxford, some of us would get together a lot to watch television or videos. When a character would do or say something inept or insensitive or really, truly obnoxious, we'd chorus, "That Wasn't Very Pastoral!!"

Well, here's something that surely fits the description. This week Mathilda*, the elderly, stroke-paralyzed mother of my friends Hannah* and Frieda* and their sister Gretchen*, is in respite care at an area nursing home. Mum usually lives with Gretchen* and her husband, but this week they have to go out of town. And Gretchen* has asked me to come in evenings to be with her.

So Tuesday night I arrived, and what did they have running around the extreme care floor? A woman with pretentions of being a ventriloquist, and her dummy was--an outsized and extremely ugly vulture! She was assaulting the residents lined up in front of the nurses' station with it, then parading it around to the patients' rooms.

Lord have mercy! A humongous carrion bird puppet as entertainment in an extreme care facility? Poking it into sick old folks' faces and having it ask, "Do you want to marry me??"

No. No-no-no-no-no!

Not too pastoral. Not pastoral At All.

I Can't See It

This morning, I supplied the pulpit at a church up in a goodish-sized town to the north of me.

Let's call it Redeemer* Presbyterian Church.

I preached on the faith of Abraham and the faithfulness of God, as shown in the patriarch's reaction to the Lord's call when he was your basic idol-worshipper in Haran. And I took the children's sermon as well. Now, I believe in giving the children a sample of the food off the grown-ups' table, so to speak, cutting the theme of the main sermon up into manageable pieces so they can swallow it down.

So I gathered the little group of five-to-eight-year-olds and asked them if they'd ever seen a blind person with a Seeing Eye dog.

"Yes . . . "

"What does a Seeing Eye dog do?"

"It helps the blind person."

"How does the dog help the blind person?"

"It keeps it from hurting itself."

It? Itself? Had I heard that right?

I asked, "What else does a Seeing Eye dog do for someone who can't see?"

"It puts the leash on and it takes it where it needs to go."

This was the oldest child speaking. And consistently speaking of blind people-- or am I supposed to say, "visually challenged"?-- as it.

And she kept on doing it. And so did the others.

But this was not my church and I had just then met these children. It would be getting off on an awkward and hurtful tangent for me to correct them in front of their friends and the entire congregation.

Instead, I told the children about my friend John from theological college, and his Yellow Lab guide dog Farina. I made a point of letting them know that my friend John is a minister who now pastors Two Big Churches. I.e., my friend John is not an "it," and neither are the other blind people these kids are likely to meet during their lives.

I summed up the talk for the children: God is like a Seeing Eye dog because we can't see the future and He can, and He leads us safely through it; God is not like a Seeing Eye dog because He is our Master, we are not His.

They seemed to get it.

But did they get the point that blind people are not its?

And where did these children pick up this attitude, of being blind to the humanity of physically sightless men and women? I just can't see it!

You Never Know . . .

A week ago yesterday, I picked up a message from my answering machine after returning home from choir. The caller said he was an elder at a church in the Presbytery Over the Border, and he wanted to talk to me about supplying their pulpit in the near future. He left his number and the directive to call back after 4:00 PM.

Oh, excellent. I haven't preached since mid-September!

Next evening, I called back several times, even though I had an AutoCAD test to study for. No answer. No answering machine, either. I let the phone ring and ring, as if the sound could create a hearing ear was no man was, but it was but vain repetition, a sounding gong and a clanging cymbal.

Next evening, Halloween, I called back earlier, closer to 4:00. Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring! Still no answer. This was frustrating. I really do want to preach wherever I can get the opportunity. But why put someone who's never home and who has no answering machine in charge of arranging pulpit supply at your church?

Still, I tried again later, after the trick-or-treaters were all safely home, the depleted bowls of candy brought inside, and the porch lights (if not the jack o' lanterns) extinguished. Ring-ring-ring-ri--!

Oh! Did someone finally pick up the phone?

Darned if I could tell for sure. For instead of, "Hello, this is So-and-so," I heard sounds of electronic confusion (a TV on loud in the background?) and a man's rough voice shouting something incoherent ending with "fifteen minutes!"

Then the line went dead.

Was that some strange sort of answering machine, that hadn't been turned on before?

So fifteen minutes later I called again. Line opens, again the background noise. And again, the loud and angry man's voice, this time ripping out " . . . won't put up with this bu!!sh1t!!!"

And again the line went dead.

I checked the number I'd been calling on my cellphone against the number on my caller ID. I replayed the message and verified the number the church elder gave. It was all the same.

Huh? Is this elder an ecclesiastical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Does he have an alcoholic grown son living with him? "Inexplicable" didn't half describe it!

But I want to preach wherever I can. So I looked up the number of the church and left a message on their machine, to have this elder call me.

Which he did, this past Sunday. Everything is lovely: I'm scheduled to preach for them one of the Sundays in Advent.

The elder referred to the call I'd left at the church. "Sorry," he said, "for not picking up when you called. I get so many phone solicitors, that if I don't recognize the number, I don't answer the phone!"

Tentatively I said, "Somebody picked up on Halloween night. It sounded like--" [I determined to put the best construction on it]--"there was a party going on."

"Oh, no," the elder replied. "No parties here! It's just me and my grown daughter, and we never do anything like that!"

"Well," said I, "maybe it was the television I heard." And I left it at that. But I don't believe it for one moment. Not about the rough voice. Not about the irruptions of vulgarity.

"I'm sick of you sales people calling me every fifteen minutes!!! . . . I won't put up with this bu!!sh1t!!!"

I wonder, does this elder even now realize that the person he was swearing at the other evening was not an interruptive phone solicitor, but an ordained clergywoman of the Presbyterian Church (USA), under whom he was proposing to sit to hear the Word of God?

And even if it had been a phone solicitor, does this elder not realize that Christian courtesy should extend even to modern-day publicans/tax gatherers such as they? That his ordination vows constrain him in particular to act in Christian love and courage towards all people he encounters, regardless of who or what they might be? Even if that Christian love and courage mean simply saying, "No thanks, I'm not interested," and hanging up?

And yes, do I realize that I represent Jesus Christ to everyone I come in contact with, whether they know I'm ordained or not? It's scary to think how many times I must've thoughtlessly said unChristlike things to people I encounter, even if they weren't as spectacular as the ejaculations of the pulpit supply arranging elder for the little church in the Presbytery Over the Border.

Really scary.

Lord help us. I mean that literally. Because, you just never know.