September 16, 2021

Here was a day. I needed to have a phone issues addressed (it claimed that its charging slot had impurities) but the Mall doesn’t open until 11, so I walked along the Riverwalk, where I was, apparently, caught by TV cameras and revealed ambling along on the 6 o’clock news. I didn’t see it myself. Once at the Verizon store I was told three times by feckless young men holding the phone as if it were a turd, “We really can’t help you here.” I knew they could, and finally, after they began actually looking things up, I came away with a new phone. The young man who set the new phone up for me used, while he was working for Fed Ex, to deliver to my house. He remembered the address and I remembered him. I complimented him in getting out of the weather. My step app lost all the steps I’d gained hiking in the morning. 

Early in the evening came the special vestry meeting occasioned by the now clearly immortal indignation of those who have decided to be indignant. The first three comments of “general discussion” were calls for me to resign from vestry. Fifty years of professional life didn’t quite prepare me for that. Their rage at my letter concerning the Parish Profile was based pretty much on poor reading skills, but since one of the accusations against me was arrogance, I thought it best not to point that out then and there. The railed against “tone” while themselves unable to recognize it. I imagine they didn’t do well in high school language arts. Clearly, they had not read the text for understanding, but for fuel for their inexhaustible fires of self-righteousness. As all unfolded I noted my own lack of indignation– my calm, if astonished, curiosity, like one watching wild animals rend one another in the wilderness--which served me well, for not only did I not rebut, but I didn’t say anything the whole time, which must have left some kind of impression. Like the lamb who before his slaughterers is dumb. What must be noted is the vehemence and eloquence of my supporters, who were not only in the majority but, unlike my accusers, wise and probing. Attacked by people I don’t respect and defended by those I do, I had, all in all, a good evening. If a curious one. I do have the ability to enrage people and I seldom know exactly why. I almost never mean to. I do understand that “You’re really too stupid for us to have this discussion” will not calm the waters. I want to find in Christ precedents for my own behavior, but I think I misjudged the size of the issue. They are no brood of vipers. They are lawyers and grandmothers and day-to-day people who have found a place for themselves in their own imagination, and resent (as I would and do) being nudged from that security. They might provoke Jonathan Swift, but they cannot survive him. My duty from now on is not to stop speaking the truth but to use my inside voice, even if that leads to the necessity of repetition, which I hate so much. The stupid are not the evil, nor are the frightened necessarily the stupid. John quoted someone saying, “Every prophet is a pain in the ass, but not all pains in the ass are prophets.” I must hold this before me before I speak.