Roller Coaster Ride

What a week!

Last Sunday, I interviewed for a part-time position at my church. I'm not sure how I feel about that position - I had been looking forward to being able to follow through on doing the work I had helped envision when I was President of the Board of Trustees 5 years ago, but after this week, I'm feeling ambivalent to say the least. Some very unhealthy micromanagement and miscommunication has been going on, and once again I'm feeling a desire to cut myself loose from that community.

But I'm jumping forward a bit.

Tuesday was election day. I thought about posting that day, but decided to wait. It seems that we all took Randi Rhodes' advice, turning out to vote in such large numbers that there was no way they could steal the election again. America voted for a change in direction - no more "stay the course!" Democrats took the House and the Senate, and Donald Rumsfield resigned! This last bit of news had my jaw dropped for a good half of the day, especially coming less than a week after Dubya said that Rumsfield and Cheney would stay with his team for the rest of his term. Happy dancing!!!!

Then the roller coaster started on the downhill slope...

In the meantime, while celebrating as the election returns came in on Wednesday, there I was at work, trying to process phone calls, and dealing with 3 or 4 ongoing email conversations from people at the church trying to micromanage a worship service that Glory and Mary and I are doing this coming Sunday. Wednesday was the day the Order of Service was due to be printed, and suddenly I had people wanting to add things or change the way we planned to do things. It was frustrating and consumed a great deal of energy, but I kept trying to chock up the miscommunication to Mercury Retrograde.

By the time I got home from work and checked my email, and saw yet another email from someone critical of the Order of Service, I'd had enough. I was furious, and spent the next two hours composing an email that would go to everyone I had been dealing with that day, and talking to Mary and Glory about the wording, and what we wanted to do. I laid it all out on the table: the miscommunications starting back over the summer, the micromanagement, the reasons for the decisions we had made, and our frustration. We agreed to include a statement to the effect that if they weren't willing to respect the work we had put into the service, then they could find someone to present a different service on Sunday. These people all know me, and know that was not an idle threat. I also said that I was considering making my year-long hiatus from church activities into a permanenet one. It was amazing how quickly people backpedaled and said, "We trust you! do what you planned".

I was so upset that evening that I couldn't even eat dinner. I'm sure some of the fallout will be that I'm not offered the position I interviewed for. And if I do decide to withdraw my membership, that means finding a new home for our monthly Reiki Circle, and could (although I really hope not) have an impact on the activities of another group that uses the church facilities.

So, we're going ahead with the service as planned tomorrow. And we're going into it with the intention of reaching out to the 150 people who will be there who haven't got a clue as to what's been going on behind the scenes. Funny thing is, the service is "Sounds of the Divine" and is focusing on healing through rhythm. There's definitely some healing needed.