faith – Page 2 – Lisa Beth Darling

Some of you have read the closed posts regarding my time at a congregational church in Groton, CT so this may make a bit more sense to those folks. But you shouldn’t have much trouble figuring it out. After today, I no longer reason to be polite.

So….I was finally released from that Mausoleum on Monday. I was paid through yesterday so I filed for Unemployment today.

First…I found it odd that Unemployment had NO RECORD of me having been working at GCC for the last 4 1/2 years! Odd but not surprising.

Second…because of that I had to go through a whole bunch of stuff to file. Like….hey! How much did you make since October 2023? Ahhh…..let me find those tax records. I had 2024s of course, the rest I had to wiggle out of my brain on my own. Oh yes, they want to break that down and tell Unemployment how much you made each quarter.

Third…it was so much fun!

I went through all of that and, me being me and loving to keep hoping and giving the benefit of the doubt to everyone, I thought maybe I had “fat fingered” my SSN when I put it in. I figured, I’d just wait and see what happened. If that was it then I’d get it fixed.

Nope.

Unemployment called to let me know that churches, no matter how fucked up they are, are exempt from Unemployment. No one told me that at any point in time or I would have left a hell of a lot sooner.

They took taxes out of my check but are not required to pay into Unemployment. So…they don’t. Yeah, greedy little fuckers. It leads me to wonder that, had I gotten hurt on the job, would they even have had to pay Workers’ Comp?

SO….I spent FIFTEEN MONTHS ALONE IN A BASEMENT KEEPING THEM GOING when they didn’t have a pastor or much of anything else and I get NOTHING for it. Well, I did get a lot of aggravation and disrespect out of the deal.

What did Arya Stark say killed her father?

Oh yeah.

Loyalty.

Here’s a nice bit of info for you….my contract wasn’t renewed because they’re broker than shit and were going to go with ‘a volunteer church member’ to take over my position. Yeah…she’s NOT volunteering, she’s getting paid. She let that slip and knew it. I saw it in her eyes as she shut her mouth quickly. The members of this congregational church are under the impression that the volunteer is just that, it even went out in a very official looking letter. They’re being lied to just like me.

The Warden Nortons and the Hadleys of that place don’t know how to tell the truth. At all. They lie about everything. Here, check it out.

They recently had an Organ Performance Event for which I did the bit of advertising I can do when one does not pay for such things. I put it up on FB as an Event with a graphic and short description.

Done.

Right?

Next day, a nice elderly lady I worked with, comes in to tell me that the organization sponsoring the event saw the FB post and wants changes.

It took everything I had not to fly up the wall in that instant because it was utter BullShit!

I made the change that “organization” wanted and then checked out my suspicions. Sure enough, that organization is not a FB Friend of the Church. That performer isn’t either. In other words, the chances that either of them saw that post in less than 24 hours was, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be the ranch on it.

No. A Norton saw it and wanted changes but, along with the ever-loving “Someone, but I’m Not Gonna Tell You Who…” game, couldn’t just say it. So they figured they’d treat me like an idiot.

Again.

Honestly, it was like being stuck in the Mean Girls Club at a high school! I WAS a teenage girl. I RAISED TWO teenage girls. These “retirement age collecting women” are exactly like that. Stuck in that awkward phase of life.

One Hadley and one Norton were disrespectful right to the end. The Hadley, the volunteer, didn’t need any help. She knows everything. She didn’t ask anything other than; where’s the paper and when does the newsletter go out? She’s a wizard. I sent her a file to work on and show me. She didn’t. She said she did but I didn’t see it. So…you know whatever. It reaffirmed how little they thought of me and everything that I have done for them for the past several years. The Norton, showed up to collect me keys and proceeded to have a 5 to 7 minute giddy conversation with the Hadley just outside my office door (oh Gods! did they love to do that!) I am me and nobody else. So, I got my stuff together, walked out my office door, interrupted their conversation on QuickBooks (the program designed for a moron to run their own business) and dropped the keys in Norton’s hand. She seemed surprised to be interrupted then, like, suddenly realized why she was even there. Stammered something about the potted flowers in my hand and how she should have done them same.

Should have left me some severance, bitch! I certainly earned it.

I told them to “have a good one” and left with my bagful of goodies from the Good Folks at the church–cards, gift cards, money, trinkets. I gave them candles. There ARE Good Folks at that church. Very nice people. I feel so badly for them.

You know, the Nortons and the Hadleys did that kind of petty crap to me, to others, and even to each other, for the whole time I was there. They lie. They treat you like your stupid. They give you back handed compliments.

I guess they thought I bought it all but I’m not an idiot and I’m not a teenage girl anymore. But they just kept going, lie, lie, lie, and do anything at all to get their way which they think is, like, you know, The Best Way or something but all they’re really doing is killing that place with their micromanagement idiocy.

If YOU really wanted to see your beloved 300 year-old church, that your ancestors built and have been coming to for THREE HUNDRED YEARS, wouldn’t you want the best for that place? Wouldn’t you try anything you could to KEEP THE DOORS OPEN? Especially when you start to realize; Hey! We got about 30 people between the ages of 65 and dead here and nobody else.

Wouldn’t you try to get your head out of your ass? Even if you need a flashlight, crowbar, and Vaseline to do it? And they do. Oh man, do they need those tools to extricate their heads from their butts because those heads are so far up their asses that those heads now reside somewhere in the large intestine.

They are nothing but children Playing Church. It’s a problem. Some of them have been going to that church every single Sunday ALL of their LIVES.

And it shows in how they interact with each other. It’s not Adult at all. It’s very Sandbox. Very, shall we say, Elementary? It’s like, one second they’re talking to me and they’re all grown up and the next one of them walks in and….BAM! They’re 12 again.

I have to say it was one of the most baffling things I have ever witnessed in my life. Watching a full grown Adult go from just that to being an utter Child in 10 seconds or less was astounding. It’s all because of large amount of baggage they’re carrying around. Their…childhood traumas. You know? The Nortons and the Hadleys are the absolute worst offenders because I’ve never once actually witnesses them behaving like full fledged Adults.

Not. Once.

They’re Stupid, Mean, Disrespectful, Xenophobic, and Small.

The last one, is the one that really gets them. They’re not big. They’re not bad. They’re not as smart as they need others to believe. And they know it but they’ll be damned if they let YOU know it. Nope. As far as YOU’RE concerned, they are the smartest people on the planet and the only ones who can do effectively run the place, you know, into the grave.

The absolutely worst part about all of it is the Members know these people are horrible people. They suck. They don’t want what’s best for the church. They NEVER ACT in the best interest of the church. Ever. Only in the best interests of themselves and what meager morsel of ‘power’ they’re deluded enough to think they have.

But the Members are too old and worn out to stand up. To get off their damn knees and on their feet and make their voices actually HEARD. To say: NO.

They just weren’t raised that way, they’re more of a Go Along to Get Along type of generation. So, they keep laying down for this shit. In the end, their apathy or inability is just as responsible for the right-around-the-corner demise of this lovely 300 year-old church as it is the Nortons and Hadleys.

It took me a long while but I’ve come to think that, subconsciously, they all want the same thing; to die in peace. Just sit there in their comfy chair, with their slippies, and blankey, sipping a cup of whatever while the place burns down around them.

They want that because….it’s hard. Damn. It’s so hard.

Getting on your feet when your knees are shot is difficult but doable, darlings. Yes, it is.

Learning new ways of doing things is hard. So they just keep the old shit. Not only that they keep reaching back further and further into the past as though if they could just go back far enough to the Golden Age when they were all happy everything would be alright again.

It won’t.

That’s not how Life works.

That’s how Decay works.

It’s pretty damn self-evident now!

People, like me and the last Pastor and a few more Pastors before her, were sent there to help them and all those nice innocent wanna-help-you-out people got was shit on. Literally.

Not one of them, including me, was listened to. We were not asked questions pertinent to our jobs. We were told our jobs by people who don’t do our jobs but think they know how it works because after all, they (and I kid you not here) ‘have WordPerfect experience’.

Hey! Me too!

It was on the first computer I bought. I don’t go around bragging about it because I use MSOffice now on Windows 11. Win 3.11 is in the past. It’s all like that with the Bosses of this church.

If there were any actual Leaders in the place, they would not be loudly singing their own praises when they should be listening to those who are honestly trying to help.

If they were Intelligent.
If they were Team Players.
If they wanted the place to stay open for their own funerals!

They would….ask thoughtful and thought provoking questions of the people in the best positions to answer those questions and then they would shut the fuck up and listen to the answers. Give them weight and try to understand even if it’s not the answer you thought you should have.

Give that other person a modicum of respect by understanding that they are NOT stupid. They DO know what they’re doing. In fact go all in on that one, let go of that Deadly Sin–hubris–and understand they may even know MORE than you do. They were HIRED TO DO A JOB and now you have to get out of the way and LET THEM DO IT.

All I can say is this probably one of the worst examples of a church I’ve ever encountered. It’s so antithetical to what a Church is supposed to be its laughable. Behind the scenes, it really is a living breathing working example of Kneel on Sunday So You Can Fuck ‘Em Over on Monday type of place.

(My Dad’s words there…along with things like “The Old Ladies Circle”–you know, instead of ‘church’. Yeah, you had to know my dad!)

In the end, what really kills me is simple: This is NOT how you run a CHURCH or any other Business. Seriously. It is so NOT how to do if you want to stay open.

There’s a book in there. I know there is. It can be a funny Bombeck type of a book or it can be

“The Church Ladies” A Murder Mystery.

Or both. I do like the title “How Not to Run a Church or Any Other Business”.

Anyway,