[Thursday] EL evening service and adult people

[hermionesviolin]

The woman doing the readings was very soft-spoken, which I found disconcerting and frustrating.  Both Lauren and Pastor Saling came in a few minutes after service started, but apparently they got the evening off.  (The pastor was wearing jeans, and when I talked to him afterward he said it was the International Day of Prayer and he'd been in "preacher duds" -- his phrase -- all day.)

Scripture Readings:
    John 3:1-21
Oh, John.
"¹³No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.^{[Some manuscripts Man, who is in heaven]}"
"¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.^{[Or God's only begotten Son]}"
Makes universalist belief seem mighty untenable.
    Exodus 19:1-6

Meditation:
Experiencing God Day-By-Day by Henry T. Blackaby and Richard Blackaby
"God Brings You To Himself"

I had my eyes closed through a lot of the service-- trying to focus on other than the fact that the reader annoyed me -- and totally zoned during the meditation reading.  Oops.

The "Prayers of the People" were listed as "Intercessory Prayer," which is not inaccurate but I have issues with the idea of intercessory prayer, so having it explicitly named as such makes me uncomfortable because it takes away [from] my ability to be in the prayers in other ways that I am more comfortable.

The pastor chatted with me a bit afterward, but I didn't get a hug, and I was wondering last week as well, how do people like sk8eeyore get these close mentor people?  Pastors are always so busy with everything, on the way from the train station I was thinking, "I'm not sweet/clever/interesting/whatever *enough* to merit the extra effort."  This of course goes back to my issues making friends more generally.

Comments

[wisdomeagle]

The pastor chatted with me a bit afterward, but I didn't get a hug, and I was wondering last week as well, how do people like sk8eeyore get these close mentor people? Pastors are always so busy with everything, on the way from the train station I was thinking, "I'm not sweet/clever/interesting/whatever *enough* to merit the extra effort." This of course goes back to my issues making friends more generally.

Well, I generally have to throw myself in people's paths in order to make them take notice of me, and even then I usually become frustrated with the lack of actual meaningful interactions - see my perrenial frustration with the ministerpeople and their lack of investment in helping make me better, etc. So I don't think it's you at all - ministers are busy; some of us just stalk them so effectively that they think they owe us something. Or something?

[sk8eeyore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. It seems I've latched onto most of my mentor-people when I was at a very needy place in my life, for one reason or another, and I think there's always been a "would I be worth this person's time if I *didn't* have some sort of Pressing Reason to talk to them?" insecurity. Though by now I've come to believe that I am somehow placed in the lives of people I'm meant to learn from at each stage of my life, so there's a sense of destiny about it all.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I think there's always been a "would I be worth this person's time if I *didn't* have some sort of Pressing Reason to talk to them?" insecurity.

Interesting.

I definitely don't have a Pressing Reason. I want people to talk theology with (except for the moments when I just wanna walk away from it all, of course) and pastors may not be the best source for that (as pastoral duties include so many other obligations) but it's not like I've had more success with professors at college, and of course as I mentioned in the original post, the whole "I'm not sweet/clever/interesting/whatever *enough* to merit the extra effort" thing is true of how I view my attempts at friendship as well. [In part, I'm sure, because I have such high standards for everyone so of course I interpret stuff as "I'm not meeting their high standards."] It seems so rare that I find people with whom there is an equal amount on both sides of wanting the other person in one's life -- and yet it seems like everyone else manages just fine (and I'm sure part of that is that one is much more aware of all the little flaws in stuff one is close to than in stuff one is viewing from afar).

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

So I don't think it's you at all - ministers are busy

That is comforting to hear. I feel so much like I'm on the outside of some circle of people, but in trying to articulate who constitutes that circle at any given church I realize the minister isn't any nicer to other people than s/he is to me, everyone else just seems obviously at home (since it's their church and they have people and stuff to do and so on) and of course I'm very aware of my not quite fitting in there. And I wonder who the minister *does* have as close people because being a minister is such a weird position to have in terms of your obligations and relationships with people.