burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

Yesterday I went to Super Saturday [a regional UCC event], and Ian H. (support pastor while Molly was on medical leave) asked if this meant I was officially UCC and I said no, though when I saw him I suspected he would think that. [He used to nudge me about officially joining FCS.]

Introducing me to the person he had been chatting with, he referred to me as "ecumenically promiscuous."
I said these days I was actually mostly only at FCS -- "situationally monogamous, what's that about?"

Early on the drive home, FCS-Ian (still more pastoral than the entire UMC!) asked me about CWM and my feels thereon, and doing my ~usual spiel, I said that FCS isn't the radical queer church of my heart and doesn't want to be, but that in recent years I've come to feel like I've been around long enough and involved sufficiently that I know ways I can push that are in keeping with the gist of the community, that isn't me just imposing my agenda -- and I mentioned the recent walk'n'talk I had with Molly, wherein she said that when I first came to FCS I was attending multiple churches and that was great but it meant I was kind of an outsider, and now I have a stake in the community (including having taken on leadership roles in the community) and so it's a lot easier for her to receive criticism from me now ... and how I'd told her that that definitely made sense once I heard her say it, but that I never experienced myself as having a particular moment when I shifted to having a stake in the community, because I organically grew into leadership in Rest and Bread (and I had a stake in *that* from early on) and my involvement shifted and changed but I didn't feel like there was switch when I went from not having a stake to having a stake.

FCS-Ian said that he knows me and he knows that "[I] can go to 3 churches and commit fully" -- but that he had to learn that about me, that he knows for himself he can't commit fully to multiple churches.

Jamie and I both thought (and she vocalized) that it's like being polyamorous (or monogamous).

It's a long-standing thing that I and others use the romantic/sexual relationship metaphor for my engagement with churches, and I sometimes miss being involved with multiple communities, but it hadn't occurred to me to potentially frame it as being actually ecumenically polyamorous (as opposed to being ecumenically slutty, which I think would not be an inaccurate representation at times).

Edit: I was writing an update email to someone and mentioned going to jazz service at Old South (one of whose ministers I know from Pride Interfaith), followed by Bible study facilitated by the same person who facilitates Wednesday night meditation at First Church Cambridge, and how I felt a certain sense of right-ness (or at least comfort/familiarity/at-home-ness) about the intersecting of various different spaces I inhabit. /edit

cadenzamuse: I couldn't decide if I should use the "you're not polly; you're elizabeth" tag for this, and I totally thought of you in that decision-making :)

Molly's creating an Ecclesiastes Bible study curriculum, and the second session was this afternoon (I missed the first one due to a pre-existing commitment and then it lapsed for a bit), on Ecclesiastes 3-4:8, but we were going around in a circle reading in turns and someone accidentally read the next bit, so Molly ended up mentioning it at one point, including that it doesn't "privilege 2s over 3s."
Ally said, "my poly friends will love that."
Molly said she knew I'd gone there and I said yeah, that's why I didn't bother saying anything, but that I'm always pleased when I'm not the only person in the room to go there (other than people just knowing that *I'm* going there).
Molly said, "Prooftexting -- but maybe God put it in there [thinking] 'one day they'll be ready for it'."

At the Grille today, Joseph had two quesadillas in the works and looked at me and I looked at him, and he put a tortilla shell on to make my usual burrito and as he was making it he reached for the shredded cheese, as he sometimes does, and I said, "No cheese," and the woman in front of me said, "I didn't hear you order."  I said, "I didn't :) " and I further explained that I order that a lot and that I am impressed at the staff's ability to remember these things.

Ari called me around 2:30 just to say her Internet was down and so if I had sent her any important emails, like about timing for phonecall tonight...
I was in a work lull, so, um, 1 hour later...

Roza and I had dinner at Tamarind Bay and then walked around Harvard Square (I would have suggested walking homeward, but she had biked), and I showed her HBS campus (which admittedly is more picturesque in the daylight) and I thought, "If I had Scott's cell phone number I could call him and see if he's around."

It was only ~7:15pm and it's the academic year, so the Food Court and Grille were both open, so I got fro-yo (I'd been kind of in the mood for ice cream, and there we were...).

She said that she had two dates this week -- her fifth anniversary with Chaz and a first date with a guy.  I asked if she wanted to say more about the guy, and she said she had been babbling about him for the past two weeks, though admittedly not to me (we haven't seen each other in ~2months), so she said she would tell me but first she wanted to hear how things were with Terry.  So I told her, and she had some conflicting thoughts (as one does) and I would have loved to talk further (you're surprised, I know), but conversation moved in various other directions and then we got to her new boy.  She said she's been babbling to all her poly friends, "Because you understand," and I did an internal double-take because I really do not think of myself as poly (I thought of Ian and how he had really pushed back when I rejected being labeled as poly -- I personally think "poly-adjacent" is more accurate).

Edit: Story I forgot to tell -- Roza and Chaz went to Japan for 3 weeks to visit Chaz's sister, and she was telling me about it, and our food came and I asked her to stop so I could say grace, and after I was done she said, "Did I not notice this before, or did you not do this before?"  I assured her it was the latter and talked about my grace prayer and the conversation I'd had with Scott.

Also, she brought back nice hand fans for people from Japan, and she said while she was letting people pick the one they wanted, she had had one in mind for each person, and she's been wrong every time.  Heh.  (I picked the dark blue one with silver flecks.)