The last few weeks I’ve noticed that some of the main triggers for me – things that send me back to the terrible memories associated with filing a complaint of misconduct – are, of all things, hymns. It’s not the melody; it’s the words and who wrote them. I yearn to be part of not just a whole and healthy church, but a whole and healthy faith – and I’ve been around long enough that I know (either directly or indirectly) quite a number of the authors in both of our hymn books.
Today it was a beautiful piece by Shelley Jackson Dunham. And today it was a good memory, though as is usually the case, good means bittersweet.
I strongly associate Shelley with The Mountain. When I think of The Mountain, I remember two things. The first is my initial visit there. It was maybe five years after the year from hell. My family basically dragged me there. I didn’t want to go, but I love my family and I went. I figured it would be beautiful, and it was. But what I hadn’t in my wildest dreams imagined was that I would feel accepted – by Unitarian Universalists. That was a time at my church when I wasn’t as totally marginalized as I had been, but I wasn’t all that accepted either. I was in some grey area, and grey is how it felt.
One of the reasons I hadn’t wanted to go was figuring that the Mountain staff would know about what had happened, know about me, and accidentally-on-purpose shun me. That was the way things worked back then. Or maybe they wouldn’t know about my role, but I wouldn’t matter to them. As much as I thought about – which wasn’t a lot.
To my amazement, they were to a person kind, attentive and appropriate with everyone in my family, including me. Just to be that way with my family speaks volumes. We’re probably a typical UU family – too smart for our own good, highly opinionated, the younger ones edgy, the older ones sometimes cantankerous, scattered around the country, and many of us no longer UU. Larry Wheeler, in particular, took us all in with great good humor and grace.
The second memory that came to me in that instant of singing Shelley’s hymn was when I returned to The Mountain several years later for Leadership School. If you’re going to get anything out of Leadership School, you have to be who you are. I still didn’t know if The Mountain staff knew I was an infamous complainant, and as luck would have it, one of them, Robert E., was my small group leader.
I’m not a swearing sort, but as we were sent on our way to small group, I thought, “Oh s#*$&, I’m going to have to talk about the misconduct – with Robert E. The jig is up. Now the staff will know.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. For one thing, as I found out the last hour of that week-long amazing experience, Helen Bishop, the head of the school, knew about my history and had alerted the whole staff before any of us students ever arrived.
And everyone, Robert E., Helen and an amazing cast of others, were accepting of me. If you know Helen, you know accepting doesn’t mean molly-coddling. There were moments that week when I thought I’d never stop crying – and, really, I don’t cry that much about this stuff. But not that week. Especially towards the end. But everyone was fine with that. Some knew. Those who had to know did, and that was good. Some didn’t, and that was good too.
I’m particularly grateful not everyone knew, because that meant acceptance for who I really am. While I was a victim of misconduct, I struggle to minimize that reality as part of my identity. But I guess it will always be pretty close to the surface, if even hymns evoke it.