PTSD
I’ve just noticed that I’ve developed an inability to trust people in dealing with religion. This is not a problem I had before.
When I moved to A’ville, the folks at St Nicholas parish reached out to me: the Deacon took me into his own house and fed me every weekend. His kids called me “Uncle Raphael”. Other members of the parish gave me furniture, offered help in moving, made sure I never went hungry or that I was able to come to Liturgy in bad weather. I’d hear bad things about the Greek parish in town (or silly stories about every priest over the last 10 years), or about the ROCOR parish or about the Carpatho-Russians or the other Antiochian parishes in our area – and know that I’d made the right choice. When people would leave the parish, I’d hear gossip about them from the priest.
Increasingly it felt cult-like. When Todd and I began sharing a house and I no longer needed to rely on the rest of the parish for help, things only got worse. It all went sour the evening I spent 45 mins in confession listening to things like like “I can’t believe you could treat the people of this parish like that after they have opened their homes to you!” This after I dared to vote against the priest on the parish council. How dare I? But it took a few more months to end it all. And when the parish closed I went to the monastery for healing. I found out all the bad things I’d heard about all the other churches were not true: in fact most of them pitied us trapped in our little cult world. It was all just a way to keep me in the on place, and not go looking at the others. A number of times the priest would say, “I don’t know why, whenever someone leaves the parish, they blame me…” and he would sigh and get a wounded puppy dog look in his eyes. Eventually, I began to get ideas about why this was.
Then I began to suspect the monks – and later members of their parish – of doing the same sorts of cultic things. I found myself wondering if I could trust my fellow worshipers.
Later, when I wondered what the priest might have said about me to the other parishioners… I began to wonder how much of the hospitality at St Nicholas/St Raphael mission had, in fact, been manipulated by the priest himself for his own purposes. I began to doubt that any of it had been real. These feelings only grew as no one from the old parish seemed interested in staying together: of the families involved in the parish the Sunday when it “exploded” I was the last one attending an Orthodox Church. Of those families, I think I’m still the last one attending any church at all. (Others, who left before that day, stayed in Church.)
Since moving to Buffalo, I’ve had my security system triggered twice by the oddest of things: things said offhandedly in email, odd comments after mass. I can and do trust – to what some would think is a dangerous extent – people I meet on the internet, people I meet on the street, coworkers and landlords. None of them have ever disproved themselves.
But when someone involved in a religion does just one little thing that triggers my memory… all hell breaks loose internally and I want to run away, far away. And I begin to see there is still some damage that need healing. It is rather like PTSD. Fr Brent, at St Mary’s in A’ville, never triggered these flags though, in less than 6 months, he had me teaching Sunday School and singing the Prayers of the People at Mass. St Andrew’s sent me into a tizzy by sending me (unasked) offertory envelopes with my name on them. Trinity Church has bonked me by sending me one email reply beyond my “not just yet, thanks” email.
I sent an email to a friend last night wondering where I could study martial arts – asking for a recommendation to avoid any cults. Only after the conversation (and when the friend had replied with good, common sensical suggestions) did I think “how odd am I?”
Rather than walking in and asking questions, just go and watch. The important questions are ones you’ll feel the answer to. Are these people enjoying themselves? Are they welcoming? Is there a lot of ego on the mat? Are people trying to prove something?
I wish someone had said such common-sense things to me 5 years ago.
This may be what caused my recent bout of looking at other religions: I’m not the only one to have gone searching or rejecting. As one former member of the parish said to me, “If God can allow that man to be a priest, there is no God.” It may be… but I don’t think so. More like a catalyst coupled with my own internal workings. At first I thought it was a fear of commitment that was plaguing me in Buffalo – or maybe my desire to keep searching. But, in fact, it’s a fear of getting trapped in a cult that is bothering me. I’d never ever had that before. Heck: what cult of personality are you going to find at most Episcopal Churches? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
This is a new thing.
Tags: asheville, Buffalo, converts, crisis, cults, dysfunction, frj, orthodoxy, recovery, sickness, st raphael's | Category: personal, take it easy, uberfrum
Discussion: You came too late to this party
Share:
I felt the same bad vibes at an Orthodox parish I attended in Portland, one which was descended from Christ the Saviour Brotherhood.
I’ve been treated poorly by other Orthodox clergy, but that was the only truly cultlike environment.
I think this happens (for a variety of reasons) with converts a lot.
I have begun fleshing out an article about Elijah and the ravens that God sent to feed him. After over thirty years studying and trying to live Carmelite spirituality, I find (like the medieval hermits/friars) much food for thought in that story from I Kings. Part of my reflection at the moment is that God sent the prophet food by way of unclean birds, scavengers. Elijah could have said, “No, thanks! I want that bread delivered by snow white doves and that meat to come by way of birds of paradise. Don’t send me no ravens!”
I know how hard it is to see the ravens that bring me the message. And since life is not just a “spiritual meaning” projected onto a story, the messengers are indeed part of the message the church offers. I can’t ignore the reality that those who claim that this way of life is transformative and deifying don’t seem to be transformed or deified. They gossip, they lie, they are greedy.(But maybe that is because I don’t know what they were like before. They may not be perfect, but maybe they are making progress.)
As a former raven (well, I’m still a raven, but not an officially ministering one) I appreciated the advice to see what your experience is when you go to a new place to worship. But realize that the folks there are folks like us: sometimes happy but not always; sometimes welcoming but with limits (though HaShem, Blessed Be He, has none) and so on. I am not arriving at their doors perfect; it is not reasonable to expect only the perfect to greet me within.
Since I myself still have not found a spiritual community to call home, I visit around and ask myself some questions afterwards: Did I enjoy it? Did I come out a bit better, happier, challenged to grow in my thinking and my living? Did I like how God was spoken about and to? Did I like how people were spoken about and to? Did I want to have that kind of experience regularly? Did I want to pursue the journey with these feeble people as my companions?
My Taoist reading reminds me that the journey is the reward. Perhaps some of us are practicing the old Russian way of a pilgrim. Maybe we are not meant to settle down but to keep searching.
Maybe I should stop rambling and start journeying…
Huw: my heart broke while reading this. I am so sorry for what happened. I do pray you can find a place free from such obvious manipulation and deception.
We had similar issues with a priest: every other parish was wrong and we were the ‘shining light’. So easy to buy into…and yet so destructive.
Unfortunately the church is made up of fallible human beings: and rather than being a spiritual hospital I at times think it is a lunatic asylum. Lord, have mercy!
Ian – Thank you for your recent comment (on “PTSD”). It helps me to know the same sort of thing happens outside of the US.
You hit on an interesting point, every other parish was wrong and we were the ‘shining light’. So easy to buy into…and yet so destructive.
This prompts me to do something that we used to call at work n the rehab clinic, “Owning my 50%”
Given my own attraction to certain sorts of Saints and writings w/in Orthodoxy, I guess I was kind of blinded to that problem. Blessed Fr Seraphim was that sort of writer where everyone else was doing Orthodoxy wrong. And many of the more conservative sorts, that I liked to read, feel that way about Orthodoxy to the exclusion of everyone else who are clearly all doing Christianity wrong.
That attitude is not only “So easy to buy into” it’s something I *wanted* to buy into. Yes it leads to “manipulation and deception” and destruction, but it’s can be like a candle to a moth: deadly light into which one willingly flies.
Interesting questions. I always wonder how I should react when I see something not “just right” in the spiritual environments I swim in. About the best advice I ever got was from a spiritual advisor who once told me when I was offended by something that if wasn’t being offended on a regular basis, I probably was’nt doing enough fellowship! In other words, it is about the journey, not the bumps in the road. On the other hand, I try to guard against my thoughts drifting away from chairitable things and need frequent breaks from people. I keep several different fellowship relationships alive at the same time, so that I don’t short-change my own need to worship and just be with other like-minded people. Thanks for everyones comments, it is giving me an opportunity to think through these fellowship relationships and why they are important to me.
I am quoting this in a web-log entry because I found it profound.
::hugs:: I'm beginning to get it. It's hard not to, really, when you describe it so completely.
::takes a deep breath:: I can't begin to describe how much this sucks, and how much my heart goes out to you. And not just to you, but to everyone who has had this or similar experiences, because I'm guessing there are scads of them out there, whether or not they'd be willing or able to describe their experiences with the same eloquence or self-awareness is up for debate.
::is silent and praying::
My prayer for you is peace.