Because of the events that took place over the summer that my previous post reflects on, policies at my former church have been changed or are in the process of changing. Why do I care? I'm not sure. I guess that after being there for as long as I was, I can't help but think about some of the people at that church who have not an idea of what is happening right under their noses. Then there are those people who chose to ignore it under the pretense of protecting that church. They are fooling themselves. A church should not be filled with stories meant to cover the truth of what is truly happening there. It should also not be one of peacekeeping teams meant to help hide that truth. Made up of good people who are now finding themselves making up stories to cover up the ugly truth, in not only our situation but others that are happening there. Good people whom I love and know that their hearts have to be aching for the things that they are doing for the "good" of the church. Or perhaps it is an ache in me that wonders how these people of whom I thought I knew can truly believe that what they have done and are doing is right.

At the time of our conflict, it was part of our church constitution that a person could go before the Spiritual Council, then the Church Council and finally the congregation with a problem that one of the congregants felt was not being settled. I'm not sure how many people have actually used their rights of the church constitution to accomplish this but for us it was a road of jumping through hoops and then more hoops to be allowed a chance to voice our concerns. In fact, it was brutal. It was not something that we wanted to do, but after many failed attempts of asking for help, or at least someone to listen we went forth according to the laws of our church constitution. After my first written request to be allowed to come before them, I was then requested to answer theological questions in writing; they finally gave in and agreed to allow us to present our "story." This occurred nearly 3 months after my first request and enough written pages of pleading for mercy, asking questions of them and, yes, at times anger at the councils, to fill a book. They gave us 10 minutes to give our story face to face with all 25 of them, and then they had 20 minutes of questions for us. We had hoped to get to ask them questions but weren't allowed to ask questions of them. They then decided our fate.

I suppose that we could have gone on with the third constitutional right, which is to appear before the congregation, but by that time we were to the point of brokenness and totally exhausted. Never in my life, and much has happened in my life as far as tragedy, but never has anything made me to the point of almost nothingness. Let me explain, by the time it was over, I would find myself pinned to the couch unable to move, my son struggling with continuing his studies and my husband whose faith was finally budding before this event now full of questions regarding his faith. These leaders and peacemakers literally ran over us with a truck and had no compassion that I could see.

They had reduced me to a zombie, made my son a person who started having problems with concentration and most of all, they stripped away my husband's faith that had just started to become established. We needed to move on, we needed to grasp at our lives again. In the beginning, a wise friend at that church told me that we would go on for as long as we could with the process of trying to get someone to listen, and then would have to walk away, for they had seen it happen there before, and knew the ending. While I will never understand those who went through the many persecutions that have happened in history, at times I found myself thinking of those people in the past, and how horrid it must have been. To know the truth and be condemned for it, to know that a pastor and others made a mistake, that things could have cleared up in the blink of an eye, but because they did not want to admit to messing up they chose to basically eliminate us instead. In fact they really didn't even have to admit anything, all they had to do was to call the attack off or, as they would say, their "loving" ways.

It is sad to know that that church is changing so drastically and yet so secretly. Do the people there know that there are plans to change the church constitution? We learned of this when we were going through the fire there. Eventually, as I understand, because of what happened, the hope is that complaints will be addressed to only the Spiritual Council to decide on and no other means of help will be available to the congregation. This same council now has a sub-committee that is none other than the peacekeepers of that church, the same council that before we ever had gotten the chance to speak with them had already decided that we were not submitting to authority and that we were wrong.

This leads back to the thing that concerns me most of all and that is this: it is a frightening thing to think about this movement of peacekeeper seminars moving around the country, training people in how to keep the peace by watching the congregants in a church and these peacekeepers then deciding if they think that someone isn't thinking right. It is frightening to think that these people can truly believe that they can judge someone and what they are thinking and that they cannot be wrong.

In one of my letters to the council, I stated that while I can and will forgive, I will always have a tattoo of these events carved on me. I now think that I am not the only tattooed one, that each and every person who is involved in this will have one etched on them. Big ones and small ones that they will carry forever, especially if they don't stand up and do what is right.