It Just Has to Stop

Okay. That's it. It's time for a little coming-to-Jesus meeting. Not an actual come-over-to-Jesus-camp meeting but a hey-heads-up-folks-this-is-getting-ridiculous meeting. And it goes like this. Non-religios: You MUST must must must must MUST stop being so awkward about me being a minister.

When I became a minister, I was fully aware that talking about my work could be sort of a buzz kill for a lot of folks. And it is. Trust me, I get this.  It's not like saying you're a doctor ("Cool! Want to see this rash on my ankle?!") or a teacher ("You are a saint to put up with all those kids!") or any of the numerous vague jobs people have that no one really understands but feels comfortable letting slide by without asking too many questions. But having to say your a minister is just different....in a put down your beer quietly and stop using the f-word from this point forward kind of way. (Ironic, as I have a deep love of both these things.)

For my part, I have attempted to alleviate this by devising numerous strategic responses to the inevitable hard-swallowing, neck-torquing intensity of the moment when the cocktail party conversation turns to me and asks what I do for a living and I have to oblige. Sometimes, I say "I work at a church," which allows a small percentage of people to imagine me as a church secretary or preschool teacher and proceed without another thought. Sometimes I say "I'm a teacher," which is also true but a little bit of a cop-out. I've contemplated many other tongue-in-cheek responses such as  "I'm in sales" or "I run a non-profit" or "I do institutional strategy." But truthfully, I've never really had the guts to pull one of them off because I fear the follow-up questions. Actually, my most successful strategy when greeting people I don't yet know is to say, "This is going to be a bit of a buzz kill, but I'm actually a Presbyterian minister." Kill 'em with comedy, I always say. It's awkward. But it's my life. And I knew it would be.

The part of all this that I wasn't prepared to deal with is that while many people will eventually integrate this idea and move on with whatever fun program of drunkenness and debauchery they were on before, there are other people that absolutely CANNOT move beyond this in a reasonable, mature way. Which leads to massive amounts of awkwardness all around.

Case in point: We (as in, Mr. L and I) have a number of sets of friends who, though seemingly interested in me as a person and delighted my general hilarity*, ABSOLUTELY refuse to EVER acknowledge that I am a minister. In fact, they avoid the topic like the plague. They won't ask me about it, won't talk about it, won't EVER let on that they even know (except that I know they do). All this is fairly amazing given that in adult conversation, one has to go pretty far out of the way to avoid asking someone else about their work life, likely the activity that takes up 70% of their waking hours. It is especially awkward when we find ourselves doing the rounds of "Oh, how's your work?" and "Are you still liking your job?" and "How did that interview go?" and when it gets to me, suddenly it morphs into "Oh, but what have you baked these days?"** Or "Anything interesting around the condo building lately?" Some people will go so far--and this is not an exaggeration, but you're going to think it is--as to NOT RESPOND at all if I mention something about my work. I'll say, "Oh, the other day at the church....blah, blah, blah....something hilarious...blah, blah,blah," and they'll simply stare back at me blankly as if I hadn't even said anything at all and then change the topic.***

What's really strikes me as bizarre about all this is that I have been surrounded by people who aren't religious all my life. And somehow many of those people, my closest friends from adolescence and college, especially, have always found ways to ask about my faith and my work and show their interest even if they didn't fully understand it. But now I find myself surrounded by this bizarre subset of folks who act as though me saying I'm a minister is akin to me saying I torture puppies for a living or that I'm a professional Dungeons and Dragons instructor.

I can't tell if this comes from some deep-seated**** fear that somewhere hidden inside me is a crazy fundamentalist Christian just waiting to pop out and tell everyone they are going to hell or perhaps it is simply a complete lack of religious awareness leading to a "File Not Found" pop up in their brains that makes them go totally blank.***** But I tell you what: I can't take too much more of it. This can't be that difficult. I meet people all the time who tell me crazy stuff about themselves that I don't understand at all (like that they are conservative-Tea-Party-Republicans who think we should eliminate all immigration in this country or that they believe in unicorns), and I don't go all black-belt-ninja-of-awkwardness-silent-treatment on their ass. I simply smile and nod and ask some general questions about it as it clearly is important to them and also I'm not a jerk.

What general questions, you say? How about starting it off easy with such as: "So, how are things at the church?" (You can usually continue with: "Oh, it's going bankrupt? I'm so sorry to hear that.") Or you could try something more direct such as: "You know, I have no idea what the heck you do all day." or "It's so strange that you work at a church. I feel like I can't use the f-word around you." At which point I will have the opportunity to tell you a bit about my life, which may be highly entertaining to you, will likely make liberal use of expletives and will definitely help us all feel edified in the end.

I'm not asking you to come to Jesus camp. I'm just asking you not to throw a strip of awkward nails under the bus I'm riding there. Capiche?





*Okay, okay. That's a little self-aggrandizing, I know. But this is a blog about my life, so it sort of fits.
** Some really awesome shit, by the way.
***For those of you concerned about my tendencies toward exaggeration, don't fret. I can verify that this is ACTUALLY HAPPENING because Mr. L also notices and will periodically say, "It's strange that we didn't talk about your work that whole (fill in time period: night, weekend, LIFE, etc.), huh?"
**** Okay, I just typed deep-seeded (which is probably what I've been saying my whole life) and my spell checker caught it. This is like the time I told Mr. L that we had to go see a Notar Republic. How did I make it this far without being exposed as a complete idiot? Yet another mystery to probe in the blog-o-sphere.
***** If the former is what's happening, you're just going to have to get over your religious ignorance and fear. When someone tells me they are a banker, I am not irrationally fearful that they are going to steal all the money in my IRA and invest it in the sub-prime mortgage market. That would be silly.