Following the Script

My time at Swanvale Halt has been punctuated by a series of bungled pastoral encounters. There was Problem Lady who I let stay in my house and who had to be extracted with the aid of a friend. There was Micky who slept in the rhododendron bush and who had to be expelled after I found him weeing up the front of Boots' one Sunday morning, and Rick the ex-convict (and future convict, as it turned out), who formed a black hole of disruption that affected the church for a while four years ago. There was Karly; I remember the tearful meeting I had with her in church a couple of Christmases ago when she explained she was dying of leukaemia and the equally tearful goodbye she made to her god-daughter a couple of weeks later. She turned out not to be ill at all. With all of these people there has come a crisis point when my patience has come to an end and when I've finally concluded that my interactions with them have been causing more harm than good. 

That happened with Julie this week, as the previous post suggested. It would be tedious to get into all the he-said-she-said details, but suffice it to say that I told her there was going to be no more money coming from me, and help, if help was accepted, would come from the church pastoral team and be to do practical things such as sorting out a birth certificate and a bank account, things she will need to escape her current circumstances, whatever direction she goes in. 

This news was not well-received. I remember the day I refused to give Rick any more money, and he stood outside the Co-Op screaming at me, 'What the fuck am I supposed to do now?' Karly did the same, though via text; I don't think the message I got from her phone in which the only distinguishable words were 'Go fuck yourself! You can just fuck off!' were actually directed at me. Instead she informed me how evil I was, how I shouldn't call myself a Christian, how I was a fake priest, and how I would be exposed. Julie said all of these things, too; I could almost predict her lines. Like Karly before her, she threatened suicide: 'My death will be on your conscience and I will haunt you forever'. This is the last resort of someone who knows they have no other leverage left. A sinful part of me wanted to tell Julie how closely she was repeating Karly's complaints, given how much she hates her. 

They are right. I should never have got into the position of supporting them in this way and would not do so now. These pastoral collapses represent the last results of my early naivety in parish ministry and the seductive delusion of the image of the old-time parish priest dishing out largesse to the poor which, however much I consciously reject it, is still there in the back of my mind. They are finally working their way out of the system. If there's anyone I really need to apologise to, it's the community at large for facilitating the lifestyles of disruptive people and helping them to avoid facing the truth. 

The surprise is that I don't recall anything ever being said about this sort of thing at my theological college, during my curacy (really) or in the training the diocese offers (though such situations feature in honest representations of Church life such as Rev). Perhaps everyone feels equally uncomfortable about it.