Lest I Should Have Had a Too Romantic View of...
Last Sunday, Mother's Day, started out nice. Flowers, cards, presents... then church service. We find a pew in the middle-back of the church. The kids are being quiet but moving back and forth along the pew. No one else is sitting with us in the pew or in the pew behind us and only one person in the pew in front of us. Suddenly, right during the service, an old lady two rows back leans over the pew in between us and yells at Ben, pointing her finger "Can't you control your kids!" and said some other things that were rude and mean-spirited. Ben took Evelyn and left the church right then and Dominic cowered under the pew for the next fifteen minutes.
After service in the fellowship hall there was another incident with this lady. My children and another child ran from the back of the fellowship hall to get in line for refreshments. They were running through empty tables and in a large arc around all of the people in the hall but they crossed closest to this old lady and she again yelled quite meanly at the three children and said nastily to me, "Can't you control those children!" Then she proceeded to yell at the other little boy. The lady then turned and started complaining to the other people around her. Ben had seen the whole thing, as he was just coming into the hall, so he walked up behind her and confronted her. Apparently "everyone" has been having a problem with our children but "no one till now has been brave enough to tell us about it". They have all been complaining about it for "a long time" amongst themselves. And don't we compare our children to the other children who sit still in church. Apparently it's so important that another family had even pinched their child to make her behave.
We had already from the beginning apologized for being disrupting to her. We don't have a problem with getting our children to sit still in church and we reminded her that they have already sat still in a car for an hour just for us to even attend church. She sort of blew that off. When Ben asked her to deal with us politely she refused to see that she had been rude and even told us that our children were "wild". After this conversation with her, we promptly left the church. Angry and broken-hearted.
My Mother's Day was spent in tears...
All this came as a hurtful surprise. We have previously been told by many people that our children are well-behaved and quiet in church. I have never heard a bad thing about them from anyone, not even Father Anthony who, if there had been a real problem, would have come to us by now.
We have been at St. John Chrysostom for nearly two years.
I can understand now why young parents don't feel welcome at church and stop coming, and why people stop going to church because of how other people treat them when they're there. Not going to church isn't an option for us but there's a very human emotion that keeps one from wanting to go back to a place that's a societal torment. I have never been treated so terribly by a fellow church-goer. Maybe that's because I used to be the Pastor's Wife and if the people in church had a problem with me or my family, they would still by etiquette have to deal with us civilly. The honeymoon is over.
And now begins the tasks of bearing insults (I am really not good at that, especially when the insults are at me AND my children), and of sacrificing oneself on account of those who may revile you. Now begins the hard task of ignoring the seeds of dissent the devil tries to sow amongst the believers and instead opening the heart once again to those who have already bruised it. God equip me for this task; I have not the strength on my own.
After service in the fellowship hall there was another incident with this lady. My children and another child ran from the back of the fellowship hall to get in line for refreshments. They were running through empty tables and in a large arc around all of the people in the hall but they crossed closest to this old lady and she again yelled quite meanly at the three children and said nastily to me, "Can't you control those children!" Then she proceeded to yell at the other little boy. The lady then turned and started complaining to the other people around her. Ben had seen the whole thing, as he was just coming into the hall, so he walked up behind her and confronted her. Apparently "everyone" has been having a problem with our children but "no one till now has been brave enough to tell us about it". They have all been complaining about it for "a long time" amongst themselves. And don't we compare our children to the other children who sit still in church. Apparently it's so important that another family had even pinched their child to make her behave.
We had already from the beginning apologized for being disrupting to her. We don't have a problem with getting our children to sit still in church and we reminded her that they have already sat still in a car for an hour just for us to even attend church. She sort of blew that off. When Ben asked her to deal with us politely she refused to see that she had been rude and even told us that our children were "wild". After this conversation with her, we promptly left the church. Angry and broken-hearted.
My Mother's Day was spent in tears...
All this came as a hurtful surprise. We have previously been told by many people that our children are well-behaved and quiet in church. I have never heard a bad thing about them from anyone, not even Father Anthony who, if there had been a real problem, would have come to us by now.
We have been at St. John Chrysostom for nearly two years.
I can understand now why young parents don't feel welcome at church and stop coming, and why people stop going to church because of how other people treat them when they're there. Not going to church isn't an option for us but there's a very human emotion that keeps one from wanting to go back to a place that's a societal torment. I have never been treated so terribly by a fellow church-goer. Maybe that's because I used to be the Pastor's Wife and if the people in church had a problem with me or my family, they would still by etiquette have to deal with us civilly. The honeymoon is over.
And now begins the tasks of bearing insults (I am really not good at that, especially when the insults are at me AND my children), and of sacrificing oneself on account of those who may revile you. Now begins the hard task of ignoring the seeds of dissent the devil tries to sow amongst the believers and instead opening the heart once again to those who have already bruised it. God equip me for this task; I have not the strength on my own.
Turn not away from the torrent of my tears, O Virgin, thou who didst bear Christ, Who doth wipe away all tears from every face.
O most holy Theotokos, save us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Comments
You do have the right approach to it, though: yes, you can turn this, too, to spiritual profit.
Go for it!
love,
Anastasia
A.
I am very sorry for your bad experience, but sadly, not surprised. It brings back some of the bad memories from my ten years as an Orthodox.
In our experience, incidents like this were not exactly frequent but they weren't rare either, and they never really went away. Taken together with the many subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways that we were reminded that we weren't of the "right" ethnicity, experiences like this ultimately drove us out of Orthodoxy. (Come to think of it, I can't recall any young families who were of the correct ethnicity being scolded about their children's "wildness." I wonder why? Our children were certainly no worse than theirs.)
No doubt Anastasia is right that you are taking the right approach to this. I hope you are able to be more patient and long-suffering than I was.
Things like this make me throughly ashamed to be Orthodox.
Whatever happened to Christ's words "Suffer the little children to come unto me" ?
For every soul these intolerant folk drive out of the Church, they will surely have to stand to account for at the Judgement Seat..
Okay. Here's my thoughts (forgive me for so many...)
Everyone has problems in church. Family is messy.
But
1. Remember that the Devil tries to destroy what is good with the least amount of effort.
2. I believe that this is true: "We have previously been told by many people that our children are well-behaved and quiet in church"
Only one (older) person has been so unkind.
3. Your priest sounds like a very good one. Have you told him about it? He may have a good perspective on this.
Also, trust that this is true:
"have never heard a bad thing about them from anyone, not even Father Anthony who, if there had been a real problem, would have come to us by now."
Probably there is not a huge (or any) problem at all. I have had similar experiences (and not by ethnic as much as just people) when I was new (first year or so) and you just have to move on from it. This will not always happen!
Sounds like a not-fun experience. Probably the lady is really unhappy and it really has nothing to do with you and your kids. Mother's Day esp. can be hard if one comes from a family that is more dysfunctional; poor lady for being so bitter.
There can be cultural differences too of course; there expectations of kids 20-40 years ago is quite different than what it is today.
When a person is attacking another person in public the others (the public) do not know what to do; I can't believe that your Church is really totally being two-faced with you. This was one lady only and who knows if she was being honest with 'everyone else thinks' and I KNOW FOR SURE that when someone says 'everyone else says so too' when they are angry is NEVER really 'everyone else'... easily maybe one other old-timer or maybe no one else.
It could be that the lady said it only because she was expecting to not be 'called on' her attack by Ben's confrontation.
This was a hard thing and it is good that you are getting support, but nothing is lost; it is an emotionally difficult situation but not impossible.
Don't let the Devil destroy your sense of home at your Church by this incident.
May the Mother of God pray and protect and comfort you and family!
*Many Hugs* and my prayers.
Chris Jones, you used to say the reason you had to leave Orthodoxy was because you didn't feel they held to their ecclesiological principles about one bishop, one city.
I will admit that the notion of fleeing this Orthodox parish did enter my mind, but I can't entertain it seriously. That is, I can't set aside my convictions about Christ just because some people make it hard on me (and, apparently, we were making it hard on them, too). Rather I have to grow to love them and to grow to accept abuse. If anything, as hard as this sort of stuff is, it is part of what God sends us to build us up in His Gospel. After all, how can we learn to turn the other cheek if no one is hitting us? As I said, this sort of thing happens in churches of every stripe.
Having said that, I do think that at the emotional level something must be said for the desire in us to avoid being part of something that is unpleasant. What is it they say, fight or flight? And church isn't supposed to be about fight, so that leaves one option left to the Old Adam. Sensitivity training might be helpful for every congregation, like ours, who sees themselves as a community ready for growth. We want to avoid fight-or-flight situations, and we want to be aware of the walls we erect against others without noticing (and it is *hard* to get around those walls, both those on the outside, and those on the inside).
you used to say ...
Well, I don't want to be seen as someone who changes his story. I did have (and still do have) a big theological problem with the one-bishop-one-city thing. But it is also true that we were never allowed to feel like "one of the family" at our parish, and the "pillars of the Church" were pretty consistent in making us very uncomfortable about having our kids in the Church. Strictly speaking "we" did not leave Orthodoxy, because I was the only one who was ever actually chrismated. But my wife came with me and stood by me in Church Sunday after Sunday for years. Any chance she would ever actually become Orthodox was dashed by the treatment that we received.
Also, I don't think the theological issues and the problems we experienced with the people in our parish were unrelated -- far from it. What we experienced in the parish was the practical working-out of phyletism, which is the same theological problem that underlies the multiple-bishops problem.
However, I don't want to hijack Emily's post with a detailed discussion of my experiences and my theological views. I simply wanted to empathize (because I have indeed been there) and highlight how serious these things can be. If you want to go further into the theological issues involved, you could drop me an e-mail.
I remember getting smacked on the chest and yelled at by an old woman in my first parish. Of course, this past Pascha she was overjoyed when I helped her up the ambon for communion - she even sorta, kinda flirted with me. Knowing something about her history in concentration camps also helped to balance out the other things.
There are a lot of interesting comments about coenobitic monasticism that get at this. They all essentially boil down to the fact that living in community does the painful work of wearing down our edges and passions - as we wear down others. It's painful for all involved, but it seems to be the only way we are saved. (This is also the problem with ethnophyletism - it is a refusal to live in community with our neighbor in preference for our kind while we silently shun those of the wrong sort - this happens as much within homogeneous cultures as in our polyglot, heterogeneous society, e.g., the inter-Russian, -Serbian, -Romanian, -Bulgarian, -Arab, -Ukrainian fights of the past century.)
All that being said, wrong is wrong, mean is mean, and there are old, bitter, butinskys everywhere. I'm reminded of Joyce's comment regarding the Catholic church: "Here comes everybody". True of Orthodoxy, too.
I remember at my husband's Lutheran Church there was a Choir Director and some older folks who just really couldn't tolerate little ones. Lots of "shhh-ing" and "looks" and comments. Most of the young families left because it was too uncomfortable for them. But one family persevered. I always admired them for that because I saw the hostility there in regard to the children. Time passed, a new young pastor came, the choir director left and now the congregation is bursting with young families. So not only is this sort of thing possible in churches of every stripe, as Ben puts it, but the likelihood of it happening in any one congregation or parish varies across time! Oh, and the family that persevered ... their kids eventually grew to the point that they sat still for an hour an a half and even participate in the service. Which, given enough time and training, is eventually what happens.
Also, there could be circumstances in this woman's life that made things particularly difficult for her last Sunday. I was thinking about how we celebrated "Mother's" that day and how some women in the parish longed to be mother's and never were (like my nouna). Or for the Mothers who have lost babies or children. Or for the Mothers who have children that ignore Mother's Day. Or have children in jail. Or have "intelli-gnostic" children who have no faith in Christ. Or...that gal might simply be a cranky old gal...some of us are just like that!
Do take the time to talk to YOUR Father Anthony. He will most certainly be able to help you take the gloom off of this experience and give you guidance in going forward.
The same thought crossed our mind, that she may have been expecting a crummy Mother's Day and already been sore ... otherwise why pick Mother's Day to yell at a young family even if they may be bothering you. We have prayed for her. Please, all of you, also pray for her and especially for us.
I can certainly understand how hard it is to get small children to stay still during service, especially after being in the car for an hour. I am would think that most Orthodox parents are doing their best to help your children learn how to behave in church (your family included), but even with all of our guidance, they will still have days when they literally cannot stay still. Our church doesn't have pews, which can make that task nearly impossible at our parish. I often feel like my children are the worst behaved at our church. It is very trying. Sometimes I don't even go to Vespers because it is just too hard. I don't want to distract others with my "wild" children. But it is so important for us to take our children to church. I wish that those you cannot understand our situations would give us some slack. We are trying our best. There are many services where I feel like I barely even get to pray with all the bouncing back between three kids and the going in and out. But it is significant to be there to show our children how important church and our faith is.
Know that you are doing your best, and may very well have been that this woman was feeling sensitive that Sunday because it was Mother's Day. I hope that she will show you grace in the coming weeks.
I will pray for you. I hope that tomorrow morning will go much better for you.
and, I agree, I can't imagine that "everyone" has a problem without you knowing. Trust your priest, and know God is with you.
Hugs and love.