Thursday, November 06, 2008

The Prison Retreat is Coming Up

I have a training this weekend for the prison retreat.

I am bummed. I need to take 20 dozen cookies to it and my baker, a restaurant owner just had two employees quit. I am busy with school and everything and this happened! Argh.

I needed to get donations which didn't happen in spite of me asking my church friends. I also told them that if they couldn't donate but cared to please make some posters for me to take which are needed and no one would do them. Why? My Eastern Orthodox friends basically told me, "We are Orthodox and you are serving with a Protestant group." I don't enjoy how they Protestants worship because it's not my style, but the people in my group are so genuine! The mission is extremely worthy and a lot of people need that chumminess with God so they can relate to Him. Some move on to more liturgical churches, some stay in the way we teach, and some fall away and come back later. Maybe some move on to other faiths-- but they learn to appreciate. I do not think that Orthodox have a monopoly on Salvation and when you are reaching out to prisoners, the simplest approach is best: Love God, be nice to your enemies, forgive, etc. Everything else is gravy. I love Eastern Orthodoxy as I find it meditative and I enjoy practicing aspects of the faith that reinforce it in our minds, but the elitism sickens me. If anyone there asked me to help out with something, I'd be happy to in whatever way I could.

I asked my husband's family-- they are great Protestants, wonderful people, but they ignored my request. Why? Probably because we're Eastern Orthodox. (I think they think we are going to Hell.) I'm not mad, but for God's sake, we are on the same side!

Should I even be doing this? Most women do things in pairs. I go off, "Hmm. This looks like it should be interesting." People in pairs have support.

What a stupid, stupid thing for me to have even tried doing. I'm going to think about this overnight, but I may just drop it.

I need support with this from my church and I am afraid that if I drop this, I will also drop the faith that I agreed to raise my children in because I don't like the people in how they act.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Uh, I am Roman Catholic. So your family think that I will end up in a worse place that hell if we make conclusions from religious history.

Tea N. Crumpet said...

No, Ropi, we are cousins! We'll be in Hell with computers that don't work!

Unknown said...

Oh, I see. So God has stroke already. I get double punishment. My great-grandmother said that left handers are evil and I am partly left hander. (she was extremely religious I liked her a lot though. My secret was not to do anything what I can't do with my right hand when she saw me)

Rick Rockhill said...

Seems like you are allowing yourself to get really stressed out about this...take a deep breath and try to let it all go...