Anonymous Notes

This morning I found this anonymous note in a place where I would find it:

Any sermon, or just dogmatics??

I suppose this was left by someone who doesn't care for my preaching style, though I don't think of what I do as being very dogmatic. It's not a very stinging criticism. It's also possible that this was left by someone from the AA group that meets in the space on Saturday nights.

From time to time I get these kinds of critical notes, I suspect most pastors do, too. The usual advice given about these things is that you should ignore any anonymous criticism, because if you let it change the way you do things than you create a very toxic and passive-aggressive kind of dynamic. So I'm doing to ignore this one, too, but I wanted to post it here just because it's an interesting artifact of parish ministry.

-t

AA Christmas

COTM hosts an a very Active AA group that holds several meetings here in the course a week. They are good guests of the place, and we are pleased to be able to help so many in recovery. Every year they have a Christmas dinner and every year they invite the Rector. So I stood up and opened with my predecessor's quip, "Hello, my name is Tay, and I'm a priest," and then I promptly gave him credit.

Although I've never suffered from addiction, I've certainly known many who have. My first real introduction to AA came back in Los Angeles when I rented a room from a recovering alcoholic. He had many years of sobriety and was very active in the program. He would talk a lot about it and I learned much from him. In the years since then I've bumped up against the program in various other personal and professional contexts and have to say that it is certainly a good thing that has helped millions of people.

I also note that the whole thing is really the application of a theology with clear Christian roots. Yes, the higher power can be anything/one, but the AA way of understanding things like the human person, freedom, sin and redemption, and so on clearly (to my mind, at least) reveal Judeo-Christian roots. I hope that's nothing to be apologetic about!

The AA folks at tonight's meeting were a very kind, generous, and hopeful bunch. They laughed politely at my jokes and had many nice and welcoming things to say to me individually. And they cook a mean turkey!

-t