[This is the prayer that I wrote today for the RevGalBlogPals website.]
I was listening to a podcast, and the speaker asked who we would want to be with us if we were stranded on a desert island. My immediate answer was “Nobody. Just nobody.”
Yesterday I said to a friend, “I love the work I do, if only I didn’t have to deal with people.” I was kidding… sort of.
I made the mistake of reading the comments on a social media thread, and I wonder how you could have created the people who are saying such hateful things.
A friend sent me an e-mail in which the wording was a little unusual, and I immediately felt attacked.
People are starting to talk about when we can resume “normal” activities, and I realize that I’m more afraid of engaging people than I was of the isolation.
Today, Lord, the prayer on my lips is “Spare me from your people.” But please don’t answer that prayer. Answer instead the prayer of my heart. Give me the gift of space to rage and weep and swear. Help me excavate the muck that is burying my love for your people. Then give me the gift of a deep breath to blow away the trash, the gift of a kind word received and a kind word shared, the gift of knowing again that I am your beloved child, the gift of loving your people again. Amen.
An Explosion of Color and Texture 
Thank you for this, which illuminates some of my feelings about tomorrow’s sermon (which does not yet exist) but puts Jesus killing himself trying to please everyone against Jeremiah … being himself and criticizing, and my recognizing that I actually don’t want to “shepherd” either way.