(I was looking through some past drafts of blogs I had started but never published . And came across this one that I started on July 1st of 2024 before the fateful day of August 6th 2024 at our house fire and decided to make a couple minor editing tweets and publish it.)
A recent incident when I was trying to get care at the Truman Medical Center Emergency Room has given me a new perspective of my sense of safety in my life.
Growing up, indeed, pretty much up until that recent Wednesday, I have felt safe in my life, almost everywhere I have been, at almost all times. Now, because of what has happened, I have looked back on my life and determined I did not have the correct perception of my circumstances, and that my level of safety has always been much less than I usually had an appreciation of. I have been naive and willfully blind to the nature and extent of the danger I have always lived in.
There were many things in my past that have shown me precisely how vulnerable I truly am, and how many places and institutions that I have placed my trust in were actually threats to my safety. But it took what happened that Wednesday for me to finally admit to myself how untrustworthy most of those who I trusted in are.
I came into the entry area of the Truman ER on that Wednesday to face a security door and a security person behind a glass enclosure. One of those types of drawers that I first saw at a bank drive through window for passing papers and money back and forth popped out at me without any notice or explanation.
“What is this drawer for?” I asked in a startled voice.
The guard behind the glass made some rude noises (muffled by his glass enclosure) and gestures at me before saying “Don’t you have an ID?” over his intercom speaker.
“So it’s to pass you my ID” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me so”
“I did” he said.
“No you didn’t” I replied, “I heard nothing out here from you. You could at least let me know before being so rude.”
Other antagonistic remarks were made by the guard as he took my ID and did something with them then passed me a printout and ID back and opened the door to the next area, where I was supposed to go through a metal detector. I saw the bin the guard there, Meredith, was holding, asked if I was to put my stuff in there and went to place my fanny pack into it.
“Just step back and stop yelling at me” the guard said.
“I am not yelling at you” I replied, with my voice lowered as it was in each of the previous statements I made, spoken slowly, with words separated by pauses to emphasize and add weight to them.
I walked several blocks away before I got back to the hospital guest advocate’s office to file my complaint, my sense of security not returning, though my calm did.
I went through the metal detector, and my finger splint caused the alarm to sound. My own internal alarms went off as he approached me, but he stepped back afterwards and asked about the contents of my pack. There was something in it they did not allow in the hospital, and I took my pack back, rather than letting him throw it out and left the ER immediately, my sense of danger the highest I had ever felt, higher even than when police had cuffed and arrested me years ago for evading someone who had assaulted me (that person had bee clumsy enough to injure himself in the attempt, while I had been stupid enough not to let myself get injured, so the bloody one got away while the innocent spent the night in jail 80 mile away from home.)
I could go on about this incident, but I will steer away from it for now, perhaps to come back to more later.
What I pondered at that moment was how often my saying something, even in a lower, slower, more punctuated voice, was called yelling, and how anybody could at any time claim I was yelling and thus get me censured or even detained. My assertions in situations where others actually yelled at me, usually end up with my getting the same censure as if I had been accused of yelling. There is no balancing symmetry to this. Being white, being male, especially being both, seemed the most obvious but not sole factor in this unfair and unjust assessment against me.
It also made me think about some statements about her safety that Jasini had made to me. She had mentioned a time at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church where Kay had mentioned how glad she was that Jasini felt safe to come to the Ladies’ Wednesday fellowship, even after what had happened at the church and how difficult it must be. Jasini, because she did not feel safe, did not voice what she really thought. What she thought was I have never felt safe here. The closest she ever felt to being safe was when she was given the opportunity to perform solos during church worship services, something that meant a lot to her, a sharing and outpouring of her very heart and soul that the later actions of the church leadership trampled to the ground and ground her into the dust.
This does not mean that she ever felt any real threat to her immediate physical security, but the way the actions of the people there totally looked past who she was, making her invisible, and putting up a simulacron of her in her place, were ample reasons for her to not feel safe.
As to what Kay meant by knowing how difficult it must be, Jasini could only surmise. What she felt it meant was how difficult it must be to have to deal with a husband like Sir Rhodri. A husband whose only crime was to try and stand up for her against the waves of things the church was sending out that were threatening to try and crush her soul. Yes, Jasini thought, it IS very difficult to have to deal with someone who believes in you against those who profess to care for you but don’t even try to get to know you.
Someone, a church leader, had shut a door in my wife’s face, and that church leader must have convinced everyone that Jasini and I were lying when we said that leader had done such, and asked others for help in reconciling with that leader since she refused to reconcile with us. Instead, the church leadership chose to legally banish me from their property while I was attending an evening service, in winter, trying to make me leave the building without my coat, my phone, or allow me to let Jasini know where I was or what had happened, and since it was Jasini’s car and she had the keys, I had no place to go for shelter or way to get to a .place of shelter besides walking. In freezing temperatures and falling snow. No
In my life I have always trusted in the safety of the Sanctuary. That the church was a sacred place of comfort and shelter from the storms without. And even though there may be disagreements and discord within the sanctuary, there was an ultimate security that would honor all people. And despite evidence to the contrary, I have trusted that at each church I have been at. I can do so no longer. Gloria Dei Lutheran Church is no sanctuary, has no sanctuary, does not honor all people.
We had come to Glory Dei as religious refugees from the Avondale United Methodist Church which when I was assaulted in their sanctuary chose to blame the victim instead of helping him.
So no, I don’t feel safe in churches anymore.
