I crawled to that church for the first time with the most erect posture possible. I wore the snazzy clothes the last predator bought me. He liked his food well dressed. “They wouldn’t know it was what he paraded his prey in,” thought the many inner me’s.
That pastor helped folks like me for free. Free was good, cause it didn’t cost money that I didn’t have. I grew up poorer than the dirt that was thrown at me, stuffed inside me, and formed me. Not much had changed, except I had lost some grit and ground under that snazzy set clothes I wore.
Fancy duds hid my famished frame.
I couldn’t say much then but the hunger in my eyes said it all and he was a mighty good eye reader. My Daddy died, the one I always had, the one I never had, and he became “Daddy” to me. He held my hand real nice like, held my head in his lap when life fell further afield than I ever thought it could. He even wanted me to provide him special services. “Daughter rub their Dad’s backs,” he said, so rub I did. He didn’t ask me to rub anything else.
Family sounded real good to a dirty orphan like me.
I met B there. He sat at the left in the back row. I sat at the right near the front. Eventually we sat together. We praised together, we paid together. Just under half a million dollars. That pastor didn’t ask me to rub his pants, just his pocket book. We did.
They said I was a ring leader. I didn’t know there was a ring and I have never led much of anything. We were the dragon at the end of the proverbial bed trying to kill the birthright of the church. We were Ananias and Sapphira apparently. I had to look that up. Those folks were put to sudden death while lying to folks about money. We wrote cheque after merciless cheque for his “kingdom business”, “cause that what family does,” said he.
Boy, did we need family… so bad we bankrolled it.
B wrote a cheque yesterday. I delivered it today. Before I gave it to the recipient I asked about confidentiality. She looked at me searchingly and said, “I don’t know why this scares you. But I respect your request.”
I know why it scares me…
Because malfeasant ministerials have accused me of doing things motivated by money, that I don’t even fully know how to define much less do. Because ministry, money, and malfeasance has been a killing field for the fatherless, the orphan, and the alien. Because money is earned but so is trust.
Because money is power and I don’t want that sort of power there or anywhere… I want personhood.