Let the Shunning Begin!

Whose Christian Clique Is It, Anyway?

The following are two epic tales of disgust, banishment, and ghosting. With lotsa laughs.

Regarding that ‘Deena Debacle’ I mentioned in my last post… I mean, who doesn’t love a decent debacle (and excellent alliteration)?

At the beginning of 7^th grade I became best friends with Deena C. after we were assigned to share a locker. But lest you think this is another Susie sitch where I’d just imagined our bestie-ness, oh no, my darlings. This was real.

Dee’n’me became inseparable. I spent many nights at her home, which reeked of patchouli, and although I didn’t know at the time that this oil was used to mask the smell of marijuana, I was aware that her parents were exceptionally odd. Rail-thin, draped in flowy clothing, drifting in and out of rooms like wandering spirits; even innocent little 12-year old me eventually figured out that they were continually baked.

Deena taught me how to conduct a séance, look for a dead woman in a bathroom mirror, and perform a bitchin’ Light as a feather, stiff as a board ritual. She was also the reason I started shoplifting Bonne Belle Lip Smackers, presenting them to her as tokens of our covenant. I occasionally had to do battle with a girl named Merritt who thought she was Deena’s best friend, but since my votive offerings were better (I’d upgraded to stealing full K-Mart makeup palettes), there really was no competition. Deena and I were the real thing, forever and ever, amen.

Then one day, she stopped talking to me.

Full-stop stopped.

She’d walk past me in the school hallway when I called her name. I’d try to talk to her and she would silently stare over my shoulder into the middle distance. At our shared locker I would beg her, with tears, to just please tell me what was going on. She acted like no one else was there, just collected her books and walked away. Notes unreturned, phone calls unanswered. A complete ghosting, except IRL and thirty years before that term existed.

Deena moved away during sophomore year of high school, but from that first day of utter silence until her exit three years later, she never spoke to me again. Our only point of contact during that time was my sadistic joy when I placed 4th in the science fair to her 5^th place finish and the local newspaper misprinted her name as “Peena”.

Now, you may think I was well rid of a junior occultist who blithely accepted stolen merchandise and killed off more than a handful of my young brain cells by subjecting me to second-hand weed smoke, but the whole affair was devastating—and just so damn confusing.

What the Bloody Mary Mirror had happened here?? How had I gone, in one day, from friend to foe?? How was I capable of inspiring this level of disgust and banishment??

12-year old with thick glasses and Holly Hobbie t-shirt shakes her fist and cries out to the universe, “What did I do to deserve this?!”

**

You may have already guessed that the church claimed to possess the answer to my existential question, because they had disgust and banishment all figured out. I discovered this about a week after my baptism in 1991.

The Elfin Dervish and Hard-Line Hannah came to me with grim faces and an aura of tragedy so thick it was worthy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. They sat me down and broke the news.

Bubbly Girl had “fallen away”.

At the time, I was mostly unfamiliar with this phrase and my blank face must have given me away. They pulled out their Bibles.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. HEBREWS 6:4-6

Wait, Bubbly Girl had done something that re-crucified Jesus?! What on earth could it be?! My mind raced with thoughts of murder and mayhem, although it was hard to imagine that sweet, ditzy gal murdering/mayhemming anybody.

No, Bubbly Girl had done worse. She’d packed up her things, left the ‘sisters’ apartment, and moved in with a man.

I bit my tongue before it could form the words, “Holy shit.” Not because I was clutching my pearls over s-e-x, but because this counted as a public re-execution of the Messiah?! They must have interpreted my bulging eyes and open mouth as fornication horror, because Hard-Line Hannah sought to reassure me.

“Don’t worry. When we confronted her, she tried to give me a hug. But I told her I couldn’t touch clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”

In case you’re busy picking your jaw up off the floor, here’s the scriptural reference:

Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. JUDE 1:22-23

This little verse that Hannah plucked out for a proof-text “gotcha” is at the end of the book of Jude, a one-chapter semi-screed about impostors infiltrating the church whom Jude compares to fallen angels and the scourge of Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s right, by loving a non-Christian man and deciding to live with him, Bubbly Girl was now on the same sin level as Satan’s minions and a posse of rampaging rapists.*

(*As a side note, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has nothing to do with LGBTQIA identities and everything to do with sexual violence, abusive power, and humiliation. Just so we’re clear for any homophobes accidentally visiting my page.)

I don’t remember what I said to Hard-Line Hannah and Elfin Dervish that day. But I do remember the intense battle in my mind, going back and forth between wanting to follow Bubbly Girl right the hell outta dodge, or doing something that might put me in the “I pounded the nails into Jesus’s wrists AGAIN” camp.

But mostly I was just so damn confused about what warranted the level of disgust and banishment directed at a Girl so inherently harmless, I’d nicknamed her Bubbly.

27-year old with contact lenses and Bodhi’s Surf Shop t-shirt shakes her fist and cries out to God, “What did she do to deserve this?!”

It was not the first time I questioned “God’s justice” and it would be far from the last.

To clarify, “God’s justice”, according to the Bible.

To clarify that clarification, “God’s justice”, according to the Bible, as interpreted by the International Churches of Christ.

And let’s talk for a moment about something else I sensed simmering under the tragic demeanor of Elfin and Hard-Line:

Satisfaction.

Ya know, for rooting out the evil in the camp.

Listen, I know humans are wired to desire community, but there’s a world of difference between finding your tribe and being tribalistic. The breathtaking arrogance of deciding that your people are the people and the “who’s in and who’s out” mentality is one of the things I most detest about religion.

And what I most detested about me under the influence of religion.

Because I listened to Elfin and Hard-Line’s directives and ghosted Bubbly Girl too. I never spoke to her again. And by the time I’d realized how wrong I’d been, she’d moved and was long gone.

I think about her sometimes, and about Deena. I never found out why my 7^th grade bestie dumped me, but Bubbly Girl knew all too well why I dropped her.

And we both know she didn’t deserve that.

.