What am I supposed to say to the ex-con parishioner who has been kicked out of her housing because she was accused of theft? I offered her the number that we give to anyone who comes in off the street, the clearing house number that’s supposed to give information on a whole host of services, including emergency shelter. I suggested that she could also call the Salvation Army because I know that they have cheap, allbeit temporary, housing.
I did not offer to let her stay with DJ and me. I’m not sure why. Part of it is that I don’t want to have to keep the house guest-clean, and deal with having someone I don’t know well left alone in the house while DJ and I go to work. Part of it is because I don’t want to cross that blurred line of boundary that is supposed to surround priests. Part of it is because I just didn’t want to. I’m not that close to her, and I’m not sure that I should be. She has other friends, I know, and perhaps I think that she should become/remain closer to them.
How can she get a job when she’s an ex-con, and one now accused of theft at that? She has a meth addiction. She’s got no control over her anger sometimes, and so she’s got a domestic abuse conviction. She’s gay in a straight world, with no idea how to be normally gay, whatever that means.
What am I supposed to say to the transgender parishioner who seems to have thought that becoming the woman she knew she was would change the essential person behind the wrong gender? You are who you are, and you can’t escape that, no matter how you change the package. How am I supposed to explain to her that the reason she doesn’t come across as a ‘real’ woman has more to do with missing the early socialization clues than anything else? Girls talk about hair care and makeup and how to interpret what others say and do, and all of that is missing for her. And so she gets upset with herself for that, and makes it into a reason to beat herself up. I can’t be sure if she would be depressed in any case, but she doesn’t need this added ammunition. She doesn’t even see that she needs these things, and wonders why she misses so many cues in her relationship with her partner, when those cues are fairly obvious.
There’s an awful lot they don’t teach you in seminary!
