Sad Slice of Cherry Pie: Are we Scapegoating MYP & Lifelong Formation

Cherries.  Gorgeous, lovely, yummy and really quite good for you. Camp Cross has several fine cherry trees that produce amazing fresh fruit.  You can just walk along and grab a cherry and eat it.  Some of them we need ladders to harvest, and some are so far out on high branches that they will be food for the birds.

A friend suggested that the disturbing cuts to the 2nd Mark of Mission in the Episcopal Church's triennial draft budget were just a puppet show.  He thinks that we would never cut down the cherry tree; that this is all just showmanship.  Yet we were here last time around too.  I know that time after time the Christian education parish staff are the first to go when budgets fail to ripen.

If he is right, if this is just a show, it is a sour cherry.  This is the area where trees are planted and watered and debugged, and their fruit harvested so it can feed the rest of the mission.  This is the area with the people who have the least voice, even when we suddenly take offense that someone might insult their voice and service.

The thing about that showmanship theory is that it needs to draw a crowd.  And I don't see it.  I see a flurry of slogan-ing (and some listening and forgiveness) regarding the sloppy commentary of a grouchy tweeter.  I don't see nearly enough people, nearly enough delegates or bishops storming the gates about the massive cuts to the budget of the 2nd Mark of Mission.  That puppet show isn't a very good one if it is one.

Instead I feel that Girardian thing.  Scapegoat the precious.  We don't know what to do about reimagining or restructuring or Pew studies or Jesus word counts or any of the myriad of issues that make the people of the church anxious.  So we cut the one who is like us, but not like us.  We love them but we don't really get them.  We scapegoat those who we are called to teach, love and nurture.

I want to agree with the friend who thinks we would never cut down the cherry trees; but I lack that boyband glee.  I think this is a real thing; I think this is a scapegoat thing.  I wonder if that tweet was the short version of the scapegoat story that the budget tells in digits.  Demanding a song and dance for a good sized cherry is grouchy and grumpy and deeply sad.

#fundformation #gc78 #pb&f
#scapegoat?  #dontjustclap

Learn more about the cuts to lifelong formation at http://episcoforma.org/gc78/.