A Priest has no Friends
One of the more difficult lessons (at least for me) of the last week or so has been just that—a priest has no friends.
On its face, that’s a hard, hard statement. You give up your friends when you elevate. As I understand it, you give up getting to mutually associate on priesthood. Not only are you perpetually on call for the spirits (who may need you to pass along a message, which really makes mutual commiseration tricky), but you may from time to time need to excise people from your life because you recognize the basis for the friendship cannot be maintained because ya changed.
Then there’s the fact that your words are declarative. Accidental self-fulfilling prophecy is a real bastard, speaking of things that make mutual commiseration tricky. Then there’s the fact that you do not have a right to self-pity. Who will you complain to, and who is listening?
A surprising number of friendships are based on mutual misery, which is a no-no for priests.
The bit of it I’ve been working on is that I’m an “all-or-nothing” kind of person, and mostly a “nothing” kind of person. I am not, to put it lightly, very generous with my emotions. You can have the shirt off my back and the last dollar out of my pocket, but you absolutely will not get to know what makes me happy that easily.
And affection? Hoo-boy, that one is hard for me.
Being a priest means caring for people who can and will stab you in the back, which is a rough one for me, because if I even think you look stabby (or I don’t know you, or I woke up on bitch), the last thing I’m going to do is show you my heart. I’ll show you indifference, or apathy, or a pretend show of being incapable, or I’ll pretend to be boring. Anything I gotta do to hide.
And yet, it is my heart I’ve been told to keep a part of what I will do. My messy, unreliable, and frankly a bit beaten up heart, which contains more than fluffy wuv.
I am not a terribly… tactful person when angry. In fact, I am biting, sensitive, sarcastic, and easily angered. I take things entirely too far when angry, which is why I rarely let myself get there. I tend to neuter myself to get along, in part because I know what I’m capable of. I have a history of taking things right to fucking hell.
It’s the balance I’m being called to, but I’ve been told (St. Michael again) to keep that enormous well of compassion, without cutting it off when I am confronted by someone’s mischief, without seeking the comfort of mutual commiseration, making myself available to people I know will try to hurt me.
A priest has no friends, just people they care for.
