An alien lizard and a human working together have formidable talents.

The latest is that we've managed to get excommunicated from a church: by ATHEISTS*.

My human is starting to see the humor in it. A call to the cares and concerns committee is comforting. The committee person asks her to contact the assistant minister.

The music committee is shunning her. The committee chair tells her to relax. When she replies that friends are dying in medicine, the committee chair chooses not to reply directly or call as asked and instead sends an email to everyone saying that if people in the holocaust could joke, they ought to be able to joke during covid-19.

My human considers that for 24 hours and then answers the whole group saying what she is grieving about, a few specific examples.

No one replies.

Now she has emailed the assistant minister. We could start a pool on whether they answer.

Some people, once they decide you are difficult or crazy or did something on purpose or whatever, they will not even speak to you. My bad, silly me, I thought that since this was a church and practically everyone on the committee has more years, that they have emotional maturity.

Apparently not.

It's Clay Shirky's Online Community Dynamics in action, isn't it? And that is playing out on Facebutt and Twitter and all the social media. People want a place where they can say anything they want. It's great, until another person does it. Then it is horrible and offensive. Then we need rules. Then there is a fight about whether we should have rules. And we need enemies, inside or outside! Let's find someone to hate and someone to shun and someone who doesn't toe the line and behave like everyone else.

My human didn't mean to piss off the committee. Though it is more likely to be fear on their part. However, if the culture is that she HAS to joke about Covid-19 or sit through jokes about it, she is not in that stage of grief at the moment.

She sends a message saying she can't attend this week because of 6 medical visits. Then she follows up after the 6th medical visit this week (yes, sometimes people go for years without a diagnosis, says her primary physician) with an email saying that after her doctor visit, she is advised to rest and heal and grieve, so she will not attend committee meetings for the next month.

If the assistant minister doesn't answer and no one does from the committee either, well, it's pretty clear that she is not the right person for the committee, right?

No doubt they are discussing her with mean words.

Sticks and stones? Well, words can and do hurt, don't they?

*Ok, some of them are agnostic, some don't care, some believe in someone or something. It's a free for all. Tolerance is preached.
Update: I have gotten an email from the assistant minister.
I forget sometimes that docs have to see everything and witness all of the emotions, disease, despair and death. Some people stay sheltered.