We launched the website last night. Now it is time to start publicizing…
Daniel and I just finished saying prayers. I’m so happy and relieved to finally be done constructing the site. It was like sifting through poison, daily, for months. It is an extremely painful story, all of it. For weeks now I have been seated here in this same spot working with all of these toxic materials. All the emails, all the messages from dishonest people claiming power to destroy my life and my love of church. People who also refuse to speak to me.
I never could have imagined what happened at Ashland UCC. I never could have imagined being treated with such cruelty. I could not have imagined a minister being so entirely dishonest, so vicious and accepted as the new minister at the “peace church”. None of it makes any sense. If you go through the chronologically arranged documents on this site you will feel confused, too. The leadership never responded to our questions, they used words to distract and confuse, they added more and more conflicts. Banishing us from our faith family was aided by their continuous ritual of talking trash about us, in our absence.
During these two years of trying to reimagine what my life looks like, I’ve studied a lot. I’ve studied human pathology and pathology of institutions. A quote that has never been far from my mind is from a pod cast I listened to with Ezra Klein interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Coates says:
“It’s terrible to contemplate. It really is.
I was deeply angry for a very long time and I wanted to express myself.”
I am deeply angry over what happened and what continues to be the reality at Ashland UCC. There is nothing ok about it. Both Daniel and I have always been clear, we aren’t interested in carrying such a brutal and ugly reality all by ourselves. What happened is a public disgrace. The response needs to be public, too. It belongs in the public domain. Now we can share the burden, you and I. And by sharing all of this information far and wide, my load becomes more manageable. If someone asks me, what happened, I can direct them here, because I can’t explain it to anyone in a way that is satisfying. Rev. Kukuk’s way of contorting reality and language itself made the entire nightmare seem impossible to comprehend and therefore, unsolvable. It is so therapeutic for me to get to share with everyone how devious a character Rev. Kukuk is. She is frightening. She appears to be quite devoted to serving herself at everyone else’s expense and doesn’t seem to have any regard for basic right and wrong.
It is a tremendous relief to me, to have this site, on which I have shared all I know about what happened at Ashland UCC.
I realize it is a horrible knowing.
I thank you for being here and reading my words. One thing that has become so clear to me over the last two years is that anyone willing to actually listen to me, gives me a little piece of my healing.
Joanna Macy suggested that looking at the whole world is way too overwhelming, that the best thing we can do is focus on our own puzzle. The corruption and brutal loss of my church has unfortunately been my puzzle. And when I put it online last night, the whole ugly story, I had a palpable feeling of relief. Now I can show people what happened, I can communicate thoroughly. I have transformed the ugly cloud of slander and lies with data, analysis and illumination. Illumination is Jesus’ third way.
This site is my avenue to heal. I have been noticing for weeks that as I added all of these awful pieces to this puzzle of truth, I felt that I have been making order out of the chaos of cruelty. It felt like in facing and placing each piece of data, each explanation of what actually happened, I’ve been knitting my dignity back together.
I wish I didn’t have such awful things to say about so many people in this town. I used to pride myself on not having ill will toward anyone. But that was two years ago. Now I know how deeply mean and cold hearted the people I used to call church family actually are. Quite frankly, I’m still stunned.
But Ashland UCC Karma is a big step in my healing. I’ve made my church of trap doors experience into compost and now we have built ourselves a solid platform on which to communicate; thereby making the trap doors, shunning, gagging, silencing end of this story, obsolete.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring.
~ L
This blog page is the space for news and commentary after initial publication of this website 12.16.17. Also if the United Church of Christ or the Ashland UCC respond, their response/s will be made public here.
What transformation is possible when truth is illuminated?
L Citizen and Daniel Sperry
Photo by Christopher Briscoe