Oh, that.

I realised something today.

My experiences with my stepdad, who was a minister, were not happy ones. He was emotionally, physically and sexually abusive toward me. I don't like to talk about the specifics much and I struggle with saying anything about it here as it's a complex issue and I don't want to make him out to be a monster. He's not a monster. He's a human being. Which is scary and hard and difficult, but it's true.

Because my stepdad was a minister an awful lot of my experience of church was filtered through him. I've known for some time that this was one of the reasons I did not get on well with Christianity and with church. I didn't exactly have a positive role model.

I was thinking today about organ playing, which it looks like I'll be learning to do much better, and about my mum's organ playing. And I realised that my mother, working as an organist at the church where I was baptised, was sexually abused by a member of clergy there. I don't remember when I found out about this, but I must have been quite young as I don't remember not knowing. I remember knowing it was wrong and shouldn't have happened, but I don't remember not knowing it had happened.

No wonder I tend to automatically be fearful of male clergy.

I've since encountered some wonderful female clergy, and in getting to know local churches I have been sometimes nervous about the fact that they are mostly led by male clergy but on meeting the clergy concerned I have not felt threatened or frightened.

It will be interesting to observe how this develops.

I've had a long day and lots of other significant stuff has happened and I feel kindof shell-shocked.