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“They don’t know it, Zeke, but somebody’s fixin’ to get screwed tonight,” he said, idly scratching between his ears.
“Woof! Woof!” barked Zeke, panting. (Loving the Ones You’re With: A Shepherd’s Lament, p.10; cf also pp. 22, 31, 42, 57, 64, 77, ff).

Back in February I posted a little ditty about the existential revelation of leaving my little clan the legacy of a little piece of country ‘recreational’ land (‘Legacy’ at the blog site), not only as a place for family gatherings, but also as a hedge against the prestidigitations of the banksters, gangsters, and corruption which has so overtaken any semblance of our civil community in the name of the savagery of the ‘free, unregulated market’ which make my (our) retirement savings disappear and magically show up in their hands. I was a bit dubious about the wisdom of the idea until Matchmaker Don observed, ‘Well my daddy always said they don’t make more land.’ With strengthened resolve I determined to do it with cash, ye olde savings account taking quite a wallop, there, Ebenezer.

So the clan gathered and discussed it and made plans and went land-scouting until we found just the place: a 5-acre parcel of raw land on the old Lazy Bar S Ranch. It sat among fields and pastures and strips of scrub forest hiding deer and such. It sat at the end of the one-lane macadam road, just past the dozen or so homesteads of similar size; decent places with people tending horses or working farms, so it wasn’t one of those ‘recreational subdivisions’ where, like here in suburbia, you have to get the home owners’ association approval to pee behind a tree. Nope. It was ‘unrestricted’ which means, according to Delightful Debbie our realtor, ‘You can do whatever you want with it.’ (The drawback being, obviously, so can your neighbor: you want to put a tannery in? Have at it.)

The negotiations went okay, though with one of the three sisters who owned it living in California, a little slowly. But a number was reached and it was to be an easy breezy deal: I give you guys $25k (it’s amazing what can be saved when you’re not supporting a sailboat) and you give me the land. In the mean time I did my due diligence, even to the extent of hiring, after the price was agreed, a site evaluator to, well, evaluate the site and educate me on bringing in water, electric, and septic. I signed the contract offer, wrote the earnest money checks, and waited for the rest of the signatories. Two signed, but the California gal was unhappy with the standard contract and wanted an addendum specifically saying that I would not get the mineral rights, just the water rights. I asked Delightful Debbie ‘Doesn’t the standard contract already say that?’ ‘Yeah, but their realtor tells me this sister doesn’t really trust the other two. There are some hard feelings there.’ So I signed the contracts again.

This got me to thinking about the three sisters I grew up with, because I know that where there are three, somebody is on the outside. It’s always two against one, though in healthy situations the alignments are constantly shifting. (I also learned it can become three against one in a flash if as big brother you dare to step in. So I was taught to stay away and let them settle it. Generally I managed to avoid being splashed by their shit.) In my business this is called triangulation: Ann has a problem with Beth but instead goes to Cindy to enroll her as an ally, ‘Hey, help me beat up on Beth.’ Pastors get triangulated on a lot; and the pastoral messianic temptation to join is always there, but woe to the poor sucker who does: ‘somebody’s gettin’ screwed, Zeke. And we even know who it is.’ This is the interpersonal reality behind Jesus’ words in Matthew 18, ‘If you have a problem with your brother or sister, go talk to that one first.’ ‘Course, that ain’t the way we usually do it–first we round up our allies; in congregational life the failure to heed Jesus’ words here (and the accompanying failure to obey the 8th commandment about tearing down another’s reputation) creates more human devastation than all the adulterous peckers in the sanctuary.

So having myself no problems with the Lazy S sisters, I left them to their own devices and waited. When the drop dead date came Delightful Debbie called and said, ‘The California gal won’t sign.’ ‘What?’ ‘She really does not like her sisters, and refuses to sign. But the other two sisters will sell you their portion.’ Yeah, right; like I want the bitch sister as an adjacent landowner. Thus the deal came to an end by the poison of resentment, though not before I heeded Jesus and sent her an email (via realtors) telling her how her behavior affected me and mine. Of course I never heard from her, but that wasn’t the point, since I never knew her to begin with. The point was that a word had to be spoken; an objection filed in the ether (‘next time, take thirty seconds to consider the people you’re doing this to’).
That was in March. So we went land-scouting again, Soccer Saul and I the usual on the ground guys, taking day trips when we could. After several fruitless months of this we came to the conclusion that we evaluated everything we saw through the eyes of the land we had wanted and designed in minds and nothing else could overcome it. While tooling the highways one day at play over these things in the fields of my mind I heard the voice of once bishop and still friend Paul from 18 years ago when my first insane ‘associate’ pastor had intentionally sabotaged a $100k outreach grant the ELCA had awarded us, ‘Is there any way to salvage the deal?’ I contacted Delightful Debbie, explained things and said if the price had been in the way I could cough up a couple thousand more.

After a time she sent me an offer to sign, only instead of one contract being made out to the three of them, it was two–one with the willing sisters, the other with bitch sister. One willing sister signed immediately but the other was out of pocket. Bitch sister surprisingly made a counter offer, though now through an attorney: another thousand. No big news there. Somebody’s gotta pay for the attorney. The interesting thing is her interest in the land amounted to only 15%, or 3/4 of an acre. I’d offered $3900, she wanted $5000, so fine, I’ll pay the premium. Oh, and of course there was a new two-page lawyerly addendum restating what was already in the standard contract, as my pal, Attorney Tim who likes lawyering so much more than he ever liked the ministry–’I never wake up thinking my day’s gonna be about love and fellowship and then being appalled by the church’s behavior. I know my day’s gonna be about conflict and I don’t have to be nice’–put it, after maintaining his reputation as the teller of the most disgustingly funny jokes I’ve known. While waiting for willing sister #2 to sign I planned my next steps.

I was excited when I saw Delightful Debbie’s name on the email inbox and opened it immediately. It’s worth a quote: ‘I am waiting on the contract to be signed by the last sister. I spoke with [her] realtor and he told me she was refusing to sign the contract, because she is afraid the she will not get the same deal that her sister is getting. She said that she wanted to look at the contract. He told her she could not.’

It boggles the mind.

I signed the legal docs cancelling all contracts the next day, and spent about a week steaming and kissing off that particular vision.

The whole episode plays like a Shakespearian farce starting with three hags gathered around a campfire in the wilderness, huddled over a steaming cauldron chanting ‘Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble’ and stirring that bilious acid and throwing heaping spoonfuls of it at each other ever more hysterically: fire burn and cauldron bubble. This is followed by a whole entourage of farcical characters of middle men/women all caught up in an equally farcical scheme of trying to con the dreaming rube. In the end, everyone around those hags becomes only a ladle of their acid; everyone is burned and diminished by the corrosive bile they spew at each other. I wonder what Shakespeare would do with that: what would their farcical comeuppance be? Of course, if Puccini wrote an opera about it I’d have to die in the end following a magnificent crystal-shattering tenor goodbye.

But it really ends with a shrug. Damn. Oh well. And recalling words of advice from a way-back friend, ‘Larry, sometimes you just gotta understand that God put other people here for your entertainment.’

The dreams and schemes of my life have always been accompanied by a silent ‘God willing’. God willing is measured in the experience of engaging the new adventure. There are always hurdles to overcome. The question is does it matter enough to overcome them? Here y’go: what is the flow of the karma in this? Is there a point at which what I am trying does not seem to be in harmony with what I’m experiencing. I know that there’s a point at which dream and desire and almost-in-hand distorts my perception of the costs to be paid trying to satiate a demanding will. So it is a time for, as we, say, second-guessing, reconsidering. It’s a time to take a breath and see what develops. I’m thinking that once Texas stops burning I might get a terrific deal at a, you know, fire sale.

And for the displaced and newly homeless and the bewildered and the children I plead.

Larry