Tomorrow

“Does it seem like a year,” she asked me.

I pressed my index finger to my lips which is something that I do when I think. My hair’s getting long enough in the back again where I can also tug on it. I ponder her question.

“No,” I finally answered. “It’s funny because the Sabbatical seems likes its been a year but the resignation from Union Mission doesn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

My fingers go back to my lips and I take my time. “Probably because there are still unresolved issues that I have with certain people associated with it all.”

There was a story in yesterday’s Savannah Morning News about me. It was one year since the last story they did on me. Obviously they didn’t want me to know because my paper wasn’t delivered yesterday.

I did get all of these strange texts yesterday morning congratulating me though I had no idea what they were cheering about. Then I called my Mom for something and she said, “Nice story.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. She told me.

At lunch with a friend, there was a discarded newspaper on the bar. She grabbed it and there I was … as I looked twenty years ago.

I’m old new so they used an old photograph.

We busted out laughing at the headline; “Pastor Goes Nationwide” like I’d sold my soul to an insurance company.

I don’t know who chooses the headlines for the Savannah Morning News but I figure that marijuana is involved. There have been some great ones! But … the fact of the matter is I haven’t pastored a church since the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel a few decades ago. I do have the “Rev” title in front of my name so I image whoever it was took a toke while writing his insurance check and came up with the headline.

We really didn’t read the article because we were laughing so hard. Apparently I had a heyday which is passed. Then the last thing you do is always the one thing that anybody remembers so the story ended with that. I’d lost my mind and decided to reform behavioral health in the state of Georgia. Who knew the whole damn system is run by crazy people? Mean crazy people!

Anyway they whipped my ass and that was the last part of the article.

Later I read the online version where marijuana use is obviously not involved in the choosing of headlines; “Elliott to tackle health care nationally.” That’s closer to what I’m actually doing these days.

“If you want to get together to talk about the future,” said the Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous … Jerry Rainey,” fine otherwise I have no interest in the past.”

It made me think of Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid. “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Of course the Board member who chooses to remain anonymous, Jerry Rainey, did go to Auburn.

I was in St. Martin last year when that last article came out. Nothing about the way I left Union Mission was handled right but … it happened that way. Personally I was burned out and was long overdue for a Sabbatical which the leadership didn’t want me to take. I made the mistake of listening to them … when they were wrong.

Priests and Nuns take Sabbaticals. They rotate the military so that you’re in the front lines too much lest you crack up (our military leadership seems to have forgotten this). Teachers need breaks from the students.

For thirty one years I was in the front lines with only one break and that was when I was in a serious accident and had many broken bones.

I only have one regret of my years at Union Mission. I didn’t take that Sabbatical when I knew I was sliding into burn-out. I listened to the wise men and sages. Because I didn’t listen to myself, I went from burn out to crash-and-burn which really sucks. And if you’ve never been there … you will one day … be it a marriage, a job, a lifelong commitment going sour ... it’ll happen.

Then everybody disagreed about everything and anyone is replaceable at any given time and it was time for me to go anyway … so I went. Keller Deal extended my stay. Conner threw a party. Joe Daniel called demanding to know “what in the hell was going on”? Skutch called wanting the last interview. I spent a lot of time snorkeling to the reef reminding myself that God created this order.

The fish and the stingrays do things in certain ways. They listen to themselves … eating when they need to … swimming in certain formations … reacting to the tides … scurrying from humans.

But we humans … we don’t listen to ourselves to good. We listen to others … one another … wise men and sages who are not really wise and don’t really think … about anything other than themselves … at our expense.

But you know what?

It’s all good. I like what I’m doing and know that it is going to make a difference to a lot of people. The house I’ve lived in is becoming another kind of home. I know who my friends really are and who just pretends.

But I don’t forget the past. It is what it is. I’ve done what I’ve done.

Tomorrow however, I will be what I will be.