Probably intending to write 'Good Morning" she left out one of the letters so it came through as "God Morning" and it immediately sent my mind racing to the past. In front of the inner city church in downtown Louisville was a sign that read:
The Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel
God is Love
Except someone had picked up a rock and thrown it so perfectly that the "O" was taken out of "God" leaving just the "G and the D" which made me laugh like crazy. Seriously? GD?
I showed up that morning to play guitar during the service because there was no one to play anything else. There was an organ and a piano but there was no one to play them. The congregation was comprised of five little old ladies who didn't know they needed a man to be a church in good standing with the Baptist. Some prisoners from the Transitional Center were also transported over by a guy with a gun. Completing the gathering of believers was a few Seminary students who believed that God loves the poor most of all (which is what the Bible says but God apparently has a poor way of showing it because the poor never go away. They just stay poor).
I sang "I Saw the Light", the old Hank Williams song. An old lady named Buna Wynn stood up when I finished, spit in the Maxwell House coffee can she held in one hand ... with a Scofield Reference Bible in the other ... and yelled "DO IT AGAIN!"
She also had a butcher knife stuck in the apron she was wearing.
When a woman spitting tobacco carrying a butcher knife requests an encore ... you damn well give her one.
So I did.
Eight years later I left that church and my career as a "Professional Christian" came to an end. The work with poor continued for decades longer. I did Christian things ... religious things ... I just wasn't paid for it anymore.
I always liked the story of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness. First of all, in Hebrew forty days means ... a long time. It could be four minutes or forty years. Whatever it was it seemed like a long time to Jesus. Then he was tempted and decided wanted to be when he didn't want to be when he grew up. That led him to what he did want to be. Then everything else became ... Godly.
For the past year or so ... I've been in the wilderness. In Hebrew, one of the many things that the word can mean is ... "God's speaking place." So God and I have done a lot of talking. She's a really good listener.
It is a God morning.
I'm learning to trust and not have to be in charge. I'm learning to take my time and not rush ... for minutes or forty days or forty years ... it takes a long time.
I've done a lot in my life and I have more to do ... I just don't know what it is yet ... well ... some of it I do. Every day I seem to know a little more.
When this life of mine started ... I had no idea. Then I ended up in college with the right group of people at the right time. Afterwards it was Seminary and the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel with another group of right people at the right time. Then it was Union Mission for a longer run and for the most part the players remained the same. Then it was Wilderness time again until... there was this other group ... smaller ... but the right ones ... at the right time. And there is this one.
The wind blows outside and leaves dance. Goddess lay on the beloved back deck enjoying colder weather that I do not like. It is the time of Advent ... the coming of God. I can feel it though there is no tree in my house ... decorations or carols singing. Just on this morning ... God.
