When I Grow Up

During my last Semester in Seminary, they did a magazine of how great the place was and who they thought the great up and coming great "Preachers" were.

I was one.

There was a picture of me, wearing blue jeans and a corduroy jacket, dark shirt and sock tie. My hair was long and I had a full beard. I looked part Cowboy/part Hippy. I was talking to a homeless guy and appear very serious.

It's a black and white photograph though every other picture in the magazine is in color. There is an image of Bill Berry, not the former drummer for REM but the other one, looking pious and holy as he kneels in a tiny prayer closet. (Seriously, it was a closet under the stairs someone stuck a Bible on a stand with a place to kneel. The Baptist are serious about their prayer!)

Bill later confessed it was a poised picture. He was graduating too and they thought he would amount to something because he'd won the Clyde T. Francisco preaching award and looked like Neil Young. He didn't do all that praying. That was public relations. It was poised. But they always liked Bill best.

I'm not saying I was discriminated against but that was one happy place when I graduated.

Anyway, I went on to have a great run as a "Professional Christian". I got invited to a lot of cool churches, ate a lot of food on Wednesdays, was a speaker at the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans and drank beer out of plastic red tea glasses like everyone else because we didn't want anyone to know we were drinking.

I was successful but as I turned 30, I didn't want to do it anymore.

The Baptists were again very happy about this turn of events.

For the next 23 years I worked transforming a homeless shelter in a multi-million company. We developed housing, health care, employment services, opened a restaurant and a Farmer's Market. I got invited to a lot of cool places, stayed in nice hotels, drank wine out of wine glasses and was in the paper a lot. I won awards, got asked to serve on the Chamber of Commerce Board and was a member of the CEO Council.

I was successful but in my early 50s, I didn't want to do that anymore.

A lot of people of all faiths led by Jerry Rainey, the Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous, were extremely happy by this turn of events.

Then I wanted to be Jimmy Buffett but the job was already taken.

My friend, the very famous Dr. Jim Withers, asked me to him with the International Street Medicine Institute. We went to a lot of cool places, squatted under some of the finest bridges in America which also double as housing (aren't you glad your taxes go to build bridges so people can live under them) and visited a lot of hospitals. My main job was to fight off all of Jim's groupies.

Then it was time to move on again though Jim wasn't especially happy with this decision.

I think I finally understand the problem.

I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

There is no doubt whatsoever I will be successful at it given my track record!

If only I knew what it was.

Time to get to work on it.