There's a story I want to tell at Bar Church this week so I went looking for it.We don't preach at Bar Church. There's far too much preaching in the world already! Do this ... don't do that ... most preaching today is a bad sign. So we stay away from it. We do tell stories though and I have a particular one in mind for this Sunday.
Confidently I stroll to the book shelve and retrieve a book full of stories I'd written over two decades ago. Flipping through it, the story isn't there!
Lots of other stories are ... people, places and experiences I've completely forgotten so I linger reintroducing myself to episodes once significant enough for me to include in a book.
But the story I want isn't there.
I grab the book after that one and flip through it, repeating the experience, reintroducing myself to people and things long forgotten and not finding the story I'm want.
Perplexed, I stare out of the window, recalling writing the story ... "At 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon, after being away all weekend, the phone won't stop ringing when all I want to do is rest, so I angrily answer," is how it starts.
I remember writing that.
"It must have been for a Newsletter," I tell myself. For two and a half decades, I wrote stories each month for Union Mission's Newsletter to raise money. A return envelope was included in the 8 page epistle and several thousand dollars came back to us inside.
I kept every Newsletter we ever published in black notebooks but I lost them in the divorce so Union Mission still has a boatload of MY STORIES.
Strolling to the Beloved Back deck to bask in the sunshine I fight to recall what's next.
"Rev. Elliott, Mr. Von Schramm has died and you need to make arrangements for the body," someone explains when I answer the phone.
"Who's Mr. Von Schramm?" I ask.
"You should know," a Hospital Social Worker says, "he's listed you as next of kin."
"I don't know anybody named Von Schramm," I snap and much to her dismay hang up.
Then in the middle of the night, perhaps because of a dream, I wake and sit up bolt right in bed and remember ...
That's how the story I can't find begins.
"Well," I say to myself, "I'm just going to have to conjure the rest back to life."
And I make myself remember.
It's funny. I've got boatloads of stories written in books and blogs but the one I want is a lost one, likely sitting in a dusty notebook I no longer own, if it hasn't been thrown out with the rest of the past.
I don't know why it popped into my head, thinking about Bar Church and how it's a good story, one that may be useful to others, had obviously been helpful to me and refuses to die ... even if I can't find it.
It brings itself back to life, appearing out of nowhere, demanding to be told ... to raise Mr. Von Schramm from the dead and now very much part of me again.
I'm not sure why yet.
Maybe I'll find out at Bar Church this week.
