Catching Magic

Sometimes in life, you're part of something special and, if you're lucky or blessed, you know it as it's happening.

There's not a single Sunday that passes, when at least for a second or two, I don't remember Jeff Street.

It was the first time I was part of magic and, once something so Holy touches you, well ... you never forget.

Jefferson Street runs through the middle of downtown Louisville, Kentucky where, in those days, housing projects and homeless people lined the road ... the stench of slaughter rose from the Stockyard ... and the banks of Ohio River was a garbage dump.

In a building called a Church, with Bars on the windows to keep people out ... so homeless people slept in the dumpster in the gated parking lot ... or huddled in the doorway on frigid winter mornings ... I was a lost 22 year old Seminary student inexplicably hired by the Baptists to be the minister.

I wasn't much of pastor but I was cocky as Hell, had a heart for people sleeping in dumpsters and little old ladies who still believed in God in spite of the horrors they were living through.

"We can change the world," I said.

I don't know why ... or how ... but others believed too ... Bill Berry ... Claude Drouet ... Beth Bell ... Diane Reel ... Sonny Broughten ... Chester Fawbush ... Pouche ... Mitch Wesley ... and my little boy Jeremy ... my little girl Kristen.

And maybe God believed too because, for a little while anyway, we did change the world.

It's hard to recognize when it's happening, you're too busy living life ... changing diapers, going to class and washing dishes to make money ... but the moment it's over ... you know.

You know because you ... miss it.

But you never forget it.

I've been to lots of Churches since then ... frequent one in a Bar now ... but what I'm really doing is trying to recapture the magic of what happened then ... when for a little while anyway ... the Kingdom came on earth as it is in Heaven ... and we did change the world.