What I'm trying to do

I woke again this morning in an empty hotel room. Just in a different city. I’ve always traveled a lot at Union Mission making regular trips to Atlanta and Washington but have also had occasion to go almost everywhere. So I’m used to waking up alone in hotel rooms.

Over the past few months though I’ve grown accustomed to waking up at home with Goddess snoring beside the bed. Then it’s a bike ride to the Breakfast Club and then to the ocean to start my day. From July until this past week I haven’t traveled anywhere other than a quick trip to Chicago. It’s the longest amount of time that I’ve simply spent at home.

I’m taking a break from the Sabbatical that I’ve been on, returning home tomorrow before leaving again on Tuesday for the rest of the week. Last week was good for me as I’ve felt revived and had good talks with peers who are advising and helping me put together the plans for what I’m doing next.

Then Conner and I hooked up and he and I always have fun. I remember some of what we actually did, but we’ll be together again in a couple of weeks in St. Martin and there will be new adventures setting sail with Captain Morgan and Hania.

Last night was with the kids and Athens friends. It is homecoming at the University of Georgia so we watched the parade and went out to dinner. Afterwards they had other things that they wanted to do so I commanded the room for myself for the first time that I can remember.

Now I sip coffee in silence and contemplate things. I’ve got a couple of friends who are going through life transitions that are just as major as the ones that I am navigating. Both have reached out to me over the past couple of days asking for guidance and telling me what is going on with them. Sadness abounds in these conversations.

I don’t mind listening to them. The other day I was talking to my Mom and we both noted that nobody likes to hear anyone describe things that are wrong in their lives. People just want to ignore bad times because it may prove to be contagious.

Once my friend Frank Stanton asked me how I was doing. When I began to tell him, he held up his hand to stop me from talking and said, “Mike, I was just being nice. I really don’t want to know.”

He was poking fun but I do believe that is how most folks are. They don’t want to know.

So I’m thinking about my friends this morning as they make themselves get through unwanted changes. I think about where I am now, calmer and quieter than I was just a few months ago. I’ve learned who my friends really are and remain surprised at the number who aren’t. I’ve let go of a great deal of pretense that once ruled my persona. I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of my surroundings and linger over them rather than rush pass them. I’ve learned to let things come to me rather than chase after them.

Now I’m trying to reframe the changes that have occurred in my life. I am a big believer that life is a gift that each of us shares and none of us asked for. We don’t know how long we get to keep it or how long it will last. The people in our lives and the things that we do are also gifts and we don’t know how long any of them remain. But one thing is certain … gifts don’t last forever.

People come and people go. Jobs end and adventures begin. I think that the trick it to be thankful for what you’ve had (even if it would be your preference to still have it), appreciate the hell out of what you’ve got (friends, places, things to do), and to do your best to prepare yourself for whatever is coming your way (hopefully better days).

At least that’s what I’m trying to do.

The Drive Home

Conner must have driven me home last night.

I mean to the hotel. At least I woke up in the same hotel room that I had been in the night before. I have no recollection of leaving the French Quarter last night, several blocks away from my hotel, so it must have been Conner who drove. It could have been Jim Withers. He was with us. One of them must have driven me home.

Though we didn’t have a car.

It all started innocently enough.

It was a glorious afternoon in New Orleans. I strolled down to Jackson Square to the Cathedral of St. Louis where I lit some candles for people I love and paid good money to the Catholic Church to do so.

Stumbling outside there was a five piece band with a hot girl bass player. I sat on the steps sipping wine. Savannah and New Orleans are the only cities in the country where you can do that. It is part of what makes them great cities.

Anyway I’m sitting there, enjoying the music, when Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion walk by. They are arguing. In fact, the Lion is cussing Dorothy out. She’s just staring at him as they briskly make their way back to Kansas I suppose. It’s not something that you see every day.

You got to love New Orleans!

Then I made my way to Bourbon Street which was likely mistake number one. I stumbled into a place with a really hot band with a girl singer. They were doing classic rock and were really good. I stayed for several drinks. They were that good!

Stumbling back outside, I wondered where my bicycle was. I can never count on my bike. Oh wait! It’s back on Tybee. Probably getting in trouble!

After that I went back to the band in front of the Cathedral. They were too good to simply leave behind and the crowd was great, the weather nice, the trees in Jackson Square danced to the music, and the bass player was hot.

After an hour or so I made my way back to the hotel. Several Community Health Leaders and I were talking when Conner strolled in. Conner doesn’t walk or rush or run. He strolls, never in a hurry, always calm and in control. Except for that time he passed out in the kitchen on Brant Island in Canada.

Anyway I introduced him to Jim Withers and we were off. Conner immediately got us lost, but he was cool with it. We followed him around until he found a place that he thought he had been to before and we ordered a gumbo feast.

Then it was off into the night for a good time!

Then I woke up this morning wondering who drove me home.

It must have been Conner.

He owed me big time for driving him home last time.

I wonder what happened to Jim?

Waiting In New Orleans

It is hard not to think about my friends Stacy Jennings and Karen Jack when I’m in New Orleans; Stacy because this is her town and Karen because her son Tyler is in school here.

Stacy burst into my life just as unexpectedly as the Saints marched to Super Bowl victory! We’d met but it was a distant knowledge of one another and then through Face Book and blogs and messages to one another this abiding friendship grew deep and fast. We gather together when we can for deep and longing conversations.

Tyler was a baby when we met but his mother Karen and I go way back to the early days of Union Mission. She came on board as the Director of the Magdalene Project eventually taking over financial operations. We became close friends then she moved to Michigan and we touched base from time to time. Then Face Book brought us back together again and we keep up.

I stare out at this magnificent city this morning from the 17th floor of the Loews Hotel where the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is hosting the annual meeting of the Community Health Leaders. I was fortunate enough to win in 2000 and received national recognition and a $100,000 cash award. I gave the money to Union Mission and we ended up buying the property around the Starfish Café with it.

The thing about Community Health Leaders is that we are this fraternity of peers who are out there trying to make the world a better place. It is like a home coming when we gather and of course no one here follows any of the rules.

As soon as the meeting began, Sharon Rohrbach, Judy Bentley and I sat in a corner to talk about the things that we’re doing. Sharon’s getting ready to be on Oprah … again! She was advising me on my career moves. Judy wants me to come to St. Louis to work on a project with her.

Last night this year’s winners were recognized. They are amazing people who are in the trenches of taking health care to people who would never get it otherwise. Dr. Jim Withers opted to skip the ceremony so that he could join a group of New Orleans medical students to go out of the streets and treat homeless people living under bridges or in parks. That’s the kind of group this is.

And Lord knows as I made my way around the city yesterday, New Orleans has its fair share of homeless people! It is hard not to love this city though. The food, jazz, Bourbon Street, voodoo and art tickle the senses constantly.

I’ve made many trips to New Orleans over the years. Most of them had particular missions to them. This time it is different. I’m here with no particular purpose other than I happen to be a Community Health Leader. There will be the opportunity to learn things that the Foundation has orchestrated and many opportunities to network with the other Leaders. I’m waiting on things to come to me even when I’m here. There is no particular agenda except to see what happens.

But then there is Conner. He and I often get in trouble when we’re together. I just got off the phone with him and we’re taking the city tonight. We’re heading back to St. Martin soon together so we need to get in shape for whatever we end up doing there. What better place to do so than New Orleans!

The Smaller Stuff

Atlanta is a perennial traffic jam with skyscrapers and housing divisions built around it. I was sitting in the back of Lucy Hall’s SUV while she and Kim drove me back to the subway station. I stared at the long lines of cars in every direction. Blinkers and headlights and break lights and horns almost make it like a moving version of New York City’s Times Square.

Lucy’s office is near the northern most subway stop and I would be heading to the southern most at the airport. It would take about half and hour which is far better than drive time and there I would sit amidst the diversity of urban culture. Races mixed, multiple nationalities represented, music blaring from earphones … and a collection of people who look …worn out and tired.

I’ve had my share of urban in my life. Eight years in the inner city of Louisville, Kentucky then led to Union Mission in Savannah and the opportunity to do work in most every major U.S. city. I’ve been blessed to visit most of them, many on numerous occasions.

I have my favorites. I love Pittsburgh! The drive through the tunnel in the mountain as you make your way from the airport to the city is an explosion of the senses. One moment you are in a lush green countryside then you go through this tunnel and BOOM …the entire city lay before you. Of course I also have good friends there, one of which who has a hot tub.

New York is always a rush because everything in the universe is there. Talk about subway rides! Talk about wonderful entertainment on Broadway and in little taverns and just on the sidewalk. Talk about poverty like you’ve never seen it! NYC has it all.

Washington D.C. I love it but I probably hate it a little more. It is a wonderful city and I have dear friends there too (though none have invited me to their hot tubs …umm… likely cause they’re all on Capitol Hill). But you see the majesty of Congress and sleeping outside is a man on a subway grate with several empty Soda containers filled with his piss because there are no public restrooms that will let him in. The place is a city of extremes that slaps the senses.

Cleveland is a wonderful place if you hit it on a sunny day. Baltimore is wonderful so long as you stay within two blocks of the river. Cincinnati is fantastic and sin-free (just go across the river into Covington, KY for that). San Francisco is as sweet as it gets, especially if you are standing on Martha Ryan’s rooftop garden and seeing a whole city spill down a mountain into the bay. Buffalo is a trip into what American city’s used to be. And Chicago (How could I leave my extended family at the Breakfast Club out?) has Wrigley Field … nuff said!

All of these places are like anywhere though. They’re just on a grander scale. There are good things and there are bad things. There is rich culture and barren landscapes. There are rich and there are poor. There is happiness and there is sadness that cannot be measured.

I sit in another airport again today on my way to New Orleans, another city that I love and have had wonderful times in. This trip ought to be a hoot because two different worlds will collide. Jim Withers, famous doctor who is changing the world, meets my friend Conner, who orchestrates body waxes. The place survived Katrina and bad political reconstruction … I’m not so sure about this.

When you boil it all down though, wherever you’re at, it all comes own to the same things. We’re trying to find ourselves. We’re trying to get out of relationships or get into them. We love what we do or hate what we do. We are sick or we are well. We’ve paid all of the bills or we haven’t.

And while you may have done some combination of the above, the person next to you has done some other some other collection. We only have ourselves to get one another though.

I see lots more kindness in small places than in large places. Maybe that’s why I love Tybee Island as much as I do. People rally for one another. Sure, there are angels and there are assholes like anywhere else, but there is a kindness that blankets a larger geographic area than in the cities.

I’ve seen lots of sadness in my life and have more tee-shirts than I can possible wear in a lifetime (most of them given to me in urban areas). So I’m drawn to the little things now; a Phone Call from a friend; a Face Book private message from another; text message exchange from someone who cares about me.

So urban is great. This smaller stuff is better.

Taking a Break

From the moment that I left Union Mission in June people began to tell me how successful the next big thing that I do is going to be. Julie was the first, though we were newly divorced but she has always been one of the best cheerleaders ever. I was in such a distraught state over a great number of things that I remember her saying the words but was pretty numb to them.

Then it was my former Board chair Herb. “With your experience and abilities to communicate in so many different ways, you are going to be wildly successful when you decide whatever it is that you are going to do.” I sat there at the table in Larry’s restaurant just staring at him, tired and worn out and not wanting to hear such things.

Even my extended family at the Breakfast Club has consistently brought it up, telling me how excited they are to watch it all unfold. Whenever this happens I look to Johnny O who always has clever responses like “Don’t listen to that crap!” or “F**K this! I’m leaving!” and he throws his money on the counter and storms out. I can always count on Johnny O.

While I’ve pretty much laid low in public since June, a number of people have gotten in touch with me asking if they can go with me, as if I knew where I was going. I say that I’ll get back to them whenever I figure out what it is that I’m doing.

For the most part, I’ve stayed on the beloved back deck writing and thinking. I’ve walked Goddess through the marshes of the Back River to listen to the choir of mussels. I’ve taken my bicycle that sometimes drinks too much to Bernie’s or to Fannies. I’ve made my daily pilgrimage to the Breakfast Club for the communion of coffee. Those have been my days.

And I resolved that I would wait on things to come to me and not go chasing after them in some frantic or panic state. It has been hard work because I have a Type-A personality disorder and am a relentless and driven person when I want something.

But it has worked out. Good things have been finding their way to me. Friends that love me and who I know without any hesitation that I can trust were the first. Followed by the emergence of ideas that are still being formulated but a plan is coming together. A calming of the soul is still taking place as I find myself overwhelmed with the beauty of my surroundings. Then a partner showed up who is strong where I am not and she gives me homework assignments and I call her names.

Then yesterday a friend who I love deeply wrote me “I know you are sabbaticaling … I think I made up that word …but I am so excited for you and watching what is next.”

And I paused.

Throughout this Sabbatical I’ve danced with old friends who had been long lost, had Celtic Christianity continued to say that light is born in the darkness, and began the long hard journey of just being Micheal again. It has been both a terrifying and thrilling walk.

I write this in an airport. I’m taking a break from the Sabbatical for a couple of weeks, heading to Atlanta, New Orleans, and L.A. Consulting work first is then followed by a collection of leaders in health care and then an exploding street medicine movement. I am intrigued of possibilities.

Then I’m going back on Sabbatical again.

Last night I began this break when another gift that I didn’t expect came to me on Shirley’s sad little holy dock. The Milky Way was putting on its nightly show and for the first time in a long, long time I felt peaceful. It is a wonderful way to begin a break from the break that I was taking.

Now as I climb on planes, I am excited a bit to see what is out there.

My Time to Imagine

On the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death I was in New York so we made our way to the part of Central Park across from the Dakota where Strawberry Fields is, the memorial to the former Beatle. It was covered with hundreds of flowers and a large “peace” sign had been formed out of votive candles.

Many hundreds of people were gathered paying homage to him. They were of all ages and many races were represented. Several had guitars and were signing his songs and smiling as lyrics were prayed into the sky.

I remember wondering that this is what it must have looked like after Jesus was crucified. His followers continued to collect telling his stories and singing his songs and remembering. Perhaps it is better stated as Re-membering him; putting it all back together again.

Then we turned to leave and literally ran into Yoko Ono who was coming to pay her own homage to her late husband. She was dressed all in black and was hugged tightly by body guards. Her head was down and I swear that she was crying. We snapped a picture and stepped aside.

Like many people, the Beatles changed the way I thought about most everything. They introduced me to the world in a way that was relevant, unlike Sunday School lessons about ancient Israel where everyone wore robes and threw rocks. John, Paul, George and Ringo gave me my first lessons in love, lust, longing, and losing what you love.

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

The only Beatle that I ever saw was George Harrison during his American concert tour. We all hopped in broken down car and made our way to Atlanta, somehow got tickets with little money, hobnobbed with the Hare Krishna’s and were blown away as the first cords of “What is Life?” opened the show. Throughout the concert, George kept mixing religions so that Krishna gave way to Jesus who bowed out to Buddha.

My Sweet Lord! What was happening? And if you listen to that song as he did it at the “Concert for Bangladesh or at his last concert in Japan, he did it again. It still makes me shiver as he calls all of the known names for God out one after the other to end the song.

“In My Life, there are places I remember…” John sang.

“Yesterday,” Paul chimed in.

“All things must pass,” George answered.

I’ve always been mindful of the passing of things; the milestones of life; leaving home for college; my children leaving home for college; leaving Louisville where I first started the journey to become an adult (I know…many will question that!); leaving my first marriage because I knew that it was time to go only to then be left because she knew it was time to go thereby teaching me both heaven and hell; leaving Union Mission after more than two decades which was long over due.

Watching the crowd at Strawberry Fields that day, they were doing their best to make it like it was. Clapping and hugging or stoically standing there, singing old songs to the tops of their lungs, trying to make it the way that it used to be.

But there’s no going back. If we do all that we find “is old speck house and plywood,” (James Taylor was the first act signed by Apple, so this is a fair inclusion). As much as we may try there is no reconstructing the past or no changing it for the better or the worse.

So what is done is done. It all helped us to get to who we are and where we are, but it is done, never to be much anything more than a memory or a story for the rest of our lives.

The only thing that matters is now and what we plan to do next. That is what I’m trying to do. Or if I can say it as John did, it is my time to …

Imagine.

Selah

I’ve had the joy of an ongoing conversation with a gentleman whom I’ve never met except through Face Book. He began reading my daily musings and has a relationship with my daughter Chelsea as the grandfather of her boyfriend Sam. Will is a graduate of Georgia Tech and is very proud of that and my utter devotion to the University of Georgia has not interrupted these discussions. Our institutions hate one another but then again most institutions, business’ or churches do.

We’ve talked about a lot of things and it is a dialogue that grows richer as we keep at it. The latest installation was yesterday when he summarized all of the things that we’ve discussed over the last few months and offered subjects yet to be explored. And his sign off gave me pause.

He wrote “Selah!”

I haven’t thought of that word in years. I learned it in Seminary where I took several years of Hebrew (which is much easier to master if you take a rum and coke to class in a large Styrofoam cup).

Like everything in the couple of hundred words that make up the ancient Hebrew language, it can mean more than one thing. As a word it means “stop and listen.”

“Let him who has ears hear,” as Jesus put it.

It is also a musical sign used in the Psalms between lyrics symbolizing that a break is needed. Pause! Consider whatever it is that you have just read or sung or done. Contemplate what is coming.

Will’s use of the word came out of nowhere and stopped me dead in my tracks. Selah?

Really?

That is my freakin life right now!

The work that I have done in the past is done. The love that I held in the past has moved on. I talk with my closest friends about what may be coming. My life has hit the pause button as I struggle to understand and put in place what has happened in my past while figuring out the future at the same time.

Selah indeed!

I suppose that I really am standing on holy ground right now spending most of my time on my beloved back deck, the Breakfast Club, Shirley’s sad little holy dock, and at the Bored meeting. These are the places and the people with which I experience Selah. I am stopping and listening; trying to make my ears hear unspoken things; listening for God to sing her songs.

Will has shared with me a life changing experience that he had in his life when he was my age that was just as radical as the things that I am going through now. Aside from telling me about his past, he is also letting me know that it’s all going to be alright. I’m doing the right things at this moment in my life. It is going to get better.

Will is a southern boy, born and bred who was once exiled to the foreign lands of Ohio and New Jersey. He now lives about a half an hour from me and I have no doubt that we’ll get around to making “the word become flesh” and moving from Face Book private messages to dinner and drinks together.

So that is enough. I have to get back to the serious work of pausing and listening.

Selah!

Sitting in the Nether Lands

I read once that the average person falls in love seven times in their life.

It makes sense I guess as seven is the perfect number. Perhaps as we make our way through relationships with the first six we evolve to the place where we love more perfectly.

Of course many people fall in love, get married, stay married though they may or may not stay in love. That is the expectation anyway. Once you get married then you’re supposed to stay married! Dammit! Even if love goes away or it is someone else who makes your heart leap.

Obviously I am not average. I’ve fallen in love countless times, far more than seven, though if I sit here and try to count I start forgetting the names of people that I’ve fallen in love with. Later someone else pops into my heart.

A friend of mine explained to me recently that she believes that there is this perfect lover out there waiting for her. She just hasn’t found him yet. Or vise versa. But she believes that it is someone who will only love her, never have a straying eye, and “be hopelessly devoted to”… her.

She is a romantic. And I am too. I believe those things.

The other day my friend Mitch and I talked as I stood on my beloved back deck and he stood on his. He then followed it up by writing me. “I hate that life has handed you this particular load of crap. I've discovered that life is not really concerned with being fair. We just have to handle it the best we can. In the midst of it, I love that friends can be there for one another - if not in person, then at least by phone.”

I have pondered long over his words.

Certainly life isn’t always fair and every one of us has been dealt loads of crap. And God knows we handle it the best way that we can because that is the only way that we know how to handle it. And thank God for friends otherwise none of us would get through anything.

“I’ve been loved and I’ve been hated, mental health is over rated,” sing the Barenaked Ladies, and I certainly have had my fill of both. And it drives you nuts!

Falling in love makes you crazy and falling out of it drives you insane. And either way we get through it the best way that we know how. Hopefully friends are involved.

I now sit in the Nether Lands (thank you Dan Fogelberg) “cause I want a lover and I want some friends.” And I’m trying to figure out “where do I go when I get to the end of my dreams?”

And I sit on my beloved back deck on this quiet peaceful morning, the sun is shinning on me through the Palm Tree and dancing on Fran’s thousand shades of green. A red sky has turned brilliantly blue. The sea sings in the distance and birds form halos over my head.

My heart is filled with the love of friends who are so wonderfully devoted that they make me thank God for them. And if God is love as the Bible says then our circle of friends is this dance of lovers and it is that dance that gets us through.

Though there is always this one.

Waiting.

And when love happens.

It explodes!

The Only Legitimate Question

Before it was the Starfish Café it was called the Bread & Butter Café. Leigh Calhoun Martin thought of it for a functional restaurant that is home to culinary arts training program for homeless people. It came about because America’s Second Harvest approached Union Mission about doing a work training program in the food industry. Savannah Technical College came in as the third partner.

The Employment & Training Center used to be on Congress Street across from Paula Dean’s “Lady & Sons” restaurant. We had acquired that building with funds from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs but it wasn’t a restaurant. So I went to Atlanta to ask if we could sell the building that they had given us money to buy. After a few hours John Bassett agreed so long as we use the new place for homeless people.

So we sold Congress Street and used the money to buy and renovate the Bread & Butter Café which opened with great fanfare. The program has been nationally recognized many times over and immediately generated great publicity and public support.

Then the first crisis occurred. America’s Second Harvest had a change in leadership and the new Director announced they were pulling out of the program and closing the restaurant.

The next day we announced that we had no intentions whatsoever of closing the café. It was a program that works!

Then we were told that America’s Second Harvest had trademarked the name that Leigh had thought up. Leigh worked for Union Mission. They also told us if we didn’t stop using the name that they would sue us.

I was sharing this news with Bill Berry (not the former drummer for R.E.M. but the other one) and his son Micah who were visiting.

“We got to think of a new name,” I explained.

“I can’t believe it’s not Bread & Butter,” Micah deadpanned.

We all busted out laughing.

So the next day Kurt Schmidt of Union Mission climbed on the roof with a can of spray paint and we changed the name. It got a lot of press but it really made the folks at America’s Second Harvest mad.

The Savannah College of Art & Design then got involved and a month long contest was held to think of a new name. The winner got a free lunch weekly for a month. There were over 300 entries and the winner was “The Starfish Café.”

Local artist Sandy Brannen did murals illustrating the story of the little girl who is trying to save a beach full of washed up starfish by throwing them back into the sea. A man tells her that she can’t make a difference because of the number of ones dying in the sand.

“It made a difference to that one,” she tells him. The murals hang in the Café.

So I tell you that to tell you this. Yesterday my dear friend Dedra called me wanting to talk. Might I really be moving to St. Martin?

Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never been one to be pinned in by other people’s expectations as the above story obviously illustrates.

“We’ll see,” I told her.

A lot of people are telling me what I should be doing these days and I listen and I consider what they are saying or suggesting or demanding. I’m considering right now.

And when we consider we should consider any and every possibility. Why limit ourselves because of what other people think, or rules, or expectations. I think the only legitimate question to ask ourselves is “Why not?”

And whatever it is that we decide to do, for Christ’s sake have fun doing it.

Roma Just Roma

And then there is Roma. She defies description in many ways but this is worth a try.

First of all she is old. I’m not how old she really is but she knows intimate details about the life of George Washington. Very intimate details! She’s up there but she refuses to grow up.

I remember her before she was the Queen. Back then she was the “Yard Goddess” mowing lawns and wacking weeds wearing shorts and bandanas. She would finish up the work in the morning and then meet Johnny O and Judy for lunch and then it was on the way to the daily pool game at 2:00. It was this way for years.

Then the people in charge of the Beach Bum parade lost their collective minds …um, that’s an oxymoron I think because it implies that they have minds … anyway, they elected Roma Beach Bum Queen several years ago. Roma took this as an opportunity to anoint herself Queen of the island. Now everybody calls her Queen Roma.

The daily pool game has gone by the wayside but Roma conducts a weekly tournament at the Quarter on Tuesday nights. She charges you $6 to play though she just sticks the money in her pockets. She has berated me into becoming a regular though in true Tybee fashion I am rarely on time. She lets me play anyway. After I pay.

She claims to be in charge of the daily Bored meeting at Fannies-On-the-Beach though we really don’t pay much attention to her. Well, the people who work at Fannies pay attention to her or she throws a fit disrupting food and drinks being delivered to customers. I’ve watched her run people off and often wondered why Jenny Orr who owns Fannies allows the Bored meeting to be there at all.

Jenny’s response to the daily disruptions? Buy Roma a super large chair for her to sit in on the sidewalk that has Queen Roma written in magic marker on it. Decorate the sidewalk with plants around Roma’s throne and set up one table just for the royal one. The table has a rose on it.

It just makes me want to flotch!

Oh, that’s another thing about Queen Roma. She doesn’t allow cussing at the Bored meeting or the pool tournament. Because she knows that the people of Tybee cannot complete more than three sentences without using cuss words, she made some up.

“Floch!” Roma will scream when she sees something that doesn’t like or stubs her toe.

“Did you see that flotching idiot?” she’ll ask.

We all just go along with it.

Now Roma is into merchandising and sells hats, visors and tee shirts that have “Tybidiot” written on them. Roma made that word up too. O Johnny (not to be confused with Johnny O) lost his mind and had them made for her. Wait, that’s another oxymoron!

I once witness Roma moon the Tybee Island City Council. The entire room gagged and gave her what she wanted. She once came to my house and vandalized my car by decorating it for Christmas including a life sized lit reindeer on top. That fine outstanding publication “The Tybee Breeze” repeatedly honors her as the islands best character.

It’s all gotten out of hand. All of these people are coming to Bored meetings that none of the rest of us knows. She has stared her own Face Book page, “Roma Just Roma” that she tenderly updates everyday. Once, she got mad that we were not paying enough attention to her so she staged her own death. Everyone fell for it except me and she has yet to forgive me for it.

So Johnny O has started a breakaway Bored meeting on the pier that doesn’t involve Queen Roma. We’ll see what happens.

Though I understand that Roma started a romantic affair with Dean who runs the pier (and could pass for George Washington if he takes his teeth out) and now he closes it claiming that it’s too cold to operate. So we all show up at Roma’s flotching Bored meeting.

That’s Roma. Just flotching Roma!

Soul Search

I was already at the hospital so I thought I may as well drop in unannounced on my friend Mary Ann Beil, pilgrim in Celtic Christianity, lover of books, and manager of Ethics. Her office looks and feels like a tiny Chapel in the corner of a great Cathedral. The light is muted and the walls are adorned with prayers, relics and photographs of Saints.

“Hey,” I said appearing in her doorway, wearing a tee shirt, faded jeans and flip flops.

She was just about to take a sip of coffee from a very ornate tea cup when I did this and she jumped in her seat, sloshing coffee on the round talking table that she has in place of a desk.

“HEY!” she bellowed, “this is perfect timing,” and she hugged me tight.

It is hard not to love Mary Ann and I have now for many years.

“Sit and talk,” she commanded. “This is just perfect! Last night while I was reading John O’Donohue and felt that something would be revealed to me today! Here you are! Tell me everything!

So I did. I spoke of green marshes, sad little holy docks, choirs of mussels that sing at low tides, and Fran’s thousand shades of green. Emotion crept into my voice and it shook. Moisture filled my eyes. I talked about lost serendipity, new found friends, and people who love me who magically appear out of nowhere to bring comfort and happiness. I told her stories of lost love, aching in the night, and a lone shrimp boat that refuses to give up. I talked about healing and how long it can take. I reviewed future travel and new partners that are coming to me rather than me seeking them out.

Mary Ann does not listen quietly. She punctuates everything that I say with a “Yep!”, “Ah-hah!” and “Um-hum” all delivered very enthusiastically. Sometimes she slaps the top of the talking table and flashes me the devilish of grins. When I finish talking it is her turn

“You are exactly in the right place! You do know that don’t you? Your whole life and everything that has happened in it was to prepare you for this soul search that you are in the middle of!”

I sit there and wonder how she consistently does this whenever we talk. Once she called me standing in the sunshine of St. Martin and when I told her that I was in a dark place, she screamed into the phone “Good! Roots take hold in dark places. Dead Saviors come back to life in dark tombs! Light explodes out of darkness!”

“You know Micheal,” she continues, “for all of those years your whole life was consumed with the poor, the widow, the orphan and the sojourner…the things that God holds most dear. None of us know how you did it that long. This is your time for you, those of us who love you, and God. You’ve spent decades doing the most holiest of things and now …” she pauses for effect, “after all of that love you’ve given away it is time for you to be loved.”

How does one respond to something like that?

She told me that she had a gift for me. Mary Ann is forever giving me gifts. A large iron cross is in the apartment downstairs. An ornate beaded one is in the Bible my Grandfather gave me. An eagle’s feather rests beside the computer that I write on.

She leaves and returns with a piece of paper. “This is my prayer,” she explains. “My prayer,” she repeats, “I wrote it just for me and God.”

“Give me strength to live another day; Let me not turn coward before its difficulties…let me not lose faith in other people; Keep me sweet and sound of heart in spite of ingratitude, meanness and assholes…open wide the eyes of my soul that I may see good in all things.”

She hugged me tight again. “You are on your soul search Mike. Get it back.”

Then call me.

Take Another Road

The first story in Jimmy Buffett’s first book “Tales from Margaritaville” is “Take Another Road” the story of cowboy Tully Mars. After major changes are forced upon his life against his will, Tully and his horse Mr. Twain, slowly make their way across the country to the Florida Keys and eventually beyond. He rides his pony through the sand and ends up in another place from a different time. And he finds contentment.

I’ve always loved both the story and the song.

A cold front blew across Tybee Island and a brisk wind blows from the north. Everyone is talking about how wonderful the weather is and how terrific it is in the fall.

I am not one of them. Give me warmer weather and a light ocean breeze. There is nothing worse than cold feet!

So I’m thinking about what road I want to take. Some place where the weather suits my clothes which should be minimal. So St. Martin is in my future again.

Conner called me yesterday and is already making plans for the things that we’re going to do. Hania, his wife, chimed in and those tinges of excitement are beginning to bubble. Before though, I have to go to Atlanta, New Orleans and Los Angeles. Oh, and the Georgia/Florida game is in there somewhere.

My geography has been very small over the course of the summer and through September, with a circle that went from my house to the Breakfast Club, the Bored meeting at Fannies, Shirley’s sad little holy dock, and the swing on the beach at the end of 12th Street. And I’ve enjoyed it like I never have in all of the years that I’ve called this clump of sand home!

After a career of making multiple decisions every day, I haven’t been making many lately. I needed a break and like Tully Mars have begun a new journey from my past to the things that lay in my future.

During this break, several things have become clear to me. First was that I really was one worn out, beaten up individual. Thirty years of saving the world on a grand scale took its toll in ways that I had no idea. It’s taken me a while to begin healing.

Then I’ve been learning how to live by myself for the first time ever in my life! In the beginning it was an incredible sense of loss which has now been replaced by quiet and slow motion.

I was a very public persona in Savannah, forever being quoted or interviewed and forever having people say that they loved me or hated me. Now I sit with Johnny O at the counter at the Breakfast Club and celebrating new days with my extended family there. Or I take my seat at the Bored meeting where yesterday we took chalk and marked off the “Nude Section” of the sidewalk. Important stuff!

And after years of relentlessly chasing things and people, now I sit on my beloved back deck and wait on things to come me. It has been a difficult transition but somehow I seem to be pulling it off. A customer sought me out and there is work to be done. Friends that I knew I had and friends that I had no idea who they were showed up. People that I thought I would have seen have disappeared but now I know who my friends are.

So I remain on this Sabbatical for a bit longer although it is getting ready to take another road. Last night in bed I lay staring at the silhouette of Palm trees in the darkness thinking these things. Reaching my hand to the other side of the bed I dreamed of touching new love.

I am ok. The roads that I’ve taken so far have been good ones. The one to college led me to friends that have reemerged. The one to Louisville led me to a career that has been an incredible ride. The one back to Savannah led me to success beyond my wildest dreams. The one to Tybee Island led me home.

Now it is time for another road I think, “any old place, in time or in space, you pick the century, I’ll pick the spot.”

Sad Sundays

I was listening to a Cat Stevens concert the other day and he was introducing his song “Sad Lisa” by saying that he used Lisa as a disguise. The song is really about him and he just wasn’t honest enough to say so.

I thought that to be poignant and have been thinking about it.

What’s wrong with admitting how we honestly feel? Most of us project how we want to be perceived rather than simply be ourselves. How we really are at the moment. It appears to be alright if we’re tired and meet a friend or go out. We may have bags under our eyes and repeatedly yawn and that is alright.

Admitting sadness…well that seems to be something else entirely.

It means that we’re not happy with the way things are. Or who we are with. Or who we are not with. Or what we do. Or what we don’t do.

In the not too distant past I dreaded Monday’s and they began to kidnap my Sunday’s. I would be sitting here and my mind would be focused on all of the things that needed to be done the next day. This was at the expense of my wife.

Now former wife.

She told me recently that I’ve romanticized my recollections of our Sundays together; that I’ve made them into memories that are not true. I would be gearing up to save the world Mondays through Fridays only to collapse on Friday nights. Saturdays were our enjoyable days. Monday kidnapped Sunday.

I wrote a lot about how I hated Mondays. They were sad writings as I look back on them now. I was unhappy with who I’d become and no longer satisfied with what I was doing. Unhappy with the things that I wasn’t doing which was to take her away and do things that we’d never done.

And the bitch is that I knew all of this. I said it to her. I said it to other people. And I had other people say, “Oh you can’t possibly be serious! Look at everything that you’ve got! Look at how popular and important you are! What would we possibly do without you?”

Now I’ve learned that sadness is born when you don’t do the things that you know you need to do. You need to do them for you most of all. Sometimes you need to do them for others but that is rare I think.

I look forward to Mondays now while I dread Sundays. Sunday’s may be romanticized in my head but that is how I want my life to be. Long walks with the one I love, talking and holding hands, and being quiet and thanking God for the touch of her hair, skin and breath. Having wine in bed or watching movies or listening to music. Just celebrating the joyfulness of being where I actually am.

I don’t have that on Sundays. I used to but I gave it away for things that were important but they weren’t the most important things.

My friend Michael Ruffin posts prayers on Face Book every day and most every day I read them. We went to seminary to together and he obviously wants to shatter the record of friends on Face Book because he and I have reconnected after thirty years. Today he prayed:

Sunday is a day that plays a double role.
It is the first day of a new week
It feels like the last day of the old week
As such, Sunday provides us with the opportunity to reflect upon and evaluate the old week and to look forward and pray for the new week.

And that is what Sundays have become for me. The past is sad and I admit that. But I pray for the future. And I believe in it with everything that is within me. And it is a romanticized place. Full of love and friends and happiness and fulfillment.

The Far End of the Black

My friend Jodi introduced me to a song several months ago by a friend of hers, J. R. Richards. The title is the “Far End of the Black”. It has come to be a meaningful gift that she gave me.

It is the story of a man who wishes that he could take care of the one that he loves, but life keeps getting in the way. At the same time he longs for her “to wash the harm from his back.” But the world is doing them both harm.

“In those days when nothing seems right,” he begins and then chronicles a liturgy of everything that is wrong. Yet in spite of it he hopes beyond hope for her. And for him. It is a sad soulful prayer of longing and determination and commitment that in spite of the world being against you, you can survive.

Throughout my life I’ve known people who just expect things to go wrong. I remember visiting a family in a hospital once after the father had fallen off of the roof and broken his back. His daughter was holding his hands, hovering over his face when I entered the emergency room. She was whispering to him, “Dad, we know all of our luck is bad. We’ve survived it before. We will now. We know how to live with bad. That’s all we’ve ever had.”

I remember once my folks took us all to the Florida Keys for a get-a-way. Everyone was excited. Dad rented a boat to take us out on and the motor died. We were stuck in paradise just floating. Dad got frustrated that his perfect get-away with his family was going horribly wrong. “This is just my luck,” he said.

Poor and homeless people have sat across from me for the past three decades and told me everything that has gone wrong in their lives. Unplanned pregnancies, lost lovers, families that fell apart, glorious addictions, mental illness, AIDS, former military who just couldn’t cope without the structure, companies that shut down or laid off…I’ve seen and touched them all.

In my own life, after decades of nothing going wrong, everything seemed to go array at once. Wave after wave of unwanted and unanticipated events hit me time and time again. For the first time, I was losing things and not gathering them up. Now I live alone and wonder what it is that I’m going to do next.

Yesterday morning was the epitome of it all. I had a swollen tightly wrapped leg from a surgery the day before. My car wouldn’t start and I had some places that I needed to be. I learned that things that I’d spent years building may soon be dismantled. I was lonely and sad. Chelsea called needed extra money for school as I sat paying the bills.

My son Jeremy called in the midst of all of this and over the course of two conversations we talked through mutual frustration. I called my daughter Kristen needing her help but called her back later saying that I’d just deal with everything tomorrow. I was sad and tired.

Then my friend Joan called out of the blue and talked to me about how much courage it takes to invest time in yourself, even at the expense of what you’ve got.

At the Bored meeting, I laughed because of tourists from Alabama and Mississippi who thought that everything that we said was funny. If you ever attend a Bored meeting, we are anything but finny.

Mom stopped by to check on her son.

Rebekah who worked with me for many years showed up with wine coolers and ideas about all of the good things that “we” going to do when we work together again.

I texted people that I love to tell them that I love them.

Then late in the evening, with my wrapped and swollen leg on my beloved back deck, I listened to this song.

On the far end of the black,
There is light.
There is light.

And it is you.

Meeting Life's Goals

I am still transitioning and trying to figure it out as I go. It’s hard work.

The first time was during my forth year of college when some Dean summoned me to his office and told me that I had to declare a major. I demanded to know why. He said that I’d already broken the rules by not having declared one already.

“Well, what do I have the most hours in?”

“History,” he replied, “but only by three hours.”

“Really? What’s second?”

“You have a tie for second,” he answered, “Religion and Literature.”

So the next year college threw me out with a major in history with a double minor. This was my first big professional transition.

Then I was a successful eight year career as a professional Christian in charge of the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel in Louisville, Kentucky. Not that we did much that was particularly Baptist. We did generate a lot of press, tremendous growth, amassed money for the place, and had a lot of fun which included creative usage of the baptismal pool. Then the Baptist threw me out and I was transitioning again.

After that it was 23 years at Union Mission where we broke all kinds of new ground. A little tiny homeless shelter was transformed into a multi-campus, multi-million, diverse management company with subsidiaries in housing development, health care, mental health care, and employment services. These things were all accomplished by not doing what we were supposed to do.

In fact I think that most things are accomplished by NOT doing what you are supposed to do. This is how things get created. Creation never happens by doing what you’re supposed to do. That is following. Creating is leading.

Anyway, we created a lot of things that no one else had created, got in the press a lot, won a bunch of awards, helped a lot of people, and tried to have a lot of fun along the way.

It was time for me to move on though so now I am contemplating the next transition. For the moment I am finally living the life that I’ve wanted since I was a child; being a full time beach bum! Well, I’m trying to be a full time beach bum but things keep getting in the way.

It seems that I have obligations with the Street Medicine Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Lucy Hall in Atlanta. All of these people keep emailing and calling asking if I’ll help them raise money, find a job, guide them on how to develop health care, housing, employment and other programs. My Type-A personality disorder means that I spend as much time answering them as I do on the beach or at Bored meetings.

I put on my favorite Jim Morris song (thank you Judi Ross!).

He’s got a life with no distractions
He’s living in his own world
Looking for buried treasure
Hitting on the tourist girls

Now we talking! The people in charge say that the first thing that we’re supposed to do is establish our goals then develop strategies to meet them.

Done!

Dad's Last Gift

I’ve been a runner for 25 years, three to five miles a day. Pretty much every day! It has become a holy time for me, I-pod streaming music into my ears as I’m either on the beach or running the streets of whatever city that I’m in. I see things that I would normally miss and thoughts come to me that never would have. There is a Spirituality to it.

These aren’t the reasons that I started though. My Dad had bad veins and horrible circulation problems. He wasn’t too keen on exercise unless it involved walking to the truck to drive to meet his friends at the pup. The older he got, the worse his circulation issues got.

Knowing this, I started running wanting to avoid these issues. And everything was fine until a few months ago as I was heading out for a run, Bill Berry (not the former drummer for R.E.M. but the other one that I went to seminary with) said, “What’s that on the back of your leg?”

Having never examined the back of my leg I had no idea. I felt the area just above my knee and sure enough there were these purple blackish bumps.

I am my father’s son after all. Damn you Dad! You gave me many wonderful things but you could have kept these!

So I went to see my doctor and she sent me to see a specialist and sure enough, it was confirmed that I am my father’s son. I’ve got the same issues that he has. And there were these clots.

Luckily the consistent running means that I am in much better shape and my veins are good except for where one ruptured in a couple of places and blood was seeping out causing the bumps on the back of my leg. Who knew?

So this morning I had my leg zapped.

First I put on a hospital gown for the first time in years. They still suck! My butt was flashed all over the place as there just isn’t any way to tie those things. Whoever invented these things was one perverse SOB.

In the out-patient operating room, I was initially misled when two nurses prepped my leg from my ankle all the way to my groin area. This was quiet the pleasurable experience and I would pay good money to have it done to me again. Both legs next time! Plus the groin!

Then the doctor came in and put his mask on right off so I wouldn’t recognize him again. He then proceeded to describe everything that he was doing to me as he did it. “This is just a little bee sting,” he said in a sweet voice.

17 little bee stings later I wanted to hit him repeatedly with both fists.

He then cut me, rammed an I.V. tube in my vein, stuck a lazer gun in it and shot it off 43 times. He even counted out loud with each shot.

As he did this it dawned on me that I was paying him for it as I hadn’t met the deductible on my insurance yet so had to give them my credit card for the pleasure of a man wearing a mask shoot me in the leg 43 times. I don’t care what you say the American health care system is screwed up!

“You may get a strange taste in your mouth,” he softly cooed right before my mouth felt like someone had lit a bon fire in it.

Then he was done and left so the nurses, who suddenly were nowhere near as attractive as they had been just a little while ago, could clean me up. I looked at my bloody leg. They wiped it off and then the winches wrapped it from my foot to just below my groin as tightly as they could.

I was ordered to keep it on for 48 hours. Then they had the gall to order me to come back next week so that they can do whatever sadistic pleasures that they conceive of between now and then.

I handed them their now stained hospital gown, happy to moon them as I retrieved my clothes. If I could have found the masked guy, I would have done much more than that!

So, thanks Dad. I’m still glad to be your son but when we hook up again I hope that you’ve been running since we last saw each other. Cause I’m chasing you down for this.

Big Money

“There’s big money in homelessness,” I explained.

“What?” he asked with a look of disbelief in his eyes.

“As a matter of fact,” I continued, “poverty is a multi-Billion dollar industry.”

“Are you nuts?”

“No, think about it. How much money does government spend on helping organizations take care of homeless people? Or people with AIDS (and let me tell you something to quote my friend John, “AIDS advocates are the best advocates!)? Or eliminating hunger?

“Uh-huh,” he said nodding his head.

“And how much does business give to these same organizations through their foundations, charitable giving programs or volunteer efforts?”

“Right,” he thoughtfully said.

“And then there are all the contributions that people make on top of all that! Big donations and change in the poor box in Catholic Church’s throughout the world.”

He sat there nodding his head.

“Add it all together and its billions and billions of dollars that are available every year! I’m telling you, there’s big money in homelessness!”

We figured this out a long time ago.

The way to get to the big money is to become one of the big boys and girls. Become as professional as big business. Act like a CFO until you become a CFO. Keep track of performance. Write annual performance reports and share them with the folks who make “investments” in what you’re doing. Always look for the next opportunity and take advantage of it. Stay in the media. Keep growing.

It is what Lee Iacoca did. It is what Bill Gates did. And Steve Jobs. And all of the giants of industry!

At Union Mission all of those years ago, we began to emulate these principals and we began to grow. I remember when the budget passed the million dollar mark and Jim Piette, a successful businessman and Board member, said that this is a most significant milestone. The first million!

For homeless people.

It didn’t take as long to reach the $2 Million milestone. And in time we got all of the way to $13 Million each year. Big money in homelessness, indeed!

“Every business and every product has risks,” said Lee Iacoca. “You can’t get around it.” And we certainly had ours. But we never stopped in part because of the fierceness in which I believed in the causes.

“The poor will be with you always,” Jesus said. And most folks stop here and tell me that I was fighting a lost cause. But that is only the first half of the verse. The rest of it says SO THAT YOU MAY BE KIND TO THEM.”

It never dawned on me that I would become a CEO or that Union Mission would become a diversified management organization but these things happened.

And I am proud of those years and those accomplishments. Because in spite of the millions that were amassed and spent, in the end, we were just being kind to them.

And there is a great deal of holiness in that.

The Stillness of the Quiet

I’m heading too town this morning to meet with my friend Philip and another friend of his as I begin restructuring the few things about my life that have yet to be restructured. It has me in a contemplative mood as I sit on my beloved back deck listening to thunder roar out over the ocean.

The sunrise was a spectacular show of every color in the rainbow brilliantly painting the sky. Now though the sun has hidden behind a grey blanket of clouds. The air is still and no breeze blows through Fran’s thousands shades of green. Aside from the thunder, all is peacefully quiet.

Over the weekend I had a second reunion with my friends from college and as we talked it became apparent that we are all managing ourselves through major transitions in our lives. I’m orchestrating the Sabbatical that I needed a few years ago and make decisions about the future. One is contemplating retirement. Another is relocating to another town to care for an aging parent.

Transition abounds.

I’ve taken the attitude that I’m waiting on things to come to me. The future will present itself. This is hard work after a career of chasing things and making them happen. Naturally I would be instigating movement.

Now I wait. Today’s meeting is happening because Philip reached out to me. I’ve been invited to be in Charleston tonight because Dr. Jim Withers reached out to me. In another week I’ll head back to Atlanta to do some work because Lucy Hall reached out to me. There are meetings in L.A. and New Orleans that I will be attending because the invitations came to me.

It is an interesting way to organize myself. Some would call it prayer.

I am learning how to live in the moment. For most of my life I was always looking ahead, thinking about what to do next, ever ready to pounce on opportunities that presented themselves. Letting moments pass me by as I looked ahead.

Now I notice the richness of the marsh and the smell of salt in the air. I linger in these moments.

Shirley visits me and we talk under the stars as good friends do and there is enjoyment in the laughter.

Patti slams her cheek into my lips as I enter the Breakfast Club and I appreciate the tenderness of friends.

Lunch dates appear out of nowhere and an afternoon with no plans turn into rich and fulfilling hours.

The thunder rolls and somewhere life is violently exploding and people are trying to cope through it.

But not here. I am not a part of that.

I sit in the stillness of the quiet.

And I wait.

Shaking my Reputation

I am learning that becoming a full time beach bum is more difficult than I could have ever imagined. It seems that I have a reputation that I just can’t shake. So as I stroll down the beach, cleverly hidden behind sunglasses and a baseball cap, I see this woman running towards me.

“Micheal!” she screams even though she is only a couple of feet away from me. I pull the buds from my ears and Bob Marley disappears.

She is older and wearing a one piece leopard skin bathing suit that almost contains her breasts. She is a professional tanner because skin is the dark, dark brown that comes from spending time worshipping the sun on a daily basis. Her long hair is frosted some color that I could never have imagined.

“Micheal,” she begins, “I am so glad to run into you. I need your help.”

I am wondering how she could have possibly have recognized me? I wasn’t wearing my normal UGA baseball but to throw everyone off had on the official cap of the Bored that has “Official Tybiodit” written on it. On the back it reads “Tybee Island Bored meeting”. The lady has powerful discernment abilities.

I have no idea who she is.

“Micheal, my son is hooked on crack. Tell me what to do.”

The weariness that I am running away from crept up my spine and rested on my shoulders.

“Aw Baby I’m sorry,” I say giving her a hug.

I call women Babe or Baby a lot. I got it from my friend Herb McKenzie. I used to call everybody “Luv” like I was one of the Beatles or something but Herb got me using his phrases. It is not politically correct and can get you in a lot of trouble but I don’t care. I probably use these words because they can get me in trouble.

“Babe, I don’t run Union Mission any more. Frances Carter does. But this is what you should do if, and the “if” here is big, HE IS ready to do something about it. You can’t quit for him.”

Her eyes grew moist and I didn’t know what to do so I gave her another hug. I think that God created hugs for when words won’t work.

I tell her who to call and what to as; the things that I would do if I was still in charge of anything. But I am not.

I am a beach bum dammit! On a beautifully glorious beach bum kind of day! With a cooler full of ice cold beer right over there! And Bob Marley is patiently waiting on me to return so that he can explain that he shot the sheriff! And there are girls in bikinis everywhere!

But the tears roll down her cheeks and a lump rises in my throat. So I hug her again as the sunshine falls down all around us.

Up On the Roof

Back at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel, when the five little old ladies who comprised the congregation lost their collective minds and “called” me to be the minister, I think that they knew things were going to be different. Nothing about my days as a professional Christian were normal.

Of course, neither was the calling. Buna Wynn, one of the five little old ladies, had a butcher knife in her apron, a Maxwell House coffee can in one hand and a large black Schofield Reference Bible in the other. At first I told them no. I wasn’t minister material.

Buna seemed to take this personal and loudly told me that I sure as hell was taking it. Then she gave me a death stare.

Now I am a 23 year old first year seminary student who was there primarily because I’d followed my friend Guy Sayles to Louisville (yes folks, it is all Guy’s fault). I stood there staring at Buna who was staring at me with her nostrils flaring. I processed the information.

If I declined the call to become their minister, I was likely going to be spit on (hence the Maxwell House coffee can), knocked over the head with a 27 pound Bible, or stabbed. I was beginning to understand how the Lord works.

So I said yes and that is how my professional career was born.

I tell you that story to tell you this one. We did crazy things at Jeff St. as it was called. The baptismal pool was a bathtub and party central (whoever invented baptismal pools is one of the greatest people ever. I mean they have so many functions! If you’ve never made out in one then you really haven’t lived!)

We also had radical worship services. Anything went! One Christmas we put Santa Claus on trail for selling out and making the birth of Jesus a commercial racket. At Easter we would cover all of the windows in the Sanctuary so that the place was pitch black. We were just as likely to have the organ play “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones or “He Arose!” Then the paper would be torn from the windows and “Celebrate Good Times” would play and we would dance in the aisles. We closed once a year to go on retreat. Homeless people lived in Sunday school rooms.

We had fun.

At least we had fun until the Baptist at corporate headquarters in Atlanta got wind of everything that we were doing. We attracted a lot of press and kept getting in the newspaper. My all time favorite headline was “Baptist Minister calls gay man the most Christian person he knows” or something like that. That was the fasted I’d ever been summoned to Baptist Headquarters in Atlanta.

But the most holy place in the three story inner city building was not the Sanctuary, or the baptismal pool, or the social hall where we really spent all of our time. Nor was it the Sunday school rooms that homeless men found sanctuary in.

It was the roof.

Down the hall from the two-bedroom apartment my family lived in was a ladder that led to a hatch that popped open. And at night we were get chairs from the social hall and hand them to one another and go up on the roof (and yes God had provided James Taylor’s version of the song at this time just because we were blessed people).

And the stars put on a show for free. And the Ohio River rolled by right over there. And on hot nights the stink of the Louisville Stock Yards hung blood in the air. Clarksdale, the housing project, was across the street and some nights it seemed like the whole damn city was crying.

But holiness was every where. And we would grow quiet and just take it all in. The Spirit of God blanketed us.

Maybe the reason that I spend so much time on my Beloved back deck or Shirley’s sad little holy dock or on the beach is that I’ve never forgotten being up on the roof. With God.