Christmas Cards

Mail isn’t delivered on Tybee unless you pay off elected officials or have some type of dirt on them for blackmail. Sure there are people with mailboxes and they get their mail delivered but it is surely another sign of corrupt government.

Most of us have to drive to the Post Office and retrieve our mail from boxes. It is a gathering place I suppose and a lot of people retrieve their mail every day at 10:00 when there is no parking whatsoever. But folks lean on the tables inside and chat or sit inside their car, open their mail and spend twenty minutes reading it. It’s federal property so no body can do anything about it

I get my mail every week or so. That way the bad news is normally offset by good news and it seems that there is something very Zen and Buddhist about doing it that way.

Yesterday I had to leave the island anyway, and the Post Office is about a mile from where I live and it really is a pain to go that far just to get mail, so I stopped. Sure enough the parking lot was full and people were mulling around everywhere both inside and out. Many people sat in their cars reading their mail. My friend Kenny had set up a grill and was selling hot dogs.

“In this economy, you gotta do what you gotta do,” he said as I walked passed. Tybee’s just not like a lot of places.

It took me twenty minutes to pry my mail out of the box and another ten to convince Kenny that I didn’t want a hot dog. Then I was in Savannah for things that had to be done and then lunch with Leigh who used to work with me many years ago.

Back home I dumped all of the mail on the big table because it wouldn’t have fit on the small one. Then I ignored it for several hours. Goddess took a couple of pieces and chewed them up and I didn’t care.

Finally I fixed a drink and stood over the mail. A heavy sigh left my chest. I used a verb followed by a pronoun. The pronoun was “me”.

Then my Type-A personality disorder took control and I arranged the mail into piles; Bills, Professional correspondence, Personal stuff, and Junk. I threw the junk away without opening it. The professional correspondence was laid in order beside the computer so that I could respond to it … whenever that happens. The bills were stacked beside the computer too.

Then it was time for the personal stuff. “Tis’ the Season” so there were a lot of Christmas Cards. I stared at how they were addressed and they fell into two categories: “Rev. and Mrs.” or “Micheal”.

It gave me pause. There are those who know and there are those who don’t; those who care and those who are oblivious.

I left the mail with my drink in hand and stood staring at Fran’s thousand shades of green. It is cold outside and while I hate it, Goddess loves it wearing her golden fur coat. She is lying on the beloved back deck and the wind blows her hair. Brown leaves cover the wood which somehow transforms the deck into a different kind of beauty.

For as long as I can remember, Christmas was this incredible flurry of things that I had to do. There were events or parties every night. The Chamber of Commerce is gearing up for the political season so there were lunches and breakfast meetings. At Union Mission there were holiday gifts to plan for a thousand people. And for about a three week period once each year it seemed everyone in the universe cares about the poor.

Then there were all of those non-poor who had nothing to do on Christmas so they wanted to do it for the poor; to volunteer to cook or serve or sing. Or parents who were trying to raise their kids right by showing them that there are people who have nothing on Christmas day while they have every single thing that they asked for.

Fran’s thousand shades of green danced in the wind. Goddess came inside and nudged my leg wanting me to scratch her butt. A Christmas carol played over XM radio.

I walked to the table and got all of the Christmas cards.

And I threw them away.

A Breeding Ground for Groupies

“Do you miss it Mike?” Shirley asked me as we sat at her kitchen table last night.

A last second invitation turned into a long conversation about everything from gossip of various public people to what happens after you die. Her question was about Union Mission.

“No,” I quickly fired back. “I don’t. There are some people I miss and there were some perks that I enjoyed but I should have left long before I did.”

“You don’t look like you miss it,” she thoughtfully replied. “You seem to finally be enjoying yourself. You had been through so much but you are certainly different now than you were then.”

I am no longer that guy.

I’ve worn a tie once since May. It was in late June and I had just returned from St. Martin. The occasion was an awards dinner honoring “Fifty men making a difference” and I was one. There were also three special awards distributed by an African-American organization.

Keller Deal and I thought it would be funny if we fielded an “All White” table to ensure integration and sure enough we stuck out like a sore thumb. Joe Driggers sat with us. At the end of the night, I was honored with one of the special recognitions and because this was the last time that I was representing Union Mission there was a standing ovation.

On the stage I was handed a plaque and inscribed on it was “Rev. Micheal Elliott, Former President Union Mission.” I cracked up, jumping off the stage and ran to Keller so that she could see it too. She burst into laughter and we just stood there while people clapped giggling and having our last Union Mission moment together.

Joe Driggers couldn’t stand it so he had to see what we were laughing at. When he did he gave a sympathetic shrug of a shoulder, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re a has-been.”

Since then I haven’t been to anything that didn’t revolve around a Beach Bum’s existence. The Breakfast Club, the beach, the Bored meeting, Bar Church, the Beloved Back dock, Shirley’s sad little holy dock, Johnny O and Judy’s daily “whine and cheese” and Friday nights in the “combat zone” with my drunken bicycle to listen to Sam Adams and Gordon play.

Sure I did go to New Orleans (which is a trip that Conner and I cannot reconstruct in our minds), Atlanta, L.A. and Pittsburgh but they do not count because I was taking a Sabbatical from the Sabbatical when they occurred.

And sure Rebekah now breaks into my house after I’ve double locked the doors to keep her out carrying calendars, pens, papers and deadlines that she shoves down my throat. (I am thinking of training Goddess to be an attack killer to see if that keeps her away! If I didn’t know she has my best interest at heart I might!)

Though let’s be honest. None of that is important. What is important is what happened this morning at the Breakfast Club! Of all of the Beach Bums Johnny O is by far the best dressed. I show up in tattered running shorts and a tee shirt with a hole under the arm.

Everybody who works at the Club looks like they are professional Dumpster Divers.

Johnny O shows up in a velvet sweater vest, a plaid shirt underneath, slacks with creases, AND SOCKS! As you might imagine he has his fair share of groupies.

It was bound to happen. A couple of weeks ago one stooled up sitting next to Johnny O who was sitting next to Whitley who was sitting next to me. While we are sipping coffee, discussing this week’s Sunday School lesson and developing our top ten list of TSA employees that we want to “pat us down”, this groupie slides his hand down Johnny’s thigh.

We’ve been friends for almost a quarter of a century but I’ve never seen Johnny O eyes get that large while he attempted to shallow the coffee he had just sipped. Of course as Chaplain of the Breakfast Club he came to me for counseling and I absolved him from the fleeting moment of joy that he received from the experience.

We both thought it was over.

But this morning, aforementioned groupie showed up again and sat next to Johnny O who sat next to Whitley who sat next to me. Johnny O was so sharply dressed that everyone who worked at the Breakfast Club went to the back room. We were discussing “world peace” I think, when it happened again. Aforementioned groupie slid aforementioned hand down aforementioned thigh.

Johnny O’s aforementioned eyes grew large again.

All of that to say, I may be a “has-been” but I thank God that I am not Johnny O wearing sweater vests and slacks with creases for coffee at the Breakfast Club because that is a breeding ground for groupies.

Family Fun

“The wounds have healed but I marvel at the scars,” I wrote in response to a dear friend.

“You are continuing what you have always done since I've known you; living out your spiritual journey in public. Whether that is courageous or dangerous is up to you to determine,” he wrote.

Even with the cryptic ending, I liked reading this.

A lot of people hide from the things that they don’t like or that make them uncomfortable. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never been one of them.

So this is a story that I’ve never told before.

When I was a small kid my Mother would pick me up and sit me on the kitchen table in Port Wentworth, Georgia of all places. Then she would look me dead in the eye and say, “You know that you’re going to be great. You are! You are going to do great things!”

And I can remember sitting there, feet dangling below, blues eyes looking at blue eyes, and nodding my head up and down. As I write this I can feel those feelings. I am perhaps seven or eight. But she did it time and time again.

Of course this is from a Mother who did great things. She busted down the doors of sexism at banks, humbling the men she worked for, and shattering record after record. As I make my way around Savannah today people still say to me, “That’s your Mom?” before launching into stories of things that she’d done.

I get it from my brother too. David and I had different sets of gifts but the one that we share is competition. I learned that from him. He was an incredible athlete and we would spend hours in the back yard trying to out do one another. Depending on which particular way that we were trying to humiliate one another we were relentless about it.

And David taught me to fight like hell to win. Against all odds! no matter how far down you happen to be. You can always pull it out! Victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat.

Always bring tarter sauce!

Angi, Age to me, and me were full of mischief. My baby sister is five years my younger but we’ve had this closeness. Age has always been determined. She knows what she wants and then she goes and gets it. She also hates rules and boundary lines. Over the years I’ve watched her do unconventional and crazy things. Just like me. Looking back we encouraged these things in one another.

Dad taught me laughter. He struggled over many things but laughing wasn’t one. “Never take it too serious,” is what he told me though he always did. So when things weren’t going his way he had this innate ability to laugh at it all. There is a thin line between laughing and crying and Dad lived on that line.

He passed it on to me.

A few years ago I was at a black tie something in downtown Savannah and Herb McKenzie and I were talking. Herb was the Chairman of the Union Mission Board of Directors at the time. Paul Hinchey, President & CEO of St. Joseph/Candler Hospital and I were having a row with one another at the time in the press that he was winning and I wasn’t looking all that good.

I handed Herb the glass of wine that I was having and said, “OK, time to go to work.”

I left him standing there and strolled over to Paul and his entourage (he always has one) and he can smile and shake hands with more enthusiasm than anybody I’ve ever met. So we did and we chatted and we promised to do things that neither one of us had any intention of doing.

Then I returned to Herb who handed me my glass of wine and said, “I can’t believe you did that? How did you do that? I would never have done that?”

“It was fun,” I remember saying.

I got it from my family.

Half of a Christmas Tree

In John Grisham’s book “Skipping Christmas” a couple tries to do so and almost succeed until they discover that there is no avoiding the holiday and if you try, it will force itself into your life anyway. For the first time in my life I’d just assume skip it this year.

In times gone by Christmas was huge in this house. Two trees were set up one with white lights and one with colored ones. Manger scenes were scattered everywhere. White lights adorned the Red-tips in the front yard. Christmas music played constantly.

Last year was the swan song of it all. I decorated the tree for the first time by myself because I wanted it to be a surprise. It was I guess but there was little joy in the world. We’d taken to going to St. Martin for the actual celebration so Christmas was white sand, blue skies and aqua-blue Ocean. And we did again and that was the last time that I was part of … whatever it was we had become.

So going through the motions of putting up a tree this year just didn’t seem all that appealing since it is a celebration of the anniversary of what used to be. It’s not like Goddess is going to especially appreciate it. But my Mom was determined and used every one of a Mother’s manipulative ploys to guilt me into doing it. So yesterday I did.

It was melancholic and “Christmas time is here” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” alternated with Wyndman Hill’s “Snow is lightly falling” as perfect background music. It was so sad that Goddess teared up.

So I drug out the tree and the box of ornaments (there used to be boxes of them). I set up the tree and got it all ready then plugged it in. Half the lights worked. I shook my head and told myself, “Well isn’t that apropos!”

Then I opened the box and inspected what was left and what was missing. It took me a long time.

I started with the one that I have always started with. When I was a kid my Mom brought home this kit of wooden “Charlie Brown” ornaments that needed to be painted. Angi, David and I sat around the kitchen table in Port Wentworth giving complete attention to painting them and then, once dried,” hanging them on the tree. I don’t remember how I ended up with “Snoopy sitting on top of a snow man” but it is the one from my childhood.

Next was one that my aunt made out of one of my Grandfather’s ties. Then a Celtic cross that Mary Ann Beil gave me and an ornate one that Susan Watts gave me. Then everything else was one half of the places where we used to go together.

“I should just decorate half the tree,” I said to Goddess at one point. “Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Someone was pounding on the door so I walked down the stairs and there stood Chuck Courtenay. He is a musician who has raised musicians and now performs in nursing homes and at Hospices. My favorite story of his is at a Hospice when a dying man asked to sing the song that he and wife loved. Chuck launched into “I can’t get no satisfaction” and the dying man cried and sang to the top of his lungs. The nurses came flying into the room to see what was wrong, saw the man crying and singing, and joined in.

What a beautiful way to die.

We’ve been friends for many years. He was staying in the apartment and we met Johnny O and Judy for the lighting of the Christmas bush (Tybee obviously can’t afford a tree in this economy), then we made our way for dinner and drinks and talked into the evening. Carols were being sung and stockings were hung in the bars. Johnny O and Chuck told old stories and I told Judy about the Christmas tree.

When I got home there were texts from what used to be. I said what I needed to say. I read what needed to be read. Then I sighed and looked at the tree.

I grabbed my I-pod and found Jim Croce. “Snowy nights and Christmas lights, icy window pains; Make me wish that we could, be together again.”

Then I decorated the other half of the tree.

Sir Henry Whitaker

After spending the day in Savannah and getting home in mid-afternoon Goddess was dying for a walk. She jumped up and down like a monkey-humper ready to go. Because of an early morning meeting followed by others, she’d had a quick walk and then I was off. She is accustomed to more.

She’s hard not to love when she’s like this so I grabbed the leash from the top of the fridge and off we went. It was the same path, take a right out of the front door and stroll to the marsh. Hang a left until we get to the next left where Shirley lives. There is a thicket there that begins the boundary of Goddess’ playground and in the summer there are rabbits in it. Goddess will slow down to a hunter’s craw, stealth, and silent. And oblivious to the face that I’m walking as normal. The rabbits hear me and dash to the thicket. Goddess chases and never wins.

The playground ends at Shirley’s sad little holy dock. Lately, because there is no traffic this time of year and Goddess loves to run, I’ve taken to throwing her leash up in the air when we get to the beginning of the turn and say, “Go!”

She takes off for the thicket. Then she runs in a dead heat to the sad little holy dock and only then does she look back to see where I am. She waits until I get there and then she jumps on the dock, I follow, and we make our way to holiest of holies where the choirs of mussels sing.

Yesterday was different though.

We turned the corner, I threw the leash up in the air and said, “Go!” and Goddess took off for the ticket. Then she turned and looked at me before taking off for Shirley’s house. It is an unspoken rule that she cannot cross the road and normally I just make this sound “Psifff” and she stops and waits.

But not yesterday! She made a bee line to the porch and stood there. I yelled and cussed but she paid me no attention. She stood there, nose to screen, looking.

For as long as I’ve known Shirley, I’ve known her cat Henry Whitaker, a fat, white ball of fur. The cat had an amazing voice and had long transcended the ability to meow. Henry Whitaker could moan. Beckon. Make cat calls. And never be in a hurry about any of it.

Many days Goddess would stand on one side of the screen, tail waging and hyper as she can be staring at Henry Whitaker who was completely unconcerned that there was a dog in her face.

Finally I walked over and grabbed her leash and drug her away. We finished our walk and back at home I fired up the computer and learned that Henry Whitaker had died.

I immediately looked at Goddess and asked “How did you know?”

A few weeks ago I had dinner at Shirley’s house. We swap back and forth hosting one another or going out. This time we sat in her kitchen and ate flounder and just talked. Fireworks went off at one point outside and we decided we’d rather just sit there and talk. Of course Henry Whitaker was there.

I remember stroking him once and thinking about a song from the musical “Cats” by Andrew Lloyd Webber; “Gus: the Theater Cat”. “His coat’s very shabby, he’s thin as a rake, and he suffers from palsy which makes his paw shake. Yet he was in his youth the smartest of cats…”

That was the last time that I saw Henry Whitaker.

So I immediately called Shirley because I know all of the ways that Henry Whitaker got her through bad times and celebrated good times too. Goddess gives me that so if you have unquestioning loving friends like that … well then you’re very lucky.

Then I got up and put the lease back on Goddess. “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go say bye to Henry Whitaker.”

So she looked again at the porch. Then we went to the sad little holy dock and said prayers together. For Shirley. And for Henry Whitaker.

Who am I really?

My friend Angela wrote that there never seems to have been “a boring moment in your life until now.”

It is certainly true that not much about what I’ve done and how I live has been boring. I’ve been part of some magical efforts to make the world a better place, often in trouble with the powers that be, and on a spiritual journey that led me to some of the holiest moments imaginable. I have also been blessed with this collection of friends who sustain it all.

Though there is nothing boring about “right now” either. In many ways it is more frightening and difficult that building health care centers out of nothing for homeless people or getting the “elect” of Washington and Atlanta to understand common sense solutions.

There are always these moments in the middle of the night when I am suspicious about myself and what I’m doing. Society doesn’t except me to stop and take time for myself. I should be working and working harder at …doing what others expects me to do.

Once my friend Bill Berry (not the former drummer for R.E.M. but the other one who went to seminary with me) and I visited Gethsemane, the Trappist Monastery in Bardstown, Kentucky. Trappist monks take vows of silence so that they can devote their entire heart and minds on listening for God to speak.

There is a tradition where the monks leave their shoes outside of the Chapel door when they enter. As Bill and I made our way towards the Sanctuary we saw all of these sandals, boots, and tennis shoes that were neatly placed beside on another. Inside the old monks sat on pews and chanted while the younger ones prayed on their knees.

Their entire lives were lived behind the walls of the Monastery. There was part that was open to the public and then there was part that was just for the monks. Of course that just meant that we had to see what was hidden from everybody else so Bill clasped his hands together, I placed my foot it in and he heaved me over the wall.

I landed on two monks who were making their way to the Chapel. Both broke their vows of silence at the same time.

I tried to explain that God had sent me from heaven and they just laughed as they led me out.

The point being that I try to live every moment to its fullest, to seek what others say can’t be found, and to go wherever I need to discover what is hidden from me. For the past several months this has meant going deep inside of myself and exploring what is there.

Who am I really?

I’ve also had this circle of friends who have maintained some vested interest in this pilgrimage and a few have celebrated the things that I’m finding. Of course, most tell me that I need to be doing it the way that it’s always been done.

I’ve never been one for that. If I had none of the magic would have happened.

There was also a cost to all of this. I live alone with Goddess. I gave all that I had to a career and woke one day burned out and broken. All of the conventional planning for the future has been thrown out of the window. I am feeling my way as I go because I’ve never been here before.

But I feel myself getting there. I know more about me than I ever have before. I know where I am strong and what my weaknesses are. I know who my friends are… and who they aren’t. And something inside of me tells me that, in spite of self doubts in the middle of the night, or what others tell me, that I am on the right track and that I’m almost over that wall.

Nudging the Closet Door Open

Today is World AIDS Day which used to be a celebration of all of the lives that had been lost to that disease. We organized the first one in Savannah back in 1989 in Johnson Square which is in the shadow of City Hall. It was a funny night because we held a candlelight vigil an hour before the City was sponsoring the lighting of the Christmas.

About 30 of us showed up with candles through hundreds arrived for the Christmas lights. So we had moments of silence and read the names of those who had died. As soon as we finished the town crier showed up dressed like Santa Claus and screamed to the top of his lungs, “ MERRY CHRISTMAS!” All of Savannah suddenly exploded with colored lights while a band played “Joy to the World.”

You just don’t see many AIDS vigils with endings like that! Most are quite depressing.

Back in the 1980s when HIV+ was sweeping the nation I was in Louisville, Kentucky in charge of a rag tag inner city church. We had turned a bunch of the Sunday School rooms into apartments so that homeless people had a place to live. So I had gained a bit of a reputation for helping people find housing.

His name Rod and he was rail thin because the HIV was devouring who he was. In those days, AIDS meant death. And no one knew how it was transmitted then so everybody was scared. When Rod came into my office that day I remember how my hand shook when I went to shake his. But I did.

A short while later I joined this group of eight that my friend Fr. Vernon Robertson dubbed “The St. Jude’s Guild.” St. Jude is the patron Saint of the sick and dying. I don’t remember voting on the name but Vernon was always quite clever at naming things. He ran a restaurant called “The St. Martin Afro-German Tearoom” and he had a sign made for our weekly lunch proclaiming “The Southern Baptist/Roman Catholic Coalition” (I got flown to Baptist Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta to be yelled at when they thought I had single handedly committed the entire denomination to an alliance with Catholics!).

Four of the eight were clergy and four were gay. We had lively meetings! But in no time at all we had raised a lot of money and opened “The Glade House” one of the country’s first residential facility for people with AIDS.

Naturally it got a lot of press and somehow I ended up being the spokesperson for the St. Jude’s Guild though I was by far the youngest member. So I was doing my first round of media management and was consistently being quoted in the paper.

One day the Louisville Courier-Journal called to ask me about Jack Kersey, a gay member of the group, who was very open about himself, was a very successful realtor giving lots of his own time and money so that The Glade House opened quickly. The reporter asked me what I thought of Jack.

“He’s one of the most Christian people that I know,” I fired back without hesitation.

What I remember next is the story had a large picture of Jack holding a cat. It was a nice picture. The story reported that a Baptist minister had called an openly gay man in 1986 “the most Christian man” he knows.

I was immediately flown to Baptist Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta where the Pharisees, Sadducees and men in three-piece suits told me that they understood. I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes. This is the first time that they had professed to understand anything and I hadn’t even offered an explanation yet.

“You were misquoted,” a man named Harold told me. “Just retract your statement and it’s all ok.”

Suddenly I understood the power of the media. I’d been getting a lot of press in newspapers and magazines. My first book was getting ready to be published and none other than Will D. Campbell (National Book Award finalist for “Brother to a Dragonfly) had written the preface. They wanted me to help with stories that promoted good Baptist press.

“Um,” I remember saying looking at Harold and Russell Bennett, “yeah…well…I can’t do that. Jack is one of the most Christian people that I know. He puts his money and his life where his mouth is and he is taking care of people who are dying…”

I don’t remember what else I said. I do remember them exploding and yelling at me. Then they sent me into a waiting room where I could hear them yelling at one another about me. Then they called me back in and yelled some more. Eventually they let me go.

I went to a Braves game and drank beer that night.

When I got back to Louisville though, Jack threw this tremendous party at the gayest mansion that I’ve ever been in --- marble statues of naked people spewing water from their mouths and such, though the food was great! I remember that Vernon didn’t go that night; nor did the other clergy representatives of the St. Jude’s Guild.

Just me.

And a hundred gay people all toasting and celebrating that the closet door had been nudged open.

A Muted Morning

Before dawn it was surreal on the island almost as though Alfred Hitchcock himself had set the stage. Christmas lights are strung over Butler Avenue and had hallows around them giving holiday spirit a ghostly feel. The moisture is suspended in the air not quite falling and reflects light into a wetness that slowly dripped nowhere. A black heaven is suspended overhead and the stars and the moon have been kidnapped so the only illuminations are artificial.

I stop the car in the middle of the road and roll the window down. The sound of the waves crashing is loud and ominous. There is no traffic to be seen from one end of Butler Avenue to the other. No one is walking or jogging at this time. The air smells of wet salt. If peace on earth has a sound it is the quietness of a morning like this.

I sigh.

Then I cuss.

It is a morning for deep thoughts. If love never dies as the Saint proclaims then where does it go when it disappears? If God is love then she must often take long Sabbaticals. Is it really living when you co-exist with someone? What happens to love when your lover dies? And when love flees from your life and you are left alone with an empty gnawing in your stomach where do you go?

If Hitchcock were here I could hear him asking these questions as the prelude to tonight’s episode.

Taking my foot off of the break I coast on to the Breakfast Club. From the outside looking in it is warm and inviting. I see friends, people whom I love and another guy. As soon as I sit upon the stool at the counter there is hot coffee and greetings that have come to mean a great deal to me.

Soon it is 7:00 and as the place opens the others at the counter leave and I sit alone. Chris, one of the Chefs comes to me and laughs at some of the things that I had said at last night softball game.

The Breakfast Club has a softball team that inexplicably made it to the tournament. They all showed up for the game looking like homeless people who had just been dumpster diving looking for food. The other team had red shirts, red caps and white pants that all appeared to have been recently dry cleaned. In my role as Chaplain of the Breakfast Club I made fun of their uniforms throughout the game pulling for my beloved underdogs. It almost worked and the Breakfast Club almost rallied to win but Satan or Hitchcock or my heckling caused them to lose.

For the longest time I am the only customer in the Club which is the rarest of rare things. Chris and I talk about love and relationships and living alone. Phil walks up and joins us though he is married.

“I would get drunk and take all of my clothes off when I lived alone,” he said which stopped Chris and I from whatever it was we were saying.

Dawn arrives and the sky turns grey. The Christmas lights flee and the rain decides to fall after all. I leave and roll with Goddess in the floor before taking her on a wet walk. She loves puddles and has never met one that she didn’t want to wallow though, lapping her tongue in the water and shaking her ass has she does so. I laugh at her for the thousandth time as she does it.

Then I take a solitary run on the beach. No one else is out and at one point I look over my shoulder and for perhaps a mile there are only my footprints. I think to myself “Well that’s kind of the way that it’s always been, just me doing these things!”

Soaked with sweat and rain I decide to baptize myself in the outdoor shower. Hot water mixed with cold rain makes me linger. I wonder how many people do this. I think of a friend who likes to dance in the rain. If love never dies then where does it hide? The baptism doesn’t answer the questions.

A Successful Life

Trying to impress me with his techno savvy Jim Withers sent me a text two minutes before it was on television. “Turn it to ABC.” He is a great writer always getting to the essence of what he wants to communicate.

So I wandered in from the Beloved Back deck, grabbed the remote and turned it from the football game that I wasn’t watching. And there he was. Dr. Jim Withers practicing medicine on the streets of Pittsburgh. It was a two minute spot that did a good job conveying the passion and the impact of his work developing systems that take health care to people living on the streets.

Before I could respond he wrote me again. “I just posted a message on Face Book while driving…satisfied?”

Like most great people, Jim wasn’t even watching his own national press coverage. He was off somewhere. It would be very hard to not love Jim. A production company once approached him about doing a movie based on his work but he was afraid that it would exploit homeless people so he declined. I really blew a gasket over this but Jim just blew me off.

Doctors with a heart? Go figure!

It got me thinking about the thing that makes a life successful. People who think that it is money, titles, position or status are dead wrong. I think that most people define success these ways and I simply believe that they are dead wrong.

It is passion.

Jack Kingston who is a friend of mine and a Congressman (I know, I know … forgive him for what he does) and I were once sitting in his office at the Capitol. Well I was sitting. It was the end of the day and he was lying on the sofa because he had thrown his back out. I was actually staring at Meg who really runs things from Jack’s office because she is quite hot.

“You know what I like about you Elliott?” Jack said to the ceiling.

“What?” I asked without taking my eyes off of Meg or being especially concerned about Jack’s back.

“All these people come to me asking me to give them money for something that they’re passionate about. Meaning they want money so that they can pay themselves to do what they really want to do.”

“Ummmm,” I said as Meg leaned over to get something.

“But you figured out how to fund your passion. Then when you come up here asking for things it is all about the passion and not about you.”

I actually took my eyes off of the very hot Meg and looked at the not-so-hot Republican Congressman lying there on his Republican couch. He sat up and looked at me.

“Seriously,” he said looking me dead in the eye.

While I never got anywhere with the very hot Meg, Jack’s words have stuck with me. A successful life is doing the things that you are passionate about. I have been fortunate enough to have built a career doing the things that I care the most about.

When I was in St. Martin I was frustrated one day because I learned of impending changes at Union Mission. While I understand that it’s not mine anymore I still care passionately about it So I couldn’t stand it any more and called a Board Chairman who chooses to remain anonymous and told him that I wanted to meet with him. I couldn’t stand seeing it taken backwards steps.

“Why would you care?” he asked.

At that moment I knew that there was no reason to go any further. We speak different languages. Our lives have different goals. One of us is from Venus; the other from Mars. One goes to Church. The other internalizes Scriptures.

And that shut the door.

In complete honesty, I should have left Union Mission a couple of years before my sub-conscious self orchestrated my leaving. My passions were elsewhere; with Jim cultivating a movement of street medicine. Dancing across the country helping other people take the things that they are passionate about and advancing those causes.

So here I sit staring at Fran’s thousand shades of green and watching Goddess eat rawhide on the Beloved Back Deck. Inside is a list of things to do. There are people who fill my heart. I will be determined about them all.

These are the things that I am passionate about. I have a lot to do today.

Coming Back

I am back to full time Sabbatical beginning today; meaning that I am home for the next month with no planned trips at this point. During the summer months, from July through September this is what life was for me and Goddess as I worked through the things that people work through when they are on Sabbatical.

It was just a shame that it came two-and-a-half years after it was desperately needed but a Board Chairmen who chooses to remain anonymous (God forbid someone find out who he is and the decisions he’s made) and wiser men than me knew better. So I didn’t.

Since listening to them I’ve lost a wife, relationships with many people that I trusted, loved and had long-term relationships and I left a thirty-one year career which was part of some pretty significant things.

Now I resume … gathering my thoughts as I was recently told by one of the sages.

Except tomorrow I have lots to do. First there are tons of personal things that I simply haven’t paid much attention too over the past, oh … year. I started a couple of weeks ago and the stack is getting smaller but Chelsea’s car insurance ended up in never- never land and our health insurance is suddenly at risk (which is most ironic as one of the things I’m known for is taking health care to people who had none! I’ve won national awards for it and gave a hundred thousand dollars to Union Mission to advance its efforts because of it. Yet here I sit. Exposed!)

Most full time Beach Bums don’t have health insurance; so why should I be any different. Pretty funny huh?

There is a looming Christmas that I have to get myself through.

And there is a lot of “work” things that I have to do. There are twenty-two grants to read. My Atlanta “client” is coming to see me. Rebekah has a long list of things that suddenly have time lines. There are trips to plan in January and February.

More importantly, my friend Conner called me the other night and told me that he needs me to “help with words” at the memorial service for his father who died last week. I never met Conner’s Dad but feel like I have after years of stories. Plus I would do anything for Conner and Hania.

Both of us would likely pay good money to reconstruct whatever it was we did in New Orleans last month. We’ll likely find out when we stand in front of the throne of Judgment and God leans over and says, “Really?”

I hope that Conner and I are standing beside one another when this happens as I know that we will look at one another and then we will look at God and then we will both say at the same time … “Wha?”

In honesty, the Sabbatical is over as much as I wish that it could linger. The past is dead and gone and it is never coming back again. I am proud of the things that I’ve accomplished, cherished whom I’ve loved, and only have a few regrets; though the ones that I do have haunt me from time to time.

There are pieces of the past that go with me into the future though I am surprised at how small that package is. I’m also surprised at who those friends are marching with me to what will be. And the circle of those whom I love came from … nowhere … from God and after Conner and I are done explaining New Orleans I will thank her profusely.

So I have to go to work. It is a brave new world. I am doing things that I’ve never done before. I am gambling everything that I have with the belief that it will all work out for the best. I feel good about it.

I pause and think to myself, “Wait! What is different about this? It is how I have always lived.”

I don’t feel any doubt, except for fleeting moments in the middle of the night, but I chase these thoughts away and climb out of bed with a “Kick Ass” attitude; probably pretty much the same attitude that Jesus had when they nailed him on the cross.

“Go ahead! Crucify me! I’ll be back!”

So because I love all of the people who read this I want you to be the first to know.

I’m almost back.

Count on it.

The Lost Season

I sit sipping coffee on the last football game of the season. This is actually the first one that I feel like I’ve actually been at though it is cold and the streets of Athens were unusually deserted last night.

The first game of the season I slept walked through the motions of decades of traditions and friends. Everything about it reeked of loss and reminded me of things that I used to have. Of course the kids and my friends went overboard on my behalf, giving me rides, taking me out, poking fun at the emotions that I brought to Athens with me.

They also worried about me among themselves; talked about me privately; expressed concern that I wasn’t taking care of myself. Several sought me out for private conversations just to let me know that they had survived similar things and that I can always count on them.

In the middle of it all I took a Sabbatical from football season and went back to St. Martin missing two games. This is sacrilegious and I am certain that I am now condemned to football purgatory for at least two years before advancing on to football nirvana.

On those two Saturdays that I was in the Caribbean as I stood on the beach as game time approached, I knew exactly what everyone was doing though I was thousands of miles away. Our routines and traditions are long established so in my mind I celebrated with them but needed something different for myself as I continue to envision a new life because there isn’t much similar to the old one.

I drove up alone yesterday for the first time since the first game of the season. All of those games in between, I either rode with my friend Bill or was flying in from somewhere so that Chelsea and Sam would pick me up in Atlanta and bring me to Athens. Yesterday I had four hours to think about everything that has happened this fall.

On that first game day of the season I sat exactly where I am sitting now doing the exact same thing. It was a season full of promise and hope. Aside from a new quarterback we had so many starters coming back. Last year had ended with a flurry so expectations were high.

Alas, things did not go as planned.

I know how the team feels.

Last week I was making my way from Pittsburgh to Atlanta to Savannah and I texted my son Jeremy asking him for the score of the Falcons game.


“You care?” he wrote back.

“I do,” I shot back. “What’s the damn score?”

“It’s good to have my Dad back,” he conveyed and then gave me the score.

When you go through difficult stuff you get through the best way that you know how. Of course everybody else wants you to do it differently but in the end it is just you getting yourself through. As we do, we often don’t realize that we are going through major changes in who we are and how we do things. Our family and friends see things that we are unable to see as we fight our way through being re-born. Giving birth to something new can be a painful and traumatic thing.

When you are done though, there is something new. A new life emerges.
I feel as though I have lost this entire season. I just wasn’t really here. But I am looking forward to today. I am excited about it. And I am no longer the same person I was on that first football Saturday. Something new is being born.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Soul Miner’s Daughter is wailing away in the back ground but Goddess won’t shut up for me to listen to them. She is standing here barking at me and scratching the chair. It is past time for her walk and the dog knows how to tell time. We are about twenty minutes behind schedule and the bitch doesn’t grasp the concept of a holiday.

If that weren’t enough my neighbor adopts feral cats and has about 2000 of them; half of which sleep on my car every night. She is standing on her back deck screaming, “Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!” She isn’t really screaming. She is screeching!

I suddenly believe in violence.

Goddess even stops and walks to the side of the beloved back deck to stare at her. Her tender loving call to the cats borders on the obscenity; finger nails sliding across a chalk board.

“Happy Thanksgiving!” she shrieks.

Goddess lies down as though someone has beaten her with a stick. She moans and puts her paws over her head.

I look over to my neighbor’s deck and see Edith Bunker in a nightgown; complete with a bandana tied in her hair. To make it worse, her sister is visiting for the holidays. There are two of them!

Goddess runs inside.

I wave. “Happy Thanks …. Yeah, whatever,” I sigh.

“Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” they shriek in harmony.

I use a verb and a pronoun.

The pronoun is “me.”

They walk down the stairs into their backyard, wandering around in their bandanas, one green and one yellow, in lime green towel cloth bathrobes, screeching, “Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!”

I give serious though to joining the N.R.A. Some things are completely justifiable!

If I did take them out it would be a pretty pleasant morning. The sun is shinning, it is a pleasant 70 degrees and climbing, and I have little laundry on. People who I love have texted me “Happy Turkey Day” wishes.

Johnny O called and started to give me advice on my love life. I hung up on him.

The neighbor’s mother walks out on the deck telling them that breakfast is ready. She looks like a mummified Edith Bunker wearing a dirty orange towel cloth bath robe and a red bandana in her hair. The poor woman obviously died several years ago but no one has bothered to tell her.

“Omelets,” she screeches in a way that somehow combines the capacity of her two daughters.

“Cat hair omelets?” I think as I watch cat hair fly around her as though it were a halo.

“Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!” the two sisters scream in unholy harmony.

The mother looks at me. “Happy Thanksgiving”!

I wave.

“Whatever,” I say, as I get up and fix a screwdriver.

Preparing for Thanks

I knew the look on her face all too well. She leaned against the doorway with slumped shoulders, staring off into a space with eyes opened wider than normal. Her eyelids were containing the tears but barely and the damn could rupture at any moment. Over anything. The normally vivacious voice was muted and cold. The fire had gone out in her heart.

She glanced up at me and I smiled. She smiled back and made her way to where I was sitting. She placed her hand on the table and I placed my hand on top of hers.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I said.

Her eyes filled with moister, her lip quivered and she nodded her head up and down. Normally words come easy for her but she had none. She couldn’t conjure then up if her life depended on it. There were only feelings of brokenness and hurt and loss.

Her thumb moved up over mine and there was the slightest of pressure. It was all that she had to give.

“So, remember last January and February and March?” I asked. “Well you are me then. I know your look. It was my look. I know exactly how you feel.”

She withdrew her hands, wiped her eyes, and told me that she’d be right back. Briskly she took herself outside and both hands covered her eyes and the sobs came. I watched her through the window and felt the moisture in my own eyes. I can still feel that way.

Eventually she returned and again placed her hand on the table. I placed my hand over hers again. She smiled but it was a vacant expression of gratitude. Her brain knew to say thanks but there was nothing anywhere else.

“Anyway,” I said, “remember when it was me? You took to given me big hugs every day. Every single day you would come up behind me and just hug. It was really the only touching that went on in my life during that time. You don’t know how much that meant to getting me through it.”

Her eyes again filled with moisture and just before the damn broke again I said, “And we’ll get you through too.”

Again she ran outside with her hands over her eyes, stifling sobs that desperately needed to be released.

When she returned people were standing around me asking me what I’m going to do for Thanksgiving. She stopped and stared at me intently and I knew that she had nothing to do for Thanksgiving. Hell there was little to be thankful for at this moment in her life.

“I dunno,” I answered. “I suppose that I’m doing a progressive one. My Mom wants me to drop by the family thing which is in the morning. Then my Breakfast Club family wants me to stop by. Then there is the Tybee celebration at Fannies-On-Beach where the Bored will collect.”

As I said these things, the damn burst again and I watched her run outside for the third time. “Let it out,” I whispered. “Let it out.”

She returned yet again and asked me what I did yesterday so I told her about sitting on the Beloved Back deck with a fire going and Pandora radio and Goddess lying on her mat staring at the first.

“I miss my dogs,” she sobbed never making it outside.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know someone else who does too.”

For thirty years I was in charge of Thanksgiving for hundreds of homeless people, orchestrating tremendous celebrations of food, music, presents, and merriment in the most depressing of contexts. The poor and the homeless hate the holidays more than anything. From Thanksgiving through New Year’s, but especially at Christmas, everything that they do not have is rammed down their throats.

Celebrations consist of outside of the ordinary food, different people serving it, plastic Turkeys, Pilgrims, Santa’s and birth announcements of Jesus are plastered everywhere. Other than that it is still a homeless shelter and the day after New Year’s it will be stripped of all of the “good times and cheer.”

I watched her and realized that it happens at the individual level too; outside of homeless shelters, hospitals or Hospices. This is the first Thanksgiving that I’ve only had to plan for me. This is the first that she’s only had to plan for her. She stares at me and the corners of her lips barely turn up below the wettest of eyes.

“We’ll be ok,” I tell her, “Happy Thanksgiving!”

Tears rolled down her face, but when she squeezed my hand, it was with force and there actually was the slightest bit of thankfulness in the air.

Church

Goddess and I spent most of last night on the beloved back deck. We had a fire going in the outside whatever it’s called, music from Pandora radio and the sound of waves crashing in the distance. We stared at Fran’s thousand shades of …black. Darkness blanketed her greens.

The moon was full and the temperature pleasant. Every once in a while I would look over my shoulders through the double sliding glass doors at a football game that I didn’t really care about, but the inside of the house looked warm and inviting with every room a different pastel color; summer time on the inside.

The I-phone was in there somewhere and the land line was off of the hook which is something that I’ve done for years. At Union Mission it was a life where needs were forever intruding so I stopped taking the phone with me on walks with Goddess and many times I would just grab the land line and put it in a drawer. Some habits die hard.

It was just me and Goddess and she was pretty content on her bed staring at the fire. My feet were propped on the rail and I praised God that laundry requirements were kept to a minimum in late November. I was pretty content too.

It is good to be home after being away for the better part of the past six weeks.

I left the sliding glass doors open when I went to bed so that I could listen to the waves. As I was waking this morning, at that moment when you open your eyes and then close them again, sigh and roll over, I wondered what had happened. Someone had lifted my bed and transported it inside of St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Either that or I had died and gone to Catholic heaven.

Everything reeked of incense.

With my eyes closed, my mind raced back to Father Vernon Robertson who was the then 60 year old Priest of St. Martin Catholic Church. When I was a 25 year old Professional Christian we became fast and dear friends. I would do the readings for noon day Mass and he would deliver homilies for Wednesday night services at Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel. We were often in trouble together.

I was in Atlanta when he died, likely being yelled at for something by Baptist Corporate Headquarters but I remember sitting on the side of the bed at the Hyatt Regency and crying when Janice called to tell me.

So incense filled my lungs and Vernon filled my brain and I rose and stumbled to see who had broken into my house to light the incense.

I saw the open sliding glass kitchen doors and the smoldering store bought pressed paper log. Goddess followed me and while I laughed, she stretched wondering what was funny.

Today everything has been different. Everyone arrived at the Breakfast Club out of order. Goddess wanted to take me on a tour of the island rather than let me run. The temperature is summer time pleasant and I’ll get around to putting on …something.

Now I sit on the Beloved Back Deck again beside the smoldering log with Goddess asleep in the dirt below me. Fran has risen from the dead again today and the brilliant sun dances through her thousand shades of green. I notice that the leaves are changing colors. All is quiet in the world.

I sit and feel as though I am in church.

Chicago Bob's Funeral

“Rev. It’s Johnny O. Meet me on the pier in thirty minutes.”

“Sure Johnny,” I reply into the phone. “What’s up?”

“I tell you when you get there,” and he hung up.

That should have been my first clue.

Immediately the phone rings again.

I answer and he says, “Bring your robe.” And he hung up again.

That should have been clue number two.

So I throw on a tee shirt over my running shorts, grab my robe, hop on my bicycle and peddle to the pier. It is a Sunday and the beach is packed. Butler Avenue is a parking lot. The parking lots are fist fights of people looking for parking. Tybee Parking Services (Nazis) are beside themselves with glee as they happily write ticket after ticket.

I am careful with my robe. It is 30 years old and is coming apart in some places. I bought it from a Minister who was going out of business for $10. His name is sewed into the inside part of the collar. It is basic black and Puritan and has served me well (not so much the Puritan part).

On Sunday’s everyone of Hispanic heritage in a 27 state radius comes to the Tybee Island Pier to fish. Needless to say it was as packed and fishing lines had been thrown in every direction. There was a long line at the bar, another at the hamburger stand and another for the bathrooms.

I stroll up to the VIP section of the bar, which is reserved for Bored members, and there is Johnny O, Roma, Tudi, and several other people.

“What up?” I say.

“Funeral,” Johnny replies. “You’re conducting.”

“What?” I exclaim.

“Chicago Bob,” he says.

“Oh,” I answer.

Chicago Bob! Tybee has witnessed, experienced and survived many things, including hurricanes and the last fifteen political administrations but none were more influential than Chicago Bob. He was from Chicago of course, from the Rat Pack era, could work a crowd, sing a song and deliver one liners with the best of them. He was a member of the Bored, once threw my Mother and Sister out of his house during the Beach Bum parade, loved to climb in Hot Tubs with tourists, and for years Roma and I had to endure him and Johnny doing their act at Fannies-on the-Beach. He could occasionally shoot pool.

So I turned and there was his widow ready for the funeral. She was crying.

“Where’s Bobby?” I asked.

“Shit!” she said “I forgot him. I’ll be right back.”

Johnny O ordered another round. A few minutes later the widow came back with a Target bag. She handed it to me. Inside was a box full of Chicago Bob’s ashes. Johnny looked at me and said, “Let’s go.”

So we walked to the end of the pier, where the Hispanic populations from 27 states were fishing, many with crossed lines, and I put on my used black $10 robe. Johnny O said a few things about Chicago Bob then I did the “ashes to ashes” thing. Bob wanted to have his scattered at the ocean but near a bar. This was the perfect place as he could have his cake and eat it too.

The Hispanic fishermen from 27 different states were all Catholic of course and horrified. They all dropped their poles into the ocean, dropped on their knees and started doing the sign of the cross over and over again.

I opened the Target Bag and committed Chicago Bob to God.

A wind gust came at that particular moment and Chicago Bob’s ashes went in two different directions. Half towards the open ocean and the other half into the waves that would crash into the thousands of tourists who were body surfing, swimming, or just wading in the water.

“Hmmm,” Roma said. “I always knew he was schizophrenic.”

And that was pretty much Bobby!

The Valley of Death

Sitting high on top of a mountain, the restaurant had walls of glass that allowed us to gaze down on Pittsburgh at night. It was beautiful and I found myself having trouble following the conversation because I just wanted to look down on the city of Steel. It made me want to have people I love with me to share the experience. It was that serene.

I’ve been here a lot over the past decade so the city is filled with memories. The first time was to visit Dr. Jim Withers and do “Night Rounds”. So Cathy Dunham and I followed Jim and his partner Mike around the city, into the parks, and under the bridges looking for homeless people who slept outside and were in need of health care. Jim and I quickly became good friends.

The next trip was a collection of about 20 of us who were trying to redefine health care for the poor. If you’ve never seen 20 people fall in love with one another at one time well … it is something. Back home we were all wolfs crying in the wilderness but in Pittsburgh over a three day period we found one another. The result was the birth of the International Street Medicine Institute.

After that I was at Operation Safety Net, Jim and Linda Sheet’s non-profit that woos those homeless folks from under the bridges and out of the parks into their own homes. Health care and mental health treatment are added. I remember that we added days to that visit and just spent time playing in the city.

Two years ago I was here and extremely glad to be. Back home one of my programs had blown up in my face and I was quite frustrated. I remember standing in the airport watching it snow, watching snow plows blow snow, wondering if I could ever be able to take off. My cell phone buzzed and it was my Board Chair who spent half an hour reading me the press in the Savannah Morning News over the blow up and describing the political cartoon which was a drawing of me. A season of depression was born.

Last year I was snowed in for four days. Aside from an evening with my friends Suzanne and Jim, where I first experienced a hot tub in the snow, it was a very depressing trip. I was suddenly single which had not been a part of the plan. There was little to do except drink, stare out of the window watching snow fall, and grow more depressed. That was the lowest point of my life.

When I arrived yesterday everyone who works here knew my name. They remember me from having stayed so long with nothing to do. Last year they all felt sorry for me because I looked pretty miserable. This year they smiled, welcomed me back and told me how good I look. They launched into stories of how rotten a snow that had been.

I am now sitting where I spent most of my time last year. At a Coffee Shop with glass windows looking at naked trees and fallen leaves. They were blanked in white last year and the drift was six feet high. Jim and Dave Buck and I sat here and laughed a lot last night as we drafted one another’s profiles for “Match Maker.com”.

Life is supposed to be a series of peaks and valleys, people say. Incredible highs and woeful lows! Soaring spirits and shattered hearts. Breaking free or staying stuck. Finding our way back again or staying lost. Giving up or re-claiming what you deserve. Accepting what is or molding what will be.

Staring out of this window where the cold snow used to be, I can see that I’ve walked through the shadow of the valley of Death and somehow made it through.

The Best of Everything

After a comedy of communication errors which were mostly my fault I am on a plane heading to Pittsburgh. I know, on a college football Saturday? When it is going to be 71 degrees on Tybee? When my family is gathering at my Mom’s house this weekend?

Yeah, I screwed up.

Probably because I was subconsciously trying to sabotage the trip I made arrangements to arrive the day before the meeting leave the day of it. Pretty clever how our brains can work! But the leadership of the International Street Medicine Institute all rearranged their schedules around mine so here I sit. Damn they are an accommodating group!

Last week a friend of mine told me how driven a person I’ve always been. “Your drive inspires others,” she said. “You stir things up.”

Looking back over a thirty one year career I suppose that she is right. For 8 years in Louisville, Kentucky and then 23 in Savannah, Georgia I was a very driven person. Because I was fortunate enough to be surrounded with other driven and talented people we accomplished some pretty remarkable things. More importantly we made a lot of people’s lives better.

Last January though it all came crumbling down and I lost my drive among many other things. While I thought I still had a great deal to give, I really didn’t. I was going through the motions and the results of that is never a good thing. I was no longer over-achieving. I was under-achieving in every aspect of my life.

So in the same way that I subconsciously tried to wreck this trip, I orchestrated myself out of Union Mission. Everyone congratulated me on my retirement. I was trying to save myself and survive! Retirement has become a joke.

I can see that now though I couldn’t then. It has taken this exile that I’ve been on to get to the place where I am regaining …me.

From June until now there have been a handful of constants. I’ve written every day looking inside of myself to see what is there. This reflection occurs after a set routine. I go to the Breakfast Club, I walk Goddess, I run, walk Goddess again as I cool down, water the flowers, hit my outdoor shower, then sit on my beloved back deck and write.

Then I share whatever it was that came out through the blogs, on Face Book, or through emails. And I’ve been taken aback at the response. Because I was sharing things that people think or feel but rarely say out loud a lot of people reacted; overwhelmingly positive though it drove members of the Union Mission Board nuts. But my gut told me that it was the thing to do, and according Scripture God speaks to us through our guts, so I listened and remained true. And am glad that I did.

I discovered who my friends are. And I discovered who they are not. It was pretty interesting on both sides of that ledger. In the public eye most everyone is your friend (though you have your enemies too). Stepping away from it taught me who really loves me. It is better knowing.

I’ve reconnected with the beauty of the earth, pausing now to celebrate the glory of creation, noticing things that I’d always rushed passed. Mussels form themselves into choirs and perform concerts at low tide! Who knew?

Now I do.

Other than that I’ve pretty much waited on things to come to me and I have marveled at what has and what hasn’t. I do not know how much longer I have to keep at it this way. In spite of the public’s conviction, I can’t retire. And I’d really prefer not to be a client of Union Mission (as I would likely orchestrate a resurrection and end up being in charge again!).

I’m just trying to live the gift of every moment. To appreciate it and hold it up to the light to see what it has for me. But as time passes I am noticing old habits creeping back in. I shake my leg as I think. I drum my fingers across the table with a thought is about to explode. I grow anxious.

“So great talking to you today and hearing that you are in a good place. You deserve the best of everything!” a friend told me yesterday.

I wonder what that means. Over the past few months, I am learning that I’ve had the best of everything.

Johnny O's Birthday

I am normally the first to arrive at the Breakfast Club followed by Johnny O and then Whitley. This was again true yesterday through Whitley arrived before Johnny. When Johnny did arrive he stood over me and loudly greeted me with a verb followed by a pronoun.

“You did it didn’t you? Then he repeated the aforementioned verb followed by a pronoun. “You wrapped by car in crime scene tape.” Then he once again used the aforementioned verb followed by a pronoun.

Many years ago when I was teaching my young daughter Chelsea Tybee survival tactics we took to looking after our dear friends Johnny O and Judy’s house whenever they left the island. They often took Judy’s car leaving Johnny’s (then) truck beside the house. So Chelsea and I got a lot of cellophane and wrapped the truck for safe keeping. Another time we decorated it for Christmas. I think that we also put it up for sale one time and Johnny received several handsome offers. So I could understand how Johnny would think that it was me though Chelsea is now away in college.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I innocently replied because I had the truth on my side.

John again responded with the aforementioned verb followed by a pronoun.

“Happy Birthday Johnny,” I told him with even more sincerity.

“Are ya‘ll coming to my surprise birthday party today?” he asked finally leaving the crime scene incident behind.

Whitley and I assured him that we would be present.

The surprise birthday party was a hostile take over of the daily Bored meeting in front of Fannies-On-the Beach. Jenny Orr the owner had transformed the sidewalk that we occupy everyday into a party scene. There was an outdoor buffet with shrimp, pizzas, fruits and cheeses. White tablecloths covered the mesh tables and the trashcan. There was a kissing booth with a miniature goat in it. A typical Tybee gathering.

And there was a crowd. Many of the Beach Bums showed up and every member of the Bored did too; except for O Johnny, Trolley Joe, Kathy Brown, Joni Woodcock, Al and…and to be honest I’m no longer certain of who is actually on the Bored or not anymore because Roma and O Johnny have franchised the thing.

A lot of regular Tybee people were there too. Wait! That’s an oxymoron.

Tybee Dave and Sandy, Cheryl Sadowski, Ohio Bob and Margaret, Ester Guy, Jack Boylston, Bonnie Gaster and Roberto and a lot of other people. At one point I swear to God I heard the voice of Chicago Bob exclaim, “There’s a lot of love on that sidewalk!” I’m pretty sure Chicago Bob’s voice came from above though he once threw my Mother and my sister Age out of his house during the Beach Bum Parade. It could have come from below.

Then I left. I had stuff to do; being the Chaplain of the Breakfast Club means that I may be called away at any moment.

I have since learned that a transvestite showed up to sit in Johnny O’s lap, kiss his face with purple lisp stick, and sing Happy Birthday to him. Johnny explained that he knew it was a transvestite when she sat in his lap.

“You should have stayed,” Johnny O told me this morning.

Then Ryan Sadowski, who cannot decide if he wants to be a Rastafarian or Ozzy Osborn when he grows up, chimed in. “What Mike left early? Not Mike? He always just makes appearances and then leaves his friends and family behind. Seriously? Mike left?”

Ryan used to be a good kid.

So that was Johnny O’s birthday. He seemed pretty pleased with it this morning as he explained the precise moment when he learned that it was a transvestite in his lap. When he explained this Whitley and I looked at him and said at the same time … well … we used a verb followed by a pronoun.

Robin Hood

It was again in the days of my professional Christianity where I got paid for trying to live like God would like while I asked that everyone else do it for free. Working for Baptist Corporate Headquarters we had to take a lot of tests, specially the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. We were told that we would learn how we perceive the world and how we make decisions. What they were really trying to do was weed out gays, pacifists, liberals and increasingly women.

I was on another forced retreat in some park in Kentucky and we all had to take the Myers-Briggs test and write a paper about something we were passionate about. Then while we all took break a Christian psychologist reviewed our things and was going to report back to us during the evening session. I used the break as an opportunity to run to the liquor store (and actually ran into several of my fellow retreat mates there).

Later the Christian psychologist told each of us about ourselves. When she got to me she just stopped and put her hands on her hips with my profile page in one hand. “And then there is you,” she began.

“You are the first person whom I’ve ever encountered who scored dead center of the Myers-Briggs test. I suppose you can swing in any direction. You can be an introvert or an extrovert. You can both think and feel. Sense and intuit.”

I sat up a little straighter in my chair feeling quite proud of myself. I sensed all my other professional Christian retreat mates were in awe. I started to think that it was time to ask for a raise.

“Then I read what you wrote about you. You certainly have a lot of passion!”

Oh yeah, I’m thinking. Big raise!

“In the end, you are Robin Hood. You prefer the fringes but are quite comfortable sitting in the seats of power. You don’t mind hiding out in the woods with your friends or strolling down the aisle of the Cathedral in the middle of a service because you have something to say. You do not like to be pigeon holed. You do not take orders well. Everybody loves you anyway. You really don’t have the right personality of a minister.”

Shit! I thought. There goes the raise!

All of my fellow professional Christians were looking at the floor or the ceiling; at anything other than me! I think that I remember one took a drink.

So began the ending of my days as a professional Christian.

I was maybe 26 or 27 when that happened but I remember it vividly. The Christian psychologist wore a red dress when she nailed me. Isn’t that funny?

Ever since then I’ve been a big fan of Robin Hood. I watched the latest version on the plane to St. Martin a few weeks ago; the version with Russell Crowe. And I cried as I did. He was helping my people! The hurt, the lonely, the addict…the widow, the orphan and the sojourner.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a former Board member at Union Mission. Of course anytime you leave somewhere you are the blame for anything that ever went wrong until they reach a point where they can’t possibly blame you anymore because you weren’t around when it happened!

After a bit of listening to things that I didn’t do especially well I snipped, “Well you know when you’re Robin Hood it’s kind of hard to play by the rules!”

There were long moments of silence before he finally said, “I have nothing to say to that. I completely understand.”

So I’ve been hanging out in the woods of Sherwood Forrest for several months, healing from the wounds of my battles and contemplating the next attacks. Though I must admit that I really keep wishing Maid Marian would drop by at night. I am proud of the things that I have done and wouldn’t change any of them.

Other people would change them but that is not my problem.

So this morning at the Breakfast Club a dear friend of mine had tears in her eyes. She gave me a big hug and because we were in front of others I just hugged her back and didn’t say anything. I would never embarrass her. So when I left, she walked out with me. She burst into tears and told me everything and I just hugged her told her that everything would be alright. That is what I’ve always done.

And I sit here now staring at Fran’s thousand shades of green, thinking to myself.

It’s time to leave this friggin forest!

Moving On

The most consistent thing that people have said to me over the past year is that I need to move on! What they mean by this of course is that they do not care for the way that I’ve handled things. They want me to be the way that they want me to be; to do things differently from the way that I’ve chosen to do them. To hell with how I feel or that healing needs to occur! Move on!

This isn’t to say that all of these folks don’t care about me. I know that many of them do. Some love me dearly. That isn’t to say that they collectively give bad advice. You have to listen to yourself first. Then you can listen to others.

Back in the days when I was a professional Christian I worked for Baptist Corporate Headquarters though I was unexplainably in charge of a rag tag congregation in the inner city. I worked for was Russell Bennett and he took us all on a retreat one time in Kentucky. There were perhaps twelve of us (no comparisons to Apostles at all!) and we were in this gorgeous park. I remember driving over with my James Furr and we listened to Eddy Murphy’s first comedy album on the drive laughing our asses off.

When we arrived the afternoon was free so James, Steve and I decided to explore the park. Soon we stumbled upon a cave and decided to go spelunking. Somehow we had two flashlights between the three of us. So we enter the dark cave and made our way until we came to a place where it grew narrow. A sign was posted that said “No further entry.”

Of course I said, “Let’s go on in!”

And we did. As I’ve explained we were not Apostles. As we made our way deeper into the forbidden area the cave grew narrower, we began to wade in water and it was darker than I’ve ever seen dark. We were literally on our knees in the mountain stream when one of the flashlights went out. I had the only one that remained shinning.

Steve panicked and started ordering that we retreat. He was a Southern Baptist minister so he was quite loud and demanding about it. So to shut him up I unscrewed the top of the flashlight and we were in complete darkness. He shut up. Well, he actually mumbled the most holiest of prayers … “My God.”

He was standing beside me so I grabbed his arm and groped my way to his hand. I placed the flashlight batteries in them.

“When you calm down,” I told him, “we can start again.

He called me many names for a bit but then he grew quiet. “Hand me the flashlight,” he finally said.

“Say please,” I told him.

“Please,” he replied.

So I did and he led us out of the cave. Once outside he resumed calling me names.

A few years later we were together again on another forced retreat. And we were all sitting in a circle and we were all supposed to share something about ourselves that no one else knew. When it came Steve’s turn he looked sheepishly at me. Then he looked at James.

“The most exciting thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” he said staring at the floor, “was a couple of years ago. When I broke a rule with some friends and we went deeper into a place where we weren’t supposed to go. It is most alive I’ve ever felt in life!”

I jumped up and gave him a hug. James followed suit and the three of us stood there embracing one another in front of Baptist Corporate leadership who do not believe in hugging, the poor, speaking in tongues, or good music. I think that they thought we were dancing. They were all speechless and looked uncomfortably in other directions.

So I’m moving on in my own way; at my own pace. I’ve been through the darkest part of my life. Sometimes there was no light at all. I sit here staring at Fran’s thousands shades of green with the sunlight shinning through them and the wind making them dance. I feel myself being raised from the dead.