Moonrise

I’m sitting in a conference room that has no windows in it. That’s a shame because I’m at the beach, it will be 81 degrees today and the winds are calm. A perfect beach day! I’ll only catch glimpses of it when we take breaks from the grants we are arguing for and against. But the trip is paid for and I’m with this really cool collection of people and we’ll have fun and learn a lot.

In 1999 I drove to Charleston, South Carolina with Ben Barnes and Mary Ann Beil so that we could meet Ted Hardgrove. Ted was the Deputy Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Local Funding Partners Program. They give away money to health care programs that they consider groundbreaking.

From New Jersey Ted is a soft spoken, former minister, who ran his own non-profit for a while. We immediately hit it off and I explained to him that we were doing shelter based health clinics for homeless people. Then we shared the dream for a full scale clinic that would be completely integrated with housing, employment, and other services. Ted was intrigued.

We were invited to submit a grant and we did. I wrote it. And we almost got funded but didn’t. Ted called to explain that all five letters of support were identical though they were all signed by different people and on different stationary.

“Damn,” I said. Of course they’re identical! I wrote them and then got people to sign them.

Ted chuckled and invited us to submit again the following year. We did, this time with five support letters that didn’t look anything like the other, and we received $500,000 to establish the J. C. Lewis Health Center.

The following year the Foundation gave me a “Community Health Leader” award which was $100,000.

The Foundation’s been very good to Union Mission and to me.

In 2002 they asked me to serve on one of their National Advisory Committee and become one of the people who decides who gets money and who doesn’t. It’s been quite the learning experience. After today, we will go visit the places that we’ve read about and this summer money will flow to the winners and the losers will reconsider their applications.

Eight or ten times a year I am in a room like this in some city across the country. Today it is Fort Lauderdale. In a few weeks it will likely be San Francisco I learned last night. In between are Atlanta and Houston.

Last night we all had dinner together beside the ocean at an outdoor bar. We’ve gotten to know and like one another so we laughed and toasted in group speak or we broke off into soft quiet conversations.

A full moon rose over the ocean. As it climbed it cast a white trail on the water. While everyone else continued talking and enjoying themselves, my mind followed the trail to the moon and I grew quiet and introspective. My eyes remained focused on the spectacular moonrise.

And I thanked God for allowing this crazy life that I live. And I toasted the moon and I made a promise to dance under it soon in celebration of the joy that is in my life.

Travel Plans

The almost full moon broke through the nighttime clouds as I made my way to the airport before the sun woke up. Last year, I became a “Platinum level” flyer meaning that I fly a lot. Several years ago I hit “Silver” status and then “Gold” and last year hit the big time.

It comes in handy sometimes. Once I was stuck in Pittsburgh and was told there was no way that I could get on another plane until the lady saw that I am a “Platinum Flyer” and then she quickly said, “Of course you can.” I also get bumped to first class a lot which gets you spoiled.

Last year this time the Chairman of my Board who chooses to remain anonymous questioned all of my travel. So I told Jerry Rainey, “It is part of the job. Almost all of it is paid for by the people who invite me to come. I learn all kinds of things from these visits and apply them to our work because other people are doing certain things better than we are. And besides, we have contacts across the nation that can come in handy doing fund raising.”

I don’t think that he ever believed me.

Today I’m off to Ft. Lauderdale because I am a member of A National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We’ve read about thirty grants and will lock ourselves in a room for a few days to determine who gets slices of a $5 Million pie.

This marks my sixth year doing this and I’ve everything there is to know about grant writing (and I was already pretty good), the common themes of successful applications and the newest solutions to complicated issues. It’s been a great experience!

Afterwards I’ll hook up with friends and at some point this weekend run into Conner. We were last together in St. Martin and made mischief together as we do. Before that we were in New Orleans where mischief was made too but neither one of us remember what actually happened.

There is a sign that my friend Jenny has in Fannies-On-the-Beach. “Travel is fatal to prejudice and bigotry.”

I think that this is true.

And I’ve been lucky enough to have most of my prejudices and bigot beliefs be blown to pieces. It makes you more open to new things and people who you normally wouldn’t pick to be your friends. But you do.

For years I begged my kids to move to Europe for year after High School then go to College or to work. This was Dad talking of course so they didn’t listen. Oh Jeremy went later and fell in love with it. Kristen hasn’t made it yet but will.

And then my baby girl Chelsea decided to go. She flies out tomorrow for a few weeks in London before spending five months in Italy. I couldn’t be prouder. She will study art while she is there but will return a changed person. It makes me happy.

I hugged her goodbye last night because I’m flying out today. We will Skype and Face Book because the world is more connected electronically than it’s ever been. Maybe one day it will be as connected in other ways. And I’m already making plans to go see her.

So Godspeed my baby! Enjoy the hell out of it! I’m proud of you!

The Language of God

The quietness of the house wakes me. Everything is still and the silence is deafening. I roll on my side and stare at the silhouettes of the Palm Trees in the dark. Then I lay there and my mind fills with hopes and dreams of miracles and love. I don’t rush anymore. I lay there for a long time just washing myself in hopes and dreams.

This is new for me. I used to leap from the bed directly into the shower fully awake and ready to conquer the day. I’d dress and be at the Breakfast Club fifteen minutes after waking. A half an hour later I was heading for the office and the days were roller coaster rides of triumph and tragedy. Returning home that evening I would describe my day to someone who cared.

That’s how it used to be.

Now I linger in the quietness of the house focusing intently on the hopes, dreams, miracles and love. These are the first things that I think about now every morning; just me and them with no interruptions. It is a sensual wakening. Why hurry when it is sensual? Life doesn’t have enough of that. We give away our sensuality for stability.

Since June, first in St. Martin then on my beloved back deck and now sitting at my kitchen table staring through the sliding glass doors at the windy winter days, I have stopped.

I used to be relentless and I gave myself away to grand causes, social justice and the things that God says she wants in Scriptures. I did a lot of cool stuff, met a lot of people, won a bunch of awards and got my picture in the paper and on TV. That was my life for decades.

Since June I’ve grown increasingly accustomed to the sensuality of the mornings. Hope, dreams, miracles and love are the major goals of life anyway so why not start every day with them?

They are prayers.

The quietness of the house is akin to the emptiness of a church. It wraps its arms around me. If God speaks in the “still small voice” then she is yelling at me.

Fifteen minutes or half an hour later I get up. Goddess is not used to this new routine so she is lying in the door to the bathroom so that I HAVE to pay her the attention that she is accustomed to. I linger in the shower now too. It is a thoughtful time and the sounds of silence are deafening in the hot water that sprays on me. I stare upwards as though in prayer. Then I sigh heavily towards the ground.

Climbing out, I have already felt every emotion that the day will throw at me. It is a much different way to wake up.

Since June I’ve waited on things to come to me rather than chasing after things. It has been very Zen like. And it has been amazing what has, and hasn’t happened.

I’ve captured the holiness of waking up somehow. My friends have come to me. The people who had always said they were my friends didn’t. I know who is who. Work finds me rather than me finding work. Fran came back to life in her thousand shades of green and I believe in resurrections more than I ever have. Old friends came out of nowhere. Joy found me.

Now is the time for my resurrection. Grand causes, social justice, the things that God says she wants in Scriptures, cool stuff, lots of people, new awards and pictures in the paper and on TV are around the corner somewhere.

But for now, I’ll take the silhouettes of the Palm Trees, the sensuality of hopes, dreams, miracles and love.

After all, this is the language of God.

The Dreamer's Disease

“Wake Up Kids! We got the Dreamer’s disease!” sing the New Radicals in one of my favorite songs.

I certainly do. I remain a kid at heart. This time of year I wear socks because its cold and I am forever getting a running start, suddenly stopping and gliding across the tile floor in my house. If I wore underwear I would look like Tom Cruise in whatever movie that was but I don’t so no one will mistake me for him.

And I have a serious case of the Dreamer’s Disease!

There is no cure.

Not that I would want one. I’ve been part of a lot of incredible accomplishments, traveled the world, know who my friends are (and who they’re not), and am preparing myself for the next great thing. That’s what dreamers do. We’re always getting ready for the next great thing; be it love, justice, creation, art, or random acts of … everything!

I showed up for bar church yesterday, dressed to preach wearing shorts, a faded blue long sleeve tee with a paint stain on the arm, and an unbuttoned flannel shirt to knock the chill blowing in off the ocean. I got a robe that I bought from a minister who was going out of business but I didn’t want to wear it.

There were lots of people on the sidewalk outside of the Wind Rose Café, which had been masqueraded as a church with a huge banner hanging out front. It read “Tybee Church! Mayberry by the Sea! Smokers and Flip Flops welcome! Where Pirates Worship”!

Making my way through the people on the sidewalk the bar was packed! It was standing room only and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Jenny O walked in. Johnny O followed her. O Johnny was already seated. Whitley must have still been there from the night before because he was on the front row.

Then there were all of these other people. Many are regulars at bar church but then there were lots of others that I recognized. Over the years they were people who had sought me out because I was someone who could get their teeth fixed, find them housing, introduce them to a doctor and take on a hospital.

“Been waiting on this Rev,” yelled Richard who is nine feet tall and tells me he bends nails for a living, meaning he works construction when he can find work and couldn’t drive a nail in straight if his life depended on it.

A lady who was vaguely familiar threw her arms around my neck and hugged the breath out of me. She couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. Her long brown hair weighed more than she did. She didn’t say anything. She hugged me and I felt wetness in my ear. And then the ocean erupted in my eyes.

Sam Adams and Gordon started playing the music. My friend Joanie got up and did this killer version of “Amazing Grace” which is much better performed in a bar than in a church (and if you don’t believe it then Google John Newton and learn the rest of the song and how it got written).

Then this old familiar feeling started in my stomach and began making its way up. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve felt it but I knew what it was. For 30 years, the Dreamer’s Disease would infect me. Coupled with a kid’s heart it can be lethal.

So I’d kick in the doors of Congress that mostly justify themselves or Baptist Corporate Headquarters who justify who they think God is or the arrogant banks that run/ruin the economy or the Chambers of Commerce where most decisions are actually made. And I would be representing the homeless, people living with AIDS, the uninsured, the addicted, the unsteady and the ones doing the best that they knew how to do.

And I overcompensated on their behalf and was as cocky as a NFL quarterback in a playoff game. And the words of God came rushing into my heart, making their way up to my head, and spewing out of my mouth.

In Seminary I learned this phrase, “orgasmic preaching”. Damn it’s good you hit it. It is not arrogance or cockiness but there is this moment when you know with everything in you are God’s words and not yours and you couldn’t change them or influence them if you wanted to.

And just like sex, after that … you are spent. So I meandered around with my friends for a bit. But then I went home where I just needed to bask in the love that I believe God is. And I smiled and when I did.

And I believe that God smiled back.

But then again, I have the Dreamer’s Disease.

And a kid’s heart.

Bar Church

“Before you move ahead and start reading this, let me take a moment to tell you a few things. I believe in God, but I’m not certain what all that means anymore. You would think someone with a divinity degree would not say such a thing. Oh, I know a lot about what other people have said about God. Then we have church history, comparative religions, theology, church management, and a lot of other things that have very little, if anything, to do with God.”

So begins “Playing Hide & Seek: A Non-Church Goers Guide to God” which is a book I wrote a long time ago.

I remember a few things about that book. First, the publisher couldn’t get anyone to endorse it. We tried everybody and I still have this great letter from Tony Compollo, who was a really hot preacher and writer at the time, chiding me because I wrote that “No Savior will ever sleep in the White House” and he had slept in the White House and was offended.

Second was when Rev. Bennie Mitchell, of Conner’s Temple Baptist Church here in Savannah, walked into a room, saw me started shaking his head from side to side and said, “Mike, Mike, Mike”. He sat down beside me. “Why did you put all of that stuff in your book? I mean, yeah we all think it but we never say it! You wrote what we really think!”

Last were all of the people who don’t go to Church but believe in God who wrote or called to thank me for writing that it’s ok. God sometimes goes to church but not all that much. She’s busy saving the world and all.

After being a part of the special thing that the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel was back in Louisville, Kentucky I’ve had a hard time with Church. I mean if they knew when God was going to make an appearance they would put it in the bulletin; probably right after the sermon but right before the collection. At Jeff St it seemed like magic was happening all of the time and there really is something magical about an experience with God!

After leaving Jeff St, I tried. Technically I’m a member of First Baptist Church of Savannah but I haven’t been for almost two decades. They still send me offering envelopes though! Gotta love that determination!

Then I bounced around a little bit. I went to Chapel by the Sea Baptist Church a couple of times but the sermon was “If you jog on Sundays you’re going to hell” and I had just finished jogging.

I’ve gone to St. Michael’s Catholic Church several times because I like a really good Mass from time to time. I was telling my best friend the other day that I know all of the responses and when to kneel and stand and I’m ok with genuflecting in general. But I can’t take the homilies. I learned all of this stuff from Fr. Vernon Robertson at St. Martin of Tours in Louisville and he was the greatest Priest ever! Then again, I now wonder if he was simply preparing me for my love of the island of St. Martin.

God does work in mysterious ways.

So all of that to say, I’m heading back to Bar Church in a little bit. Sam Adams and Gordon who play damn good live music here on Tybee started Bar Church several years ago (become a friend on Face Book by going to Tybee Church). It is in the Wind Rose Café. Somehow a bar band turns a bar into a church with votive candles, a large screen with words to songs and Scripture verses and the people who don’t go to Church attend.

I was the first member of the clergy to be asked to “bring the word” to this crowd. I had a blast! So Sam invited me back and today is the day. Johnny O is the first non-ordained heathen to “bring the word” to them and he will do that Sunday after next!

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the Saints,” sings Billy Joel.

Me too!

That’s where God is.

The Lazarus Convention

It started at a Bored meeting, the daily collection of friends who gather in front of Fannies-on-the-Beach to celebrate life on Tybee Island. O Johnny got the “brilliant” idea to get us into merchandizing with hat caps and tee shirts made with “Tybidiot” on the front and “official Bored member” on the back. The first run of 12 sold out in one day.

So O Johnny decided to do more. I should share that O Johnny actually spends more time in Atlanta than he does on Tybee. To make matters worse he is actually employed by the federal government who hold him prisoner there. Regardless his thinking is very warped as a result of living in such conditions.

That is no small statement when you compare O Johnny to the other members of the Bored!

So for the first ever the Bored had money. Everyone naturally assumed it would be used to buy the next round but then a miracle happened. Chuck Courtenay, Jr. the famous musician was riding down front, saw the Bored protecting the sidewalk in front of Fannies (which consists of Roma screaming at anybody on a bicycle or skateboard on the sidewalk) and he stopped.

After a brief exchange with Roma he set up his piano and speakers on the sidewalk and did a concert for the Bored. This is akin to the Beatles famous roof top concert on the top of the Apple Recording Studio in London. It immediately became the biggest concert every held on Tybee and everybody now claim to have been present (though there were like 10).

After that Chuck had endeared himself to the Bored. So in an executive committee meeting, which consists of Roma going to the bathroom and coming out with an idea, it was determined that all of the money would be given to Chuck to hold a concert at the Oceanside Nursing Home.

Several years ago Chuck started “Door of Hope Ministries” where he does concerts in nursing homes. If you’ve ever spent much time in a nursing home then you know that they are not the most fun places to spend an afternoon. Most seem to have had all the life sucked out of them as families stick relatives there until they can die. Not all families, but a lot. It is as Nursing Homes suck the life out of the people while charging them for it (kind of like government).

Chuck takes life back in by performing concerts for the residents. He shows up with his talent, electric piano and speakers. He is charismatic and speaks to each person who can walk or be wheel chaired in. He knows the music they like prefer he starts.

Then he starts.

Yesterday Roma, Jenny O, Johnny O, Whitely, the Rev. and a friend of us all showed up at the Oceanside Nursing Home for Chuck’s concert. He started with 1950s rock-n-roll and it was as though Jesus had wandered into a Lazarus convention! Old ladies long dead in wheelchairs jumped and danced! Old men stood beside Chuck as though they were background singers and dancers, snapping their fingers and clapping their hands. People confined to their seats sang along loudly. Even those who couldn’t do anything watched with more intensity than they’ve had in years.

As the only member of the Bored who can actually dance, I grabbed the hand of a lady in red sitting in her wheel chair and spun her around.

“Oh my” she said grinning from ear to ear.

A bit later, Roma who thinks she can dance grabbed some pom-poms and twirled them around in front of Chuck. To the non-trained she almost gave the appearance of dancing except that the pom-poms were going in opposite directions. Roma only has rhythm when alcohol is involved.

But this was an amazing thing to witness…this Lazarus Convention.

For years Chuck has mostly paid for these concerts out of his own pocket. He does them all over the place because it is amazing how few really give a shit about the people who live in Nursing Homes. He and I have been friends a long time and I know how he struggles to keep doing it but he does.

Yesterday was his 60th birthday too! He could have been making money or having parties or a thousand other things but he chose to bring the dead back to life.

So…if you want to do something to make yourself feel wonderful and participate in the raising of the dead, send him a check at P.O. Box 2294, Evans, Georgia 30809 made out to Door of Hope Ministry or call him at 706-210-HOPE.

I did the other day. But I didn’t realize what I was buying until I attended my first Lazarus Convention. My God! It is an amazing thing to witness.

Unfinished Stories

Before there was Charles, my six-foot-two, African American, mentally ill former bank robber adopted son, there was Keith. For the better part of the past decade until I left Union Mission Charles and I were extremely close and he achieved more stability in his life than he’d ever had. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen him but he crosses my mind every day. The last time that I saw him he told me that he loves me.

In 1995 though, there was Keith. From Ohio Keith was a mentally ill, Vietnam veteran with lupus. His head was permanently cocked to one side and his white face was filled with red splotches. He spoke with that high nasal twang of northern Ohio. He loved French fries, science fiction novels and pretty girls.

“Keith,” I asked him one day sitting in my office, “I really have a hard time envisioning you in Vietnam.”

“Oh Mike,” he replied in his high pitched northern voice, “I was different back then. It was before the lupus.”

I nodded, of course. It had to have been.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Oh I discovered pot,” he answered with great enthusiasm.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled. “Then what happened,” I probed.

“I liked it so much I sent some to my wife back in Ohio”!

“Wait,” I said standing up, “you were married?”

“Oh yeah,” he said turning his body to look me in the eyes, “back then I was hot.”

I loved Keith.

“Then what happened?”

“Well,” he replied sitting back down with his head cocked away from me but his green eyes still looking in mine, “I mailed her really good stuff. And the Army found out so I was discharged pretty quickly.”

“You mailed it to her?”

“How else was I going to get it to her?” he stood and turned his body to look me dead in the eyes again. “I was in Vietnam and she was in Ohio.”

‘Uh huh,” I shook my head. “Then what happened?”

“Well when I got home she divorced me for being stupid.”

I didn’t know what to say.

A few weeks later I ran with the Olympic Torch and soon after I finished took it to Grace House so that homeless people could see one. There is a photograph of me still wearing the official sanctioned running wear standing next to Keith who is holding the Torch. His head his cocked to the side but his eyes are staring at the camera. He is smiling a crooked slurred smile.

So Keith became part of the family. The first time that I brought him to Tybee he went nuts over the girls in bikinis. He deserved more than life in a homeless shelter and after we got him disability I asked if he wanted to move to the Ocean Plaza Nursing Home, a couple of blocks from where I lived.

“Can I look at girls in bikinis?” he asked.

“All you want,” I told him.

So he moved into the nursing home and though Julie would visit him and play Chinese- Checkers with him sitting on his bed, he hated it. I was forever getting phone calls from Susan the administrator.

Keith had taken a boom box, placed it in the middle of the community room, hit play and the Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil” blared into the ears of all of the wheelchair bound residents. Keith gyrated and danced and got mad that no one would dance with him.

One day I was called to immediately come because Keith had taken $1,700 on a group trip to Wall Mart. He wanted to buy a Walk-man. The Nursing Home Policy was to charge rent first and leave a bit of spending money for the residents. I’d hid Keith’s money so that he had plenty.

“Dammit Keith,” I was furious after Susan had given me back his money, “what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know what a Walk-man costs,” he calmly answered. “I didn’t want to be embarrassed if I didn’t have enough money.”

I didn’t know what to say.

In my mind I thought that it would always be this way. Keith would live and die as part of my family on Tybee. Kristen and Chelsea would visit him with us. It would be a perfect ending to a rotten life.

But Susan called me one day to tell me that Keith was gone. I rushed out to his room at the Nursing Home and he had cleaned it out. And … that was that.

Life is full of unfinished stories. We’ve all got our share.

So Keith, if you’ve figured out the Internet yet in your science fiction brain, or have a Face Book page or might you still be alive, this is for you. “Not trying to change your mind … but to say that I miss you … good luck, goodbye …”

And thank you.

Bye Mrs. Tommie

Back in those days, Chelsea was five or six and would wake up when I woke up. She dressed quickly and was waiting on me when I walked into her room. Kissing her good morning, I took her tiny hand and we made our way to the car for the quick drive to the Breakfast Club. In those days it opened at six a.m. and my daughter and I took our seats at the counter.

Chelsea ordered the same thing every day. “The Chelsea Special” is what Bruce called it. A grilled cheese sandwich with “the rhine cut off” and bacon. I was already dressed for work with a shirt and tie on and Chelsea never mastered the art of a napkin back then. She used the shelve of my shirt to wipe her hands after eating.

On one side of me was Jake, the master of ceremonies; deaf as he could be but equally funny. On the other side of him was Georgia who delivered the newspapers to the island.

“God I’m tired,” Georgia exclaimed one morning. “I just want to go home and take my bra off and go to sleep.”

“That explains it,” Jake said.

We all stared at him.

“Those two loud thuds I hear every morning.”

Laughter exploded on every side of the counter.

Sitting on the other side of Chelsea was Tommie Pierce, a nurse with the Chatham County Health Department. Tommie would stroll in every morning with her newspaper, kiss Jake, kiss me, and then kiss Chelsea, softly wishing each of us a good morning.

Then she would open the paper to the obituary section, order a bowl of grits and a side of bacon, and intensely study who had had died.

After about ten minutes she would look up, make the sign of the cross and exclaim, “Whew! I’m not in there. It’s going to be a good day.”

She did this every day for the decade that she was a member of the Counter Crew, first shift of the Breakfast Club.

One day she called me to tell me that her freezer had stopped working and that we were invited to the party.

“Party” I asked?

“All of this stuff is thawing so Frank and I are cooking everything and having a party. Hurry on over,” she explained.

It’s hard not to love Tommie.

She counted the days until her retirement and knew it down to the minute. When that happy day finally came, I drove to the Health Department for her farewell party and we hugged and laughed as I listened to the stories about her career. After that she no longer needed to rise so early so she became part of the Counter Crew, third or fourth shift, depending on the day. Whenever I saw her she gave me the same kiss and wished me good morning.

So yesterday at the Breakfast Club I sat on the same stool that she used to sit next to me on and I read her obituary. My eyes filled with salt water from the sea as I pictured her daily ritual. And I stared at her picture and told it that I love her.

It was fitting last night that Chelsea and I went together to the funeral home to help send her off to heaven. Now finishing college, Chelsea hugged Frank and we made our way through the crowded room talking to this person and that.

At one point, Chelsea was talking to someone and I stood there a part of the crowd but in a different universe at the same time. And I remembered how Tommie used to laugh when Chelsea would finish eating and wipe her hands on my shirt shelve before I went to work.

“Homeless people are going to be hungry all day long because you smell like bacon,” she would tell me.

So bye Tom! You remain so loved. I’m glad that you and Jake and Blind Mike are all reunited. And do me one last favor. Whenever I show up, save my seat at the counter. And save Chelsea one too. And we’ll do it all again.

An Important Question

“Tell me something,” she asked on the phone, “what makes your heart happy?”

It gave me pause. It’s not a question that is easily answered. It is certainly not one that’s honestly answered. We cite clichés or lie to ourselves by saying the things that should make us happy but don’t really. So we say Jesus or our kids or spouses or friends or work or windsurfing or something exciting. Such things should make us happy but many times … in spite of them we’re not.

When Bill Berry (not the former drummer for R.E.M. but the other one that I went to Seminary with) and I were standing in the middle of Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration in Poland, I kept asking questions of our guide, a Holocaust survivor. I would impatiently blurt out questions of things that I wanted to know.

“What became of the Kappos?”

“What happened to Rudolph Hoess’ lamps?”

His name was Martin and he was dignity personified. I stood there wearing a red and white University of Georgia coat with the matching hat, knowing that I already knew everything.

As I blurted out the questions he would pause and his eyes would lock mine. He had this way of letting the moment linger so that tension was created. Then he would clap his hands together in the cold February weather and smile.

“That is an important question,” he would say. “I will answer for everyone.”

I was put in my place.

Later that day Martin and I disappeared together. He left the British tour group he was leading that Bill and I hijacked. We stood in front of the gallows where Rudolph Hoess, the most infamous Commander of the Camp, was hung after the war.

“Why do you know these things?” he asked me standing there.

And I didn’t know how to answer. In a history class at Groves High School in Garden City, Georgia of all places, Wayne Seay showed a film of the liberation of the camp. My mind and my heart woke up that day.

And it led me to college, then to Seminary, then to the worlds of homelessness, AIDS, the uninsured, the worst of poverty … and then to Denominational Headquarters, City Halls, State Capitols, Governor’s offices and Congress.

I’ve been to some bad places.

“Ummm,” I finally answered her. “I got to think about that.” Then I quoted Martin, “It is too important a question.”

I sit here now pondering it. Balmy tropical weather makes my heart leap. Islands and oceans do too. Writing comes from somewhere deep in my heart and bursts out and always surprises me. The things that I’ve done and the places that I’ve been stagger me. The smell of the marsh in the heat (sex in the tropics is what it smells like).

Goddess.

The people I love.

More important recently are the people who love me and are not afraid to show it.

Special ones who have my heart in their back pockets.

When God touches me and I cry.

When I’ve helped justice roll from the mountain tops or watched something that I said birth hope in somebody’s eyes.

It’s an important question. It will take a long time to answer.

I Don't Care What Anyone Thinks (To Goddess)

Goddess and I stand on Shirley’s sad little holy dock feeling the heavy moisture that is suspended in the air. The lighthouse is muted across the marsh and the gray sky makes it appear as though a set in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The sweat from the run that I just finished is making me cold so I grab the leash and pull but Goddess is content and doesn’t want to leave.

Steam is surrounding my head which is still red from the three mile sprint. My bare legs are warm enough for the moment but will soon turn cold. I tell Goddess to come on but she stands defiant and stares at me. I sigh.

Then I sit down on the wet cold dock and the back of my legs sting. Goddess sits down beside me wearing her fur coat. I call her a bitch. She happily licks my face.

Egrets and marsh hens are below us in the mud of low tide. The marsh grass has the last hint of golden to it but will soon turn brown and die. When it does the tides will carry it out to sea and eventually wash it upon the beach. The marsh itself will have been cleansed of the old making way for the birth of a new which will come in the spring.

A white egret flies behind us and Goddess runs down the dock after her. I take this as my cue and jump up and quickly catch up grabbing her lease and walking towards home. She spies the empty Gator-aid bottle in my hand and I give it to her. She carries it in her mouth.

People love to see her do this. I finish the Gator-aid after my run and just hand her the bottle. She leaps to take it out of my hand and if people see it they laugh and point and speak. Goddess has a huge fan club.

Back home I turn on the hot water of the outdoor shower. The temperature is 37 degrees but the house blocks the wind and the water is hot. I’m addicted to the outdoor shower and opt to use it most of the time. There’s something quite spectacular about standing there outside, one with nature, as yourself.

It strikes me that most people never do this and I feel sad because they don’t know what they’re missing.

Then it strikes me that most people would think I’m crazy to take an outdoor shower when it is 37 degrees. Well, I tell myself, it won’t be the first time that I’ve been called crazy.

Goddess waits for me on the porch as I grab the towel and quickly make my way into the warmth of the house. She follows me still carrying the Gator-aid bottle. While I dress she holds it between her paws and bites the top off then licks out what is left.

As I watch her my thoughts drift to a Board Chair who chose to remain anonymous. I’d had a flat tire and changed it in my driveway. It was one of those mornings when everything was just going wrong. As I worked, Goddess kept licking my face as though offering encouragement and love. I wrote about it and Jerry Rainey took offence.

“You wrote about a dog licking your face,” he said.

“Yep,” I replied. “Love is love.”

“You shouldn’t be saying that kind of stuff,” he admonished.

I look at Goddess who is lying on the beloved back deck licking green Gator-aid out of the bottle. I ponder all of the love that she has given me through the hardest of times. I love this dog.

Then I think about my friend Joe Daniel, also a former Chairman of the Board that I worked for. We had a long talk on the phone last night and we laughed and cussed and made plans to get together soon. With Joe we built a shelter for men, a shelter for families with children and a shelter for people living with HUV+/AIDS in a three year period of time.

We shared vision. We also shared jokes. He once brought Dianne Fuller and me the resume of someone he wanted us to consider hiring. He kept telling us she had great assets. We opened the file folder and it was a Playboy Centerfold. It’s hard not to love Joe.

Like it’s hard not to love Goddess.

And I don’t care what anybody thinks about it.

Getting My Voice Back

Lou Phelps Faced Booked me. She is the editor of the “Coastal Business Journal” had read a blog that I’d written on the changes planned for Union Mission now that I am no longer there and wanted to interview me for a story.

My initial reaction was to say no. I’ve laid low out of respect for the new leadership at Union Mission. Besides I’ve been on this Sabbatical and these are quiet times. And I’ve lived such a loud and public life. Aside from my daily musings on my blog and on Face Book the people that I’ve chosen to talk to and listen to is very small. I’ve commanded huge audiences and at this point in my life do not have the need to be center stage.

I’ve lived my whole life in the press. For twenty years Union Mission averaged 52 newspaper stories a year. That’s one a week. I was in most of them. That doesn’t count television, radio or regional and national publications. My face was recognized when I would be out and once people figured out who I was they asked for things.

“My son has an addiction problem and I don’t know what to do,” a Mother cried seated beside me at the Breakfast Club one morning.

“Look at my teeth,” a man commanded in fresh meat section of Publix. “Can you help me with them?” and they were yellow and rotting and who can buy fresh meat after that?

“I’m married but there is somebody else. Will God forgive me? I don’t know what to do,” he told me over a lunch at Johnny Harris’s.

At a Chamber of Commerce meeting a Savannah business woman wrote on her napkin and passed it me. “Can I talk to you after this?” I nodded and we did. Her daughter is a waitress and has no health insurance but is sick. I told her about the J. C. Lewis Health Center.

Sitting at the head table of a political “Eggs and Issues” breakfast the Senator sitting beside me leans over. “Hey Mike, I’ve got this …friend… Yeah, friend… Anyway my friend has AIDS. Tell me,” and his voice cracks as he finishes and his eyes grow moist and his voice quivers, “tell me what to do.”

That was my life for the better part of 30 years; raging against injustice in the media while quietly responding to the real needs of real people at the individual level. Both were relentless and on this Sabbatical, I now realize the toil that it all took.

There is this scene in “Jesus Christ Superstar” where the crowds around Jesus become a mob. They all need something from him at the same time.

See my eyes I can hardly see
See me stand I can hardly walk
I believe you can make me whole
See my tongue I can hardly talk

See my skin I’m a mass of blood
See my legs I can hardly stand
I believe you can make me well
See my purse I’m a poor, poor man

It overwhelms Jesus in the end and he scream at the pleading crowd “HEAL THYSELVES!”

No one has ever accused me of being especially Christ like and I certainly never learned to look a hurting person in the aisle of Publix and tell them to fix it themselves. But I got overwhelmed too and the thing about that is how few people give a shit. If you can’t do anything for them … well, then …what good are you?

So I locked my voice away on this Sabbatical because I needed to just be with the people who love me for me. And not for what I could do. It was an amazing lesson to see who is who.

Now thirty years of wounds have healed and I marvel at the scars. And I am grateful beyond expression to those who tended my healing. And I am not done. Thirty years is a long time. “Three years seems like thirty,” Jesus sings in Superstar.

I did my thirty.

So I called Lou and told her that I would do the interview. Rebekah came to participate and stand beside me because my knees are still a bit wobbly from it all. But I got my voice back. And I know what is what. And what isn’t.

And resurrections are funny things. You recognize them when they are happening.

Sunday January 9th 2001 at the Breakfast Club (First Shift)

“Get that thing out of my toaster!!!” Jodee screamed.

Jodee is the owner and mastermind behind the World Famous Breakfast Club on Tybee Island, Georgia where I live. The Breakfast Club is a local’s favorite, a Savannah icon and a tourist’s mecca. Long lines form throughout the year but especially in the summer to get inside to eat what is much more than a breakfast. It is an experience! Paula Dean has nothing on Jodee.

It was a Pop Tart in the toaster. Val who runs the cash register with one hand because she is holding up her pants with the other one had tried to sneak it by him but when it popped up Phil screamed.

“OH MY GOD” he yelled. “What is that?? I’ve never seen anything like it!!”

Phil is the twelve foot tall red headed person in charge of toast, grits, hollandaise, and garnishments at the Breakfast Club.

“GET IT OUT OF MY TOASTER NOW” Jodee screamed.

“Shit,” I heard Val mutter. One arm was raised because she was using the other one to hold her pants up and retrieved the Pop Tart. She then disappeared into the back somewhere like Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” eating a raw fish.

“Hey Mike,” Jodee said, “Were you here when we put the Strawberry Pop Tart in the toaster and turned it up high?”

I shook my head from side to side.

“Yeah you were,” he tells me.

“OK,” I reply.

“We had to take the toaster outside. I read about it in a Dave Berry column. Anyway, we dropped two strawberry Pop Tarts in and, after a minute, flames shot up four feet high! Ain’t having no Pop Tarts in my toasters.”

I am cracking up.

I start every day of my life with my extended family at the Breakfast Club. Johnny O does too. Whitley shows when he can remember where his truck or bicycle is which is becoming increasingly challenging for him.

“I played Pictionary with myself last night,” Phil tells me from above. “Katy was working. It only took me a minute.”

We have deep meaningful conversations at the Club.

“I pay taxes so that government can build bridges so that people can have a roof over their heads,” I am informed.

There is a logic to it all somehow.

“What’s the difference between Bill Clinton and the Queen of England?”

I shake my head.

“You only have to get down on one knee if you’re with the Queen.”

Coffee comes out of my nose.

Not to be outdone, Nancee strolls in like a gun slinger from the movie “True Grit.”

“Yeah,” she says as she fills a coffee pot, “what is Prince Philip going to say to his wife on their wedding night.”

We all just stare at her.

“I’ve got the whole of England in front of me.”

I am fully awake by now so I stand and say “Later kids.”

“Bye Mike!” I hear in unison.

Wild Wild Life

My eyes opened in the dark and I stared at the silhouettes of the Palm trees I can see out of the five windows I see from this view in my bed. Turning and stretching I see the shape of the lone red leaf on the tree outside of the other two windows. With seven windows in my bedroom its little wonder that I get up before the sun comes up.

Goddess is snoring on the floor. I lay there and think thoughts. “Did I dream about Art Linkletter offering me a deal to take over his company because it needs music? Then I called my Dad and Mom who showed up because they love Art Linkletter?”

This is the worst time of living alone in a house that you used to share. But I think of happier thoughts and reach for the pillow on the other side of the bed.

Getting up I stumble into the shower which is full of memories. I stand there with hot water showering on my head and remember.

When I get out I throw on running clothes and Goddess is now awake waiting on a belly rub. I wish the Lady of the House a good morning, give her treats, grab the keys and head downstairs for the car.

Typically my radio is at full blast as it was this morning. As soon as it started the lyrics filled my brain.

“I’m wearing my fur pajamas … I ride a hot potato …”

And I smile.

It may as well have been God knocking Saul off of that ass he was riding to turn him into St. Paul. The Talking Heads have always knocked me on my ass and this is my favorite song of theirs.

“Like sitting on pins and needles, things fall apart, it’s scientific …”

Ah, things fall apart. They did for me. It’s a fact of life so we may as well grab hold it and enjoy the hell out of the ride.

And driving to the Breakfast Club at 6:15 in the morning I stop the car in the middle of the road. I look at the stars and listen to the lyrics.

“Piece of mind? Piece of cake,” David Byrne sings.

Yep. I’m getting my piece of mind back.

And I say a prayer.

“Hey God,” I call her by name.

“Thank you. Mine really has been a wild, wild life. More right now than ever! At 54 you’d think that I’d be settling down but you are God after all and knew just the right moment to knock Saul on his ass and turn him into a Saint. I trust you. I have my whole life. I’ve been on my ass a lot lately but am ready to get up. Of course you are God and all so in your time … not mine.”

I think I learned that last line in Seminary.

“And forgive Guy Sayles for talking me into going to Seminary. It really wasn’t his fault. And forgive Bill Berry if you can. And when Conner and I stand before you, I promise you will laugh.”

“We wanna go where we go, where we go, I doing wild wild life,” the song goes.

Present tense I notice as I listen.

“Thanks God,” I finish the prayer. “I need coffee now. And I wouldn’t change this life all that much.”

Wild Wild Life

My eyes opened in the dark and I stared at the silhouettes of the Palm trees I can see out of the five windows I see from this view in my bed. Turning and stretching I see the shape of the lone red leaf on the tree outside of the other two windows. With seven windows in my bedroom its little wonder that I get up before the sun comes up.

Goddess is snoring on the floor. I lay there and think thoughts. “Did I dream about Art Linkletter offering me a deal to take over his company because it needs music? Then I called my Dad and Mom who showed up because they love Art Linkletter?”

This is the worst time of living alone in a house that you used to share. But I think of happier thoughts and reach for the pillow on the other side of the bed.

Getting up I stumble into the shower which is full of memories. I stand there with hot water showering on my head and remember.

When I get out I throw on running clothes and Goddess is now awake waiting on a belly rub. I wish the Lady of the House a good morning, give her treats, grab the keys and head downstairs for the car.

Typically my radio is at full blast as it was this morning. As soon as it started the lyrics filled my brain.

“I’m wearing my fur pajamas … I ride a hot potato …”

And I smile.

It may as well have been God knocking Saul off of that ass he was riding to turn him into St. Paul. The Talking Heads have always knocked me on my ass and this is my favorite song of theirs.

“Like sitting on pins and needles, things fall apart, it’s scientific …”

Ah, things fall apart. They did for me. It’s a fact of life so we may as well grab hold it and enjoy the hell out of the ride.

And driving to the Breakfast Club at 6:15 in the morning I stop the car in the middle of the road. I look at the stars and listen to the lyrics.

“Piece of mind? Piece of cake,” David Byrne sings.

Yep. I’m getting my piece of mind back.

And I say a prayer.

“Hey God,” I call her by name.

“Thank you. Mine really has been a wild, wild life. More right now than ever! At 54 you’d think that I’d be settling down but you are God after all and knew just the right moment to knock Saul on his ass and turn him into a Saint. I trust you. I have my whole life. I’ve been on my ass a lot lately but am ready to get up. Of course you are God and all so in your time … not mine.”

I think I learned that last line in Seminary.

“And forgive Guy Sayles for talking me into going to Seminary. It really wasn’t his fault. And forgive Bill Berry if you can. And when Conner and I stand before you, I promise you will laugh.”

“We wanna go where we go, where we go, I doing wild wild life,” the song goes.

Present tense I notice as I listen.

“Thanks God,” I finish the prayer. “I need coffee now. And I wouldn’t change this life all that much.”

Wild Wild Life

My eyes opened in the dark and I stared at the silhouettes of the Palm trees I can see out of the five windows I see from this view in my bed. Turning and stretching I see the shape of the lone red leaf on the tree outside of the other two windows. With seven windows in my bedroom its little wonder that I get up before the sun comes up.

Goddess is snoring on the floor. I lay there and think thoughts. “Did I dream about Art Linkletter offering me a deal to take over his company because it needs music? Then I called my Dad and Mom who showed up because they love Art Linkletter?”

This is the worst time of living alone in a house that you used to share. But I think of happier thoughts and reach for the pillow on the other side of the bed.

Getting up I stumble into the shower which is full of memories. I stand there with hot water showering on my head and remember.

When I get out I throw on running clothes and Goddess is now awake waiting on a belly rub. I wish the Lady of the House a good morning, give her treats, grab the keys and head downstairs for the car.

Typically my radio is at full blast as it was this morning. As soon as it started the lyrics filled my brain.

“I’m wearing my fur pajamas … I ride a hot potato …”

And I smile.

It may as well have been God knocking Saul off of that ass he was riding to turn him into St. Paul. The Talking Heads have always knocked me on my ass and this is my favorite song of theirs.

“Like sitting on pins and needles, things fall apart, it’s scientific …”

Ah, things fall apart. They did for me. It’s a fact of life so we may as well grab hold it and enjoy the hell out of the ride.

And driving to the Breakfast Club at 6:15 in the morning I stop the car in the middle of the road. I look at the stars and listen to the lyrics.

“Piece of mind? Piece of cake,” David Byrne sings.

Yep. I’m getting my piece of mind back.

And I say a prayer.

“Hey God,” I call her by name.

“Thank you. Mine really has been a wild, wild life. More right now than ever! At 54 you’d think that I’d be settling down but you are God after all and knew just the right moment to knock Saul on his ass and turn him into a Saint. I trust you. I have my whole life. I’ve been on my ass a lot lately but am ready to get up. Of course you are God and all so in your time … not mine.”

I think I learned that last line in Seminary.

“And forgive Guy Sayles for talking me into going to Seminary. It really wasn’t his fault. And forgive Bill Berry if you can. And when Conner and I stand before you, I promise you will laugh.”

“We wanna go where we go, where we go, I doing wild wild life,” the song goes.

Present tense I notice as I listen.

“Thanks God,” I finish the prayer. “I need coffee now. And I wouldn’t change this life all that much.”

The Magnatism of Jesus

It all started with Bill Berry of course (not the former drummer from R.E.M. but the other one who went to Seminary with me). He once took a Bible, cut out the pages in the middle and mailed me a magnet. I suppose he wanted to cover up the fact that it was a magnet that he was mailing me and not some subversive tape, by-products of war, or letters on stationary from God, all of which he had done before!

The Bible industry is better off because of Bill. They are his methods of concealment of choice.

Whenever we are together some adventure occurs. We’ve run into a bus (literally!) with the font end of my car suddenly resembling a tin can. We both agreed that this was an excellent reason to skip Seminary, order pizza and drink beer.

We’ve been thrown out of a Trappist Monastery after entering the forbidden zone because … well, it was forbidden.

We jumped off a British tour bus in Poland with no idea how we would get back to the train station to spend a bitter day in Auschwitz, the concentration camp.

We were once chased by a collection of Turkish whores in Prague late one night. They accosted me first, rubbing my body and asking me things I didn’t understand. Bill stood there laughing until I yelled that he had all of the money and they left me taking off after him. He took off in a sprint and I lay on the cobblestone street laughing in the dark.

In Havana Cuba we spent one night in a Cabrera talking to 1930s burlesque showgirls and it took all eight of our legs and arms to make it back to my hotel room that night where management immediately thought that we were gay and reported us to the Communist government. We were followed around by guys in coats afterwards.

Also in Havana we took public transportation to Figora, Ernest Hemingway’s house because he’s one of my favorite writers. I wore a “Georgia” tee-shirt and this huge man threw his arm around me and told me that his name was George and he was going to be my friend. I sat in his lap during the crowded ride on the “camelback”. Mothers breast fed their children, men held chickens, and this was one happy collection of people. It only costs us 35 cents a piece!

Once we got to Hemingway’s house, it was closed so we had to hitchhike back. A 1940’s pickup truck with the bed absolutely packed with people stopped to pick us up. The cab was also full but the driver made them get in the back to accommodate us and we were driven back to Havana. I had a back pack full of Snickers bars and when I threw them to everyone they cheered and exclaimed with glee.

In Berlin Germany I attacked Bill in a McDonald’s late one night for ordering a fish sandwich because he is a devote vegetarian but he was drunk and had the munchies. I was not going to allow him to blame me for betraying his vegetarianism so as I exited the rest room and saw what he’d done I sprinted across the restaurant and tackled him. “Dumm Esel!” I heard someone say.

I could go on. We’ve done more (Let’s not bring up Myrtle Beach, Nashville or the Southern Baptist Convention).

Anyway I opened the Bible, saw the cut out pages and I retrieved the magnet which was a portrayal of Jesus presenting a pizza to the Apostles.

And I was converted that day. If you come to my house my refrigerator is covered with pictures held up by Jesus magnets. “Please Jesus protect me from your followers,” says a man in a suit talking to the Savior.

“Jesus is coming! Look busy!” proclaims one with Jesus knocking on the door of a church.

“I’ve found Jesus!” proclaims another. “He was behind the sofa the whole time.”

“Stop using Jesus as an excuse for being a narrow minded bigoted ass!” says a favorite.

There are maybe 50 of them covering the white of the fridge. People will come over and spend an hour standing in front of them reading and laughing or … giving me the death stare.

Well. It’s not my fault. It is Bill Berry’s.

And in the middle of my fridge is a magnet of the Prophet Bob Marley which says “Emancipate your self from mental slavery.”

And it seems as I look at them now, 50 versions of Jesus are looking at Bob Marley and smiling.

The Faith of Dinosaurs

A few short years ago I was sitting in Bob Colvin’s office at Memorial Health Medical Center, Savannah’s safety net hospital and strategic ally to Union Mission. He sat in the power chair that he liked and I had my feet propped on the coffee table.

Over the previous decade we had done some amazing things together along with Peter Doliber at the hospital and Kelly McDaniel back at Union Mission.

We had pioneered the respite care movement, demonstrated significant cost savings formulas by establishing alternatives to Emergency room treatment and hospitalization, and crafted the redirection of an entire chronic needs population (homeless people) from a hospital to a community setting like Union Mission.

No one had ever done these things before (sorry Jim O’Connel, you are still the gold standard but we did all of these things first!) and had won a lot of awards because of it. Our relationship and our organization’s partnership had surpassed a decade.

“You know what Mike,” he said.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I feel like a dinosaur. No body stays at a hospital for twelve years. All of my friends tell me that I’m nuts to still be here.”

His eyes looked weary. Taking my feet off of the coffee table I leaned forward to respond.

“You” I said? “Try 20 years in the front lines of homelessness. The average tenure is two-and-a-half years. Add what I did before and it’s almost 30 years.”

“Yeah but it’s just a homeless shelter.”

Bob knew how to get me going. I busted out laughing and we both agreed to go out for beers soon to talk about the dinosaur landscape.

Not long after that Bob left the hospital. We remain friends and in touch though I will never comprehend why he returned to his home state of Idaho to live across the gorge from the guy that played Horshack on “Welcome Back Kotter”.

I lasted another three years and then “the time of Middle Earth had passed” and a new breed came who were different from the dinosaurs that we were. They believe in short term fixes and not long term results.

One of the things that I learned through my career is that if you believe in something you stick with it. It may fail but you learn from the failures and keep at it until you succeed. Perseverance and faith breed success.

Success came early for me at Union Mission. Grace House, the Magdalene Project and Phoenix Place were all built in the first three years that I was there.

Then it got harder. The Employment & Training Center took five years. Expanding Phoenix Place took five too (at the same time though). The J. C. Lewis Health Center took four after that. The Ben & Bettye Barnes Center was a gift from nuns that we used HUD money on because the relationships we had with government allowed us to suspend the rules for how to spend it. The Behavioral Health Center took seven years. Dutch Town took five years too.

Somewhere in there we sold Potter’s Place, closed the Hacienda, and birthed and killed many Sacred Cows along the way.

It was with alarm that I read of Memorial’s decision to replace Phillip Schaengold as Bob’s replacement. He’s been there less than two years. It’s hard to do much anything in two years.

But the days of Middle Earth have passed. Everybody wants perfection now without the hard work that it takes to get there. Small minded people want debts retired immediately and it doesn’t matter what that cost to the greater good or the smaller satisfactions of life. Instant gratification rules!

But I choose to remain a dinosaur. A feisty one who will relentlessly pursue what he has faith in, but a dinosaur nevertheless.

The Balance of Power

Sitting in the offices of the Orlando Free Dental Clinic Bob, the Director was getting mad. A federal auditor was getting on to him because his outcomes were not pure. The grant that supported a large part of the program only allowed people meeting certain demographic requirements to be served. Bob and his staff had this notion that anybody needing dental care could come.

The federal auditor would have none of it. Rules are rules. She kept demanding proof of outcomes.

“You want outcomes,” Bob spit standing up, “I’ll show you outcomes!”

And he left the room. When he returned he carried this very large jar. He turned it upside down in front of the auditor’s chair and hundreds upon hundreds of extracted teeth showered around her feet.

“There’s your outcomes”!

He was making a powerful point. The shower of teeth represented the real pain and agony of people who may or may not have fit the guidelines. The pain was as much for those who did as for those who didn’t. Shepherd’s Hope, the clinic refused to discriminate even though the federal government paid them to do so.

When you boil my belief system down I believe in Liberation Theology, a belief that God sides with the poor and if we want to hang around God then we need to hang around the poor. It is a theology of the streets.

It doesn’t trust institutions. Any institution --- governments, banks, churches, Synagogues, or much anything else! The reason is institutions exist to perpetuate themselves above anything else. Continued existence of one means more than anybody or anything … including God, justice, charity, and family.

It is a balancing trick to be part of an institution that you know you can never really trust. There is always this tension of doing everything for the sake of the place while keeping one foot over the line. That’s what Bob did when the Shepherd’s Place served people in pain regardless of rules.

Sure, you can’t do everything for everybody. But you can try. Pushing institutions and organizations to do more than they are capable of keeps them honest. Once they become status quo, then the Bank, Church or government exists for itself at the expense of others.

Several years later Bob was at Union Mission with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doing a site visit for a grant we had submitted. The grant was for $500,000 to help start the J. C. Lewis Health Center. The meeting had gone well and we were feeling pretty good our prospects.

Towards the end Bob asked, “Have you thought about adding a Dental component? Oral health ranks sixth in why people go to hospital emergency rooms. They can’t afford a Dentist so …what do they do?”

It had never dawned on us. Besides we were already trying to do something incredibly ambitious.

Then Bob the story of showering the auditor’s shower of extracted teeth.

So in the course of a couple of weeks we amended our application to include oral health. Today it is the Peter Brassler Dental Clinic, this area’s only oral health center for the working poor, uninsured and homeless.

I’m no longer part of any of that but I still worry about it becoming too much of an institution that merely adheres to government rules or Income Performa or being content to do what they can without pushing themselves. Pain is pain after all.

Congress returns to session today as though any of us really need that to happen. We all have to be careful in how we approach our work and our beliefs in institutions that we belong; that we do our very best to prevent them from becoming like Congress where everyone works hard to keep it like it is.

The Suddenly Compact Universe

On the 11th day of Christmas, or the 3rd day of January depending on your religious persuasion, I sit alone in my kitchen staring at the reflection of the lights on the sliding glass doors of the Christmas tree that I haven’t set on fire yet.

If eleven Pipers are piping I don’t hear them yet. If I do I will call the Tybee Island Police Department who will tase them as the Tybee Island Police Department is prone to do and then there would likely be flutes, burnt grass and stuff cluttering the yard.

If 12 Drummers drumming show up tomorrow I now have a rocket launcher and will take them all out at once.

“Your writing has been so sad,” I was written.

Duh!

You live through your first Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s by yourself and let me know if you don’t get sad.

I have friends who have lost their husbands or wives over the past few years and the holidays will never be the same to them again …at least not in the same way.

Perhaps they will find new love or someone to fill the void and once again the Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

Or perhaps it won’t.

Tonight it won’t.

It’s funny when you are married or in a deep relationship and you live together how much you enjoy having the house to yourself. You watch whatever you want on television, use all of the hot water in the bath, quietly sit and read or pee off of the porch if you want. You relish these times because your husband, wife, significant other or kids take it all which is most of the time.

So when you get the time alone in your own place …well…what a luxurious gift.

Then the one you love dies, leaves, can’t be there or the kids grow up and leave or some combination of all of the above. Or because the one you love has to be somewhere else.

And you get it all to yourself. The whole place is yours and you can keep the television channel on whatever you want all of the time. Or not at all!

Cook or go out becomes life’s most interesting question.

But when no one is coming, and you know that no one is coming, you either embrace that or you don’t. You curse who left or died or can’t be there or you love them in a whole different way; a way that doesn’t need words or touch or “the suddenly compact universe of skin and teeth and hair.”

And the house is filled with memories or loneliness or both.

So there is one more day of Christmas according to the old carol. Most people have already stored it away until next year anyway. And God damn those twelve drummers drumming if they show up.

Unless…

That is what love sounds like.

God's Golden Sidewalk

The beach is scattered with Christmas trees lying there naked and unadorned in the sand. Some are at the ocean’s edge while others were thrown in the sand dunes. Some have tinsel hanging from them as the last remnants of what they used to be. None stand any more but are on their sides, a sad testament to the “glad tidings of comfort and cheer” that they represented.

The idea is that the sand will engulf them as it blows against their branches building up the dunes and creating a tiny beach refurbishment effort.

I run between them looking at the train that the sun has painted on sea, a golden sidewalk that ends at my feet. It’s as if I believed that I could walk on water then God is surely inviting me to do so. Take a left run on the blazing yellow water and straight into the eye of God.

For years I loved morning runs with sunrises that lead to the golden sidewalk. There were times when I would just stop and stand there staring at its brilliance, trying to discern the messages that were being sent.

“What God? Am I doing the right stuff and this is affirmation? Or am I really screwing up and you’re inviting to just run away from it all? You want to demonstrate that I’m in over my head when I submerge?”

There have been a few times when I was “Running with the Dolphins” and they would hit God’s golden sidewalk and leap into the air; straight up and then return in the exact same hole in the water that they made when they jumped towards the heaven. It took my breath away and I remember just staring with my hands on my knees, breathing hard and saying the most holiest of prayers.

Oh My God!

I am struck by the contrast of the discarded symbols of peace on earth and goodwill towards men and God’s golden sidewalk on the water. I leap over one of the trees that are in front of me as I run. What was an invitation a few days ago is now an obstacle.

All of those years working with homeless people, the sick, the uninsured and the addicted led to this cynicism about the holiday season. From Thanksgiving to Christmas Day it seemed like everyone in the world cared. They came, they gave and they loved.

The day after Christmas was another story.

And the shelters were filled with manger scenes, plastic Santa’s and trees that had been delivered with fanfare and promises of Joy to the World. But there was no longer any joy. Everyone had left. Except the same broken people who had been there before the Spirit caught everyone up (which evidently last for about a month before the Spirit lets them all down again).

The discarded trees make me think these thoughts.

Then I look at the golden sidewalk again and wonder if it is God’s way of still extending the invitation while everybody else is getting rid of Christmas until next year. Is this an invitation to walk on the water and demonstrate that, if we want, miracles can occur all year long?

These are funny thoughts to have on a morning run.

“Happier New Year,” a friend of mine wished my yesterday. It is someone that I haven’t talked to in some time. I appreciated the way she said it though. “Happier New Year” acknowledges that the last one wasn’t so great.

So here I am running into a new year, jumping over the discarded remnants of the past, leaping towards the sky and new love, wondering if I have what it takes to say, “Damn it all! I’m taking a left and going to do my best to make it to the eye of God before I sink”!

It’s only water.

The worst that can happen is I get baptized.

By God.