When I was the Innkeeper

It all began on a bitterly cold day in Louisville with the wind chill taking the temperatures well below freezing. My wife, year old son and I had just moved into the two-bedroom third floor apartment on top of the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel in the inner city. I was a full time seminary student and I’d just become the person in charge of the rag-tag congregation of five little old ladies and a bunch of prisoners caravanned to Sunday morning service by a sheriff carrying a rifle. The apartment came with the job and it was free.

The salary was mostly what was collected on Sunday mornings. Jeff Street survived because in those days Baptist still cared for the poor. So the folks at Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta paid the bills as part of their home missions. I remember my entire compensation that first year was $3,100.

I think that they believed that anybody poor certainly didn’t have Jesus in their life and was going straight to hell hence investments in buildings like Jeff Street.

Baptist Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta somehow had convinced themselves that I would be able to rectify this and help poor people get saved. Perhaps the only thing that I ever really accomplished there was saving poor people from Baptist Corporate Headquarters in Atlanta!

We had a Christmas tree that year. A few blocks from the apartment was an outdoor market that sold them. I was sent to get one and we had so little money that I tried to barter with the guy selling them.

“Sure,” he said full of Christmas spirit, “come back on December 26.”

So I spent more than I’d been instructed to spend and drug the tree across concrete blocks and then up three flights of stairs. It was a “Charlie Brown” tree for sure after that but Janice has this great ability to make things look good and by the time she’d finished yelling at me and working her magic it looked pretty good shining down on Louisville’s largest housing project.

The following Sunday morning I crawled out of bed and dressed for Sunday service. Blue jeans, brown hiking boots, a white shirt and a blue sock tie. I called it the “Kroger-look” because I looked like one of the bag boys at the grocery store.

Then I’d walk down the stairs, flip on lights, adjust the thermostat, crank up the van, fix coffee while it warmed up, then climb in and go try to round up a congregation. Quite honestly there was little reason to attend Jeff Street then. The five little old ladies all fell asleep as soon as the service started and the prisoners were all contemplating a plan to jump the sheriff with the gun.

The biggest attraction was Janice’s terrific ability to hit bad notes rather than right notes on hymns. And of course Jeremy was always finding his way to the Baptismal pool leaving clothes lying in the hallway.

On this particular morning though, I walked downstairs, flipped on the lights, adjusted the thermostat, fired the coffee pot … and saw them.

Five men huddled together in the doorway of the Church, trying to get out of the cursed wind, jumping up and down and smoking and cussing. Jeff Street had glass doors and glass walls at the entrance so I stood there looking at them and they stood there looking at me. I remember that I had keys in my hand.

And a thought struck me. Here at I am, 23 years of age in charge of a building called a sanctuary with locked doors and bars on the windows while outside stood five men desperately in need of a sanctuary.

There was this pregnant moment when ten eyes looked at me and two eyes stared at ten. With no thought I unlocked the church and told them to come inside. There were steps to climb when you entered and they all sat down on them patting themselves and willing warmth.

I poured them cups of hot coffee and started another pot. Then I sat with them on the steps. Their names were Chester, Bruce, R.C., Poochie and Mr. Edwards; three white, two black. All freezing!

They all thanked me over and over for letting them inside. I think that I remember Janice brought Jeremy down at one point to see what was taking me so long and there I sat with five homeless men drinking coffee. Introductions were made though that part is foggy to me.

Then we all became the dearest of friends. Some moved into Jeff Street with us because there were all of these Sunday School rooms that nobody ever used. Chester became the babysitter after Kristen was born. Poochie was our protector. They were forever getting me out of bad situations on the streets of Louisville and I was forever saving them from themselves.

It was the holiest of times.

Today I sit and stare at Goddess asleep on the beloved back deck in 23 degree weather. The wind is whipping. I have layers on and it is cold inside of this beach house. But it takes me back to where it all began for me.

The outside looking in and the inside looking out, a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, Baptists who love buildings more than people … and me discovering that I was an Innkeeper and there were these people with nowhere to go. So like the Innkeeper in the story who found room for Joseph, Mary and a soon-to-be arriving Savior to the world, I invited them in.

And all of these years later there is something very Christmas about that morning.

More Christmas than I’ve ever felt before.

Or since.

Christmas Thoughts

“Let’s go to St. Martin!” Johnny O exclaims as he enters the Breakfast Club shaking off the cold.

Whitley agrees having already cursed the bitter 25 mile wind whipping off of the water. From the sky the ocean looks like a steaming vat of hot chocolate with masses of sea foam looking like melting marsh mellows. From the ground it is a bitter windstorm.

We take our normal seats at the counter and during this time of year our friends who work there have time to talk. So we tell stories and in no time at all we are laughing to begin our day.

“Anymore panties” Nick asks?

I shake my head, “Nope just the one pair that is still hanging on the door knob.”

“Chelsea’s art showing looked impressive,” I am told. Yesterday my youngest child had an exhibition of her art on the island. Included were a number of nudes. Her mother said, “Can you turn the nudes around?” as though the paintings would show the body’s backside rather than frontal nudity. We laughed.

Then Whitley and Johnny O leave and I remain behind sipping coffee. Patti sits next to me and reads the paper. Franklin and I chat about his grandmother, my friend, Tommi who was taken to the hospital yesterday. It is warm inside because of the heat from the grills. There are no customers at the moment and I just sit with members of my extended family watching the flags be blown from the flagpoles atop the Ocean Plaza hotel.

I linger because I’m wearing running shorts and a couple of long sleeve tee shirts. I know that I’m not going to run in this wind. My entire body would be chaffed.

It grows quiet and I look at my friends.

If Christmas is for friends and family I am more immersed than I ever remember being. At Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel and at Union Mission is was all about others. Family and friends got squeezed in. This year there is plenty of time to just … enjoy what is around me.

Why did I give so many Christmases away?

I know why; so many don’t have them. I have this flare of doing things on a grand scale so I orchestrated grand celebrations. Hundreds of people had stuff. I had great partners pulling it off but the standard was set by me. Everyone would have joy in their stockings and if they didn’t have stockings then they’d get two.

But everything has a cost to it and while hundreds got through a Christmas day because of these efforts, my wife, children and friends didn’t get very much of me.

I look at Goddess lying on the beloved back deck with the wind blowing through her fur coat and my promise plants blowing over. This Christmas there are no hundreds to care for, no parties that I must attend, no one in this house that I must do anything for aside from a dog who loves the outdoors as much as I do.

“Loved the story of the half decorated Christmas tree,” Johnny O told me the other day. “I can just see you talking to Goddess and say “Let’s just decorate half’ because the other half is gone anyway.”

Then he explained how it happened to him when his Dad died. Other people have told me the same thing since I wrote about lighting the tree with only half the lights working and it represented the reality of living alone and no longer a part of the couple that was. A few have explained how they have drug out Christmas trees for the first time in years and while it may have taken them a while to get them decorated, they are up. Because I did it!

And the only reason I did it is that a mother has the ability to make a 54 year old son feel guilty. There’s nothing under the tree other than three manager scenes that were left behind.

Then last night Goddess got up and walked over to the tree. She sniffed a new ornament that my friend Shirley had given me which used to belong to someone very special in her life. Then Goddess curled up under the tree and went to sleep.

And I was filled with more emotion at Christmas time than I’ve ever felt in my life.

Feliz Navi-down

“Dad why is there a pair of panties hanging on the front door?” Chelsea asked after entering the house last night.

“I don’t know Chelsea,” I reply sitting on the sofa ending a phone call. “Why is there a pair of panties hanging on my front door?”

“Seriously Dad,” she says looking at me as though she is the parent.

I shrugged my shoulders. This is Tybee Island. There is a long history of underwear abuse here. I believe that there is a support group for underwear abusers that meets on Tuesday nights at Chapel by the Sea Baptist Church. (I once read that the more conservative one’s religions views are, the more likely that they will eventually be underwear abusers. Maybe it was alcoholic? One of the two. I can’t recall.)

A few minutes later we were off to McElwees for dinner. Kristen works there and it is rare that I get both of my daughters at the same time. When we walked outside, sure enough there hung a pair of burgundy thongs with black lace.

Chelsea eyed me suspiciously while I inspected them. They were mediums. I shrugged my shoulders again. Chelsea rolled her eyes at me. I left the panties on the door and off we went.

Whenever Kristen sees us she shoots across the room as though out of a cannon with little concern of who or what is in her way. She slams her body into ours and you cannot help but feel her love. After a few intense moments she is back to being all over the place doing a thousand things at once. Kris works hard and consistently until she is exhausted and then she gets sick. After a few days in bed she’s back at it again. She gets it from me and I hope that she forgives me one day.

“There’s a pair of panties hanging from Dad’s front door,” Chelsea says.

Kristen looks at me before shrugging her shoulders. She is a Daddy’s girl.

Chelsea and I talk as we consume flounder and shrimp. She steals my hush-puppies but she’s my daughter so I left her without retaliation. We tell stories and laugh a lot. Kristen darts in and out wanting to know what she’s missed.

The place fills and Kristen is too busy to pay us much attention so we finish up and leave. In the car Chelsea hits play on the CD and “A Glee Christmas comes on”. I’ve watched Glee once with Chelsea called and ordered me to so. It was the Rocky Horror Picture show theme. I loved it! Then I forgot about it.

My friend Karen sent me the Glee version of “Imagine” and if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this, go to YouTube and find it, cry for a while, and then resume reading.

Chelsea plays me the two gay guys singing “Baby it’s cold outside” by Savannah native Johnny Mercer. I LOVE IT! So Chelsea and I are just riding under the Christmas decorations on the island listening to music. All three of my kids share my love of music. We make one another CDs and are forever introducing one another to new things.

“STOP” I yell. “Park!”

Chelsea has never been to Bernie’s to listen to Sam Adams and Gordon and they were doing their Christmas concert in the outdoor courtyard.

“Rev!” Gordo said in his Sling blade voice as we entered, “is it true that you also go by the name Micheal?”

I shrug my shoulders.

Now this is in the middle of their version of Feliz Navidad except that they’ve changed it to Feliz Navi-down. “Christmas sucks!” Gordon says.

Chelsea smiles as we grab two stools and Gordon wails on the harmonica. Then they launch into “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

“I’ll tell you why,” Gordon says in the middle of the song, “he knows where the bad girls live. God I love bad girls.”

Chelsea and I crack up with laughter.

So…all of that to say, a bad girl evidently got away from Santa Claus last night and made their way to my house and left her panties on the front door knob. I’m not sure why she didn’t come in.

Either that or Johnny O is trying to get me back for the time that Chelsea and I wrapped his truck in multiple layers of cellophane so that he had to carefully cut it off with a razor blade so as not to damage the paint job.

More Sabbactical Thoughts

The ocean is a brownish gray and the heavens are covered with a blanket of purple gray clouds. The sand is a dirty white, moisture hangs in the air so as I run it sticks to me making me wet, and the radio pumps “Have yourself a merry little Christmas” in my ears. I use a verb and a pronoun. The pronoun is “me.”

A mountain of sea foam separates the sea from the shore and as I run the wind blows large pieces of it away and it flies past me, tumbling in the sand until it grows smaller and smaller before disappearing.

I am struck with the thought that the sea foam represents my past. It was a lot of big stuff back then but as time passes it diminishes in importance and scope. One day it will be lost from the collective consciousness and simply be gone.

Just like me.

Though I’m not yet! While I have been lying low, gathering my thoughts as a pseudo-sage put it to me I’ve been working harder than I ever have to understand…me.

It is damn hard work; the hardest that I’ve ever done but I believe that diving into the quiet will lead me to a new place. Gandalf the grey will become Gandalf the white and while there may be some dark stuff to work through it’ll all work out fine in the end.

In the middle of a run on a deserted beach with pieces of sea foam past flying by me, I stop. And pee. “It is great being a boy,” I say to God. She makes the moisture in the air turn to rain. God can be funny.

Resuming the run, watching the sea foam blow, tumble and disappear, each seems to represent things that I’ve been working through over the past several months.

“You’re burning out,” my mother told me a year ago or so. I protested because I’ve got a social work degree and she doesn’t. She proved right. Desperately needing time for myself and family after years of focusing on everyone else, I reached the point where I knew. Then I made a gross mistake. I listened to what other wiser, successful and proven mostly old white men counseled. I didn’t listen to myself and walk away.

So the thing about a fire is once it begins it will continue consuming until there is nothing else to burn. So when the burning took everything inside of me it continued to consume the things around me. After my inside had become dying embers it t burned away a deep love that I cherished, long standing friends, then a thirty-one year career.

For months I sat and cried in the smoldering ashes of it all.

The friends of Job came by to counsel me, but there was no consolation. I wiped the ashes across myself just as Job did and sent them away just like he did.

But a precious few kept coming back.

They refused to listen to me. They rejected waiting until I was at a better place to talk. They let me know there is no hurry to move on and told me to take my time. They would wait. They got a mixture of sea water and tears and wiped the ashes away that I’d covered myself with.

And out of a charred life, a dead friend and long forgotten ones came back; one literally, others from college and one from a God forsaken place where it snows as much as it doesn’t so that you have to mail order everything to your house because there is no going out. My extended family on this island proved to be as significant and important as those who share my DNA. My Mom showed back as a daily presence when it had been decades since that had last taken place.

I ponder these things now dry in my kitchen, staring at Fran’s thousand shades of green, with Goddess lying at my feet munching on a bone that is bigger than she. It is from my friend Nanci at the Breakfast Club who … well, I don’t know how she got them but she did.

A smile creeps across my face. After years of every day and night Christmas activity, this year I’ve had none. Today I was invited to the only Christmas party that I’ll attend this year and it is with the people whom I love most.

Goddess and I are throwing a smaller one for the people who will not be at that one. Then people are waiting on me in St. Martin.

Then when I come back, I know who will be waiting on me.

And who won’t.

Granting an Exclusive

“Why don’t you just let us do the exclusive? I’ll set up a long interview that we’ll run and both stations. We have a new partnership with the newspaper and it can run there the next day.”

I was sitting in Nicky’s, Tybee Island’s newest restaurant that caters to the late night bar crowd staying open from 4:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. It is run by my friend Dean who also runs the pier, Grayson Stadium, wholesale distribution centers out of the trunk of his car, and sponsors several local organizations that may be Mafia related.

But the food is good and I hadn’t eaten all day and was starving so I left the work that I was doing and went for a quick bite before returning to the pile on my desk. As soon as I sat at the bar and Rita hugged me and served me, then Michael Sullivan came in from producing the nightly local news.

Michael wants to be a beach bum but his addiction to work, news and reporting keeps getting in the way. At 64 he’s running out of time.

We’ve known one another a long time and I’ve logged countless hours doing interviews and sound bits at the local ABC and FOX affiliates which he oversees. Often I’d sit with Michael in his office before or after the filming talking about Tybee, the news or my work.

Since the last explosion of press in June of my sudden resignation from Union Mission after 23 years, I’ve laid low. Reporters who covered me for years have called asking to do interviews but I told them I don’t have anything to say right now.

The last interview that I did was with Michelle from the local CBS affiliate as a way of saying thanks for all of the coverage that they’d given me over the years. At Union Mission we averaged 52 print stories each year. One a week! That didn’t include television interviews. Michelle had been the last to cover me for them and and I wanted to say thanks to Bill Cathcart and Sonny Dixon for all that they’d done for our work. It was this long ranging rambling conversation about all of the things that we’d accomplished in Savannah.

“I feel as I’ve scooped everybody,” she said while setting up the camera in the lobby of the station after it had closed. “Everybody wants to know why?”

She stopped and checked her cell phone. Her recently born child was still in day care, had been sick, and she was running out of time before having to get him. I sat on a waiting room sofa in blue jeans, a tee shirt, and flip flops; a first for me in front of the media. Representing the poor, homeless, dying and sick I’d always overcompensated for them with the coat and tie.

“What are you most proud of?” I remember her asking.

“That’s like asking me to pick out my favorite child,” I remember answering. There are just too many things that I was a part of that changed the way a city looks.

The other thing that I remember about that interview is that it was broadcast at 5:55 directly in front of the six o’clock news.

“You’re a has been,” Johnny O explained the next morning at the Breakfast Club. “The really important news is shown after six.”

Johnny used to be a newsman so I suppose he knows as he is expert at so many aspects of reporting. “I could fart in a microphone, tape it, edit it into a story with the best of them,” he once told me.

So Michael and I had another round.

“I’ll call you,” I finally answered his question. “I’ve been trying to be respectful of the new leadership of Union Mission and give them time to establish their footing. I’ve needed a break from the media Michael, you understand that.”

He nodded and sipped his beer.

“But I’ll be coming out soon,” I continued. “When it’s time. It’s not quite time. I’ll let you know when it is.”

He clicked my glass with his.

“Deal!” he said.

And I left and went back to work.

Sabbatical Reflections

Goddess is eating what remains of my socks on the beloved back deck and it is too cold for me to go out there and get them. She is a thief especially of socks and other dog’s toys. I’m running out of socks. Goddess is winning that war. I think that I have enough to get through this cursed winter. After that I won’t need them until the next winter. In the meantime she is out there munching away, occasionally looking at me through the glass windows smiling.

She is such a Bitch.

Standing in the shower this morning I noticed the quietness of the house. In days gone by I’d sneak around in the dark to not wake her up. I strove for quiet and somehow never really achieved it banging doors or dropping the brush.

Now the morning quiet is everywhere.

Water that is hotter than I normally have it is raining down on my head. Steam fills the bathroom. My skin warms. I wonder about my heart.

Goddess knocks open the door to the bathroom by butting her head against it and pokes her head in the shower. I swear the dog knows my thoughts and decided that I shouldn’t be showering alone. She laps the raining water and then licks it off my knee. Her head is quickly wet and she makes me laugh.

One of the things about being on Sabbatical is that it’s normally quiet. I think of the Trappist monks with their vows of silence that I rained upon one day. They live for quiet so they can hear God when she speaks. I’m not much of a monk but I’ve mastered quiet.

Nature means more to me that it ever did before. I’ve always been an “outside” guy but my thoughts were always in the city, with those who were relying on me to help save them from their worlds, or contemplating how to pay for it all. Focusing on these things enabled me to live in this house for ten years before Fran came back from the dead and showed me the thousand shades of green. Thank you Fran! You were the beginning of me coming back.

I’ve learned that you measure the changing seasons here by watching the marsh and not the trees. The trees are green, then suddenly they are not and then they are naked. The marsh has four distinct seasons. Dead brown in the winter is replaced by light green in the spring, then lush deep greens in the summer and golden in the fall. Anyone who says that the southeast United States doesn’t have the changing of the colors never study the marsh. I’ve lived here 24 years and it has only now that I learned this.

“Waiting may be the hardest part,” if Tom Petty is right but it certainly works. After relentlessly chasing, convincing, arguing and pleading over a thirty year career, I’ve grown to just wait for things to come to me. I hardly go anywhere anymore when I just to go everywhere.

And sure enough people and opportunities have come to me. I’ve bumped into a friend on the beach which led to work and had old partners visit which led to new partnerships. Friends and love have forced their way through my front door even when I had it double locked because I wanted to be left alone.

I can wait now. The best things are worth waiting for anyway.

Everything doesn’t have to be done right now. Damn that has been a hard one for me. I’m a multi-tasker who would win Olympic events if it were a medal competition. Though I still lapse into it and can do it when I want or need to, I’ve learned that things take care of themselves in time. I only influence a part of whatever it is that needs to be done anyway and then it is up to others. And others do not do things according to my timelines or demands.

The past is dead and gone. Though I’ve never been one to tip toe through it much I have learned to celebrate the things that brought me joy and happiness, fear and frustration, and to try to learn how they brought me to this moment in time; because nothing else really matters except this moment in time.

This has all made me calmer. I’ve always been one hyper person. Bill Berry (not the former Drummer for R.E.M. but the one that I went to Seminary with) once told me that I just couldn’t stop. I would jump up in the middle of a confessional conversation to take care of something that I suddenly thought was more important. I no longer do that.

I watch Goddess eat my socks with Fran’s thousand shades of green dancing behind her. The quietness of the house is magnified and the sun beams down new opportunities that I ponder. I am excited with anticipation of what will be. And like those Trappist monks, I wait for unspoken words to become flesh.

A Christmas Point

A bitter wind is blowing off the ocean that bites right through the layers that I am wearing. Usually at the end of the first mile I’ve warmed and start to sweat. Not today. It is near freezing and the wind makes it worse. I hate it.

On the other hand Goddess is quite happy with it and is especially playful as we take our walk. Once home she sprints outside, collapses on her mat and falls asleep. Leaves have fallen on the beloved back deck giving it a whole new appearance, almost like a cabin on a farm in the mountains.

I sit at the kitchen table staring out the glass doors at the outside that I would be sitting in if it wasn’t so damn cold. The umbrella is down because of the wind but it dances along with Fran’s thousand shades of green in the trees behind it. The Palm tree in the back yard drops branches that wake Goddess and send her flying downstairs so she can inspect by sniffing her way around them.

The lights of the Christmas tree behind me reflect in the glass in front of me giving it all a holiday feel. I stare at the reflected lights, glad that I eventually decorated the entire tree rather than just half, and ponder my dear friend Stacy’s message to me “the real Christmas lives inside of you …”

I suppose. Isn’t that what Lianas said to Charlie Brown?

The music from the dance scene in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” starts playing in my head and I think of dancing in the Church aisles on Sunday mornings at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel and it always brings a smile to my face.

My computer pings and I see that I have messages and the smile grows broader when I see who they are from. Carlos has written from St. Martin asking when I am arriving and when I’m leaving. Several years ago he and Verna and my black Chelsea, their daughter, made their first trip to the United States and spent a month here. We had a huge party where people came from all over to welcome them and we danced until late into a hot August night.

When I was in St. Martin several weeks ago Verna stopped by to see me. She also works the place that I stay and she loves to cook, knows that I love jerked chicken wings and cooked me several thousand.

“Oh Mike, on Christmas Mike,” she says in the Caribbean lilt of a voice, “you spend with us and not all of these other people. Mike you need to be with family on Christmas and we are dat to you.”

Carlos is following up.

There is another message from Nathalie who also works at the resort. Can I order them some shoes and bring them with me when I come? They can get anything from France or the Netherlands but not Reeboks. Shaking my head I write her back and assure her that I will.

It pleases me that relationships are so deep that friends are anticipating my arrival in a few weeks, planning it, and don’t mind asking for favors. I make myself a note to contact others to see if they need me to bring things from the States that they cannot get in St. Martin.

Looking outside again at the umbrella violently dancing with the blowing leaves I suddenly feel warmer. I think of something that is on my porch downstairs. I was in Mexico (thank you Jenny Orr!) and stumbled across a ceramic of the Mayan God descending from heaven to earth. I was struck that Christianity or Judaism were not the only faith’s proclaiming that the Messiah became one of us, leaving heaven to wander in the gutters with the rest of us.

Joan Osborn’s “What if God were one of us,” replaces the Charlie Brown dance music in my head.

Then I get Stacy and Lianas’ point.

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.