Questing Parson

How Many Needed?

The Educational Work Area meeting had concluded a few moments before. The parson had thanked everyone for coming and then headed to his office to make a couple of notes. Shirley Shulman tapped lightly on the frame of the parson’s open door.

He turned, “Oh, Shirley, thanks again for coming tonight. I think the idea you had for the kindergarten class was terrific.”

“Thank you, Parson. I appreciate that.” Shirley stood at the door watching the parson for  long moment and then she said, “Parson, I wanted to speak to you about that Adult Study they talked you into leading.”

“What about the study, Shirley?”

“Well, you know I came to the study last Sunday evening. Now, look, Parson, I understand this is only a short term study, but I was shocked to see there were only six people there, counting me.”

“That’s why we were so glad to see you, Shirley. You increased the attendance by seventeen percent all by yourself.”

“That’s true, Parson. And that’s what struck me. Listen, Parson, as a member of the Pastor-Parish Committee, I talked to some other members and I want you to know, we don’t think you have to continue these studies when so few people are coming.”

The parson smiled at Shirley. “You know, Shirley, I really appreciate you saying that. It’s really special you guys are trying to look out for me.”

“Well, we appreciate you and you don’t have to keep up these studies when so few people take advantage of it.”

The parson smiled at her again, “Thanks, Shirley, I used to think it a sin that I tried to do these things and so few took advantage of it. But then one day I realized that the Lord called me to show up but the Lord said nothing about counting the gate.”

Vacation Advice

The parson sat on a sofa in a reading area of the local library. He’d left a meeting and had about three-quarters of an hour before he had to meet a colleague at a church within walking distance. He was studying a history of the local county when Todd Emerson, a pastor of a small church in an extremely rural area, walked up. 

The parson noticing him approach stood and extended his hand, “Hello, Todd, how are you. I haven’t seen you for a good while.”

“I’m fine, Parson; how are you?” Todd replied.

“What brings you to the library?”

“I bring a few of the seniors to the library each week for them to check out and return books. They seem to look forward to it.”

“Sit down, Todd,” said the parson. “That’s a wonderful idea. I hope you don’t mind if I appropriate that for our church.”

“Not at all,” said Todd. “I’d be flattered.”

The parson and Todd began talking about various church issues. Over the last year Todd had from time to time visited with the parson to share his views. theologically they were a match and the younger pastor seemed comforted to find a senior in the ranks who shared his views.

In the course of the conversation the parson mentioned he was headed to Missouri on a vacation in a few weeks. 

“Boy,” said Todd, “Jane and I were hoping to go to Savannah for a vacation, but I don’t think we’ll be able to get away.”

“You can’t afford it, or you can’t get away?” the parson asked.

“Oh, we can afford it. I mean, Jane’s dad offered to pay most of it and to come to the beach to be with us for a few days. But things are a little hectic at the church and I don’t see how we can get away.”

The parson glanced at his watch and realized he had to get to the meeting at the nearby church. “Todd, I’ve got to go meet Ed Griner down at First Church, but listen to me. Go on vacation, Todd. Go on vacation. I know for a fact your church was founded in 1858, Todd. You do the math and figure out how many hectic things went on at that church prior to your arrival. You take that number and multiply it by two and that will give you an  idea how many hectic things will go on at that church after you return from vacation.”

Todd stood along with the parson. “Look, Parson, I wish it were that easy....’

“It is that easy, Todd. You take your suitcase and Jane’s suitcase and put them in the trunk of the car. Then you drive down the I-75 to Macon. At Macon you take I-16 to Savannah. And when you’re recreated yourself you drive back and let the folks at your church tell you how they handled all those hectic things all by themselves while you were away. They’ll do it the same way they did all those years before you arrived.”

The parson patted Todd on the shoulder. “Thanks, Todd, for all you’re doing. And, look, if it will help, let me know if you need me to drive those folks here to the library.”

Todd walked out with the parson. Outside the library door he said, “Parson, do you really think I should go.”

“I do,” said the parson. “I do. You go to the beach, swim, surf, eat at nice restaurants, fish, maybe play some golf, and take lots and lots of naps with your wife.”

The parson turned to walk away but not before he enjoyed to look on Todd’s face.

Persistence Pays?

She came into the church’s Monday night soup supper, provided free for anyone who might want to enjoy the meal. She came not every Monday but often. She’d amble in and wait to be invited to join the assembled. Most evenings she would ask if someone could bring her a bowl. And when she asked someone did.This night she’d come early, almost as soon as the doors were opened. 

On this night despite the stated purpose of the evening the bowls were filled with chili, poured over rice with a side bowl of mac-n-cheese and cornbread. It was followed by peach cobbler, with ice cream cones for the children.

She sat by herself most of the evening, as was her usual practice. As the parson walked in and out, going from duties in the kitchen to meeting with electricians in the sanctuary she sat quietly and watched him with practiced eye.

About an hour-and-a-half after the doors had opened the parson was sitting at a table with a couple of high school students who often stopped by the soup kitchen. They were discussing possible colleges to apply to. She came up and tapped the parson on the shoulder. He turned quickly. He had been expecting the tap

“I’m going to head out now, Parson,” she said. “That was really good chili. It filled me up.  Ms. Parson said I could take this bowl of cobbler home with me.” She held up the bowl.

“Hope you enjoyed it,” said the parson. “Come back next Monday.”

“I just might do that, Parson. I really like eating here.”

“We’re always glad to have you, Shirley,” said the parson.

“You know, Parson, the price of gas went up again this week. And I had to buy some extra medicine. I was just wondering if ....”

The parson held up his hand. “Shirley, it’s Monday. I had two funerals today. I haven’t been to the bank so I don’t have any money. Now, I know that Reverend Stephens at the Baptist church gave you twenty dollars this morning, so there’s not going to be any money given out tonight.”

She studied the parson a moment. “Okay, I can understand that. I hope you brought some comfort to those folks at the funeral. You’re a good pastor; you know that, don’t you, Parson?”

“I try, Shirley. I try. I’ll see you next Monday.”

“Well,” said Shirley, “I heard you tell that electricity man you were going to meet him tomorrow at noon. So I’ll see you then.”

Holy Humor

The parson stood behind the pulpit. He was only a few minutes into his sermon. With the accumulated experience of decades of homiletic endeavor he was prepared to lead the people in a step-by-step journey through the carefully planned and theologically enlightening revelation of the deep meaning of the scriptures.

It was about four minutes and thirty-seven seconds into the sermon that the parson began to escort the congregation across the bridge called humor that spanned the gulf between introduction and first point. 

“So,” said the parson to the assembled, “a man comes up to a doctor and says, ‘I want to thank you for the benefits I have received from your treatments.’

“The doctor replied, ‘I don’t think you are my patient.’

“‘I’m not,’ said the man, ‘but my uncle was and I just inherited his entire estate.’”

Immediately a wave of chuckling rolled over the room punctuated by the occasional splashing of outright laughter. The humor was appreciated. The parson with a pulpit maturity born of four decades of leading the listeners along the oratorical journey that is the sermon felt pleased as he began to ease the congregation into an understanding of point one.

It was then the song leader, sitting off to the side and behind the organ, let forth with a loud guffaw, an audible comment of “The uncle died.”, followed by what could only be described as a cackle of laughter. 

The parson, being the erudite proclaimer of the Word he is, attempted to continue without even a hint of hesitation, but his resolve was interrupted by another exclamation of loud laughter from behind the organ accented by stammering words, “You’re not my patient. Oh, Lord help us.” This was echoed by three people on the third pew on the left giving forth with their own expressions of humor, two with an obvious attempt at restraint and one with an unbridled exuberance of laughter.

The chuckles and laughing on the third pew on the left bounced over the aisle and into the seventh pew on the right which then bounced to the eleventh pew on the right and then to the fifth pew on the left.

The parson stood behind the pulpit wrapped in his decades of experience watching the assembled followers of the risen Lord giggle and laugh, bend over in unabated expressions of happiness, which was interrupted only be the occasional wiping of a tear from the eye. The entire assembled saints were completely out-of-control. 

Not to be defeated by such an unrestrained expression, the parson smiled and calmly waited until sanity returned to the congregation. Then he completed point one without any noticeable interruption. Whereupon he began to escort the saints across the bridge that led  from point one to point two. He was halfway across that bridge when the eighty-year-old widow sitting on the eighth row on the right looked over at her matronly sister sitting on the seventh row on the left at which both of them began to giggle, which led to the song leader losing control of his restraint and the entire congregation giving way to whatever had been let loose in the sanctuary. 

Perhaps here it should, at least, be noted that being the staid United Methodists they are the assembled did show enough self-restraint to resist rolling in the aisles.   

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Poisoned Stewardship

So I debated writing a story for today or indulging myself. Myself won. 

I sat myself down and clicked, fired up the computer, and watched “Poisoned Waters”, a PBS Frontline presentation. The two hour program (and, yes, you should take time to watch it) examines the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, thirty years after the Clean Water Act.

I won’t outline the story here (but, yes, you should watch it). Near the end the program examined King County, Washington, where there is an effort to address the problems that are poisoning Puget Sound’s waters, where the Orcas are dying from contaminants. One strategy has been to restrict people owning five acres of forest development from sub-dividing the property or utilizing more than one-third in a manner that would result in the cutting of trees. 

In the interview with one of the effected property owners, a woman stated in an angry voice: “It’s my land I can do whatever I want with it.”

Somehow she reminded me of so many church people I’ve run across over the years. “It’s our church.” 

“It’s mine!”

I thought of our current environmental problems. I thought of her attitude. I thought of the churches I’ve served.

This entire country suffers from a poisoned attitude toward stewardship.

Here ends the rant. 

Praying With An Atheist

The parson was sitting in a visitors area on an upper floor of a big city hospital. He sat reading his Kindle as he waited for a chaplain friend to come from a meeting with some doctors. He and his friend had agreed to have lunch after the parson came to visit with a church member’s relative having surgery.

A man came into the area and sat on a small sofa opposite the chair where the parson sat reading. The parson studied the man. He was dressed in an expensive pair of slacks, a polo shirt, and loafers without socks. The parson smiled quietly as he studied the man.

“I take it you’re feeling better,” said the parson.

“I beg your pardon?” the man said.

“I take it you’re feeling better. When I saw you a half hour ago you were in a hospital gown and looking really impatient laying in the bed. Room 417, isn’t it?”

“Okay, okay,” said the man. “I’m caught. Look, I just wanted to get out of that room for a while. I’m feeling okay, but I’m having to hang around here until they come to some conclusions about the tests I’ve been given. I may end up having surgery, but I’m not in any immediate danger.”

“You are going back to the room?”

“Oh, yes, I just wanted to get by the nurses’ station without any hassle.” He held up a book. “I’m going to read a few chapters sitting here in some clothes without having to worry about by butt being visible to the whole world.”

“I guess your secret’s safe with me,” the parson said.

“Thanks,” was the reply. And then he opened his book to begin reading. Before he did he asked, “You on the staff here?”

“Oh, no,” said the parson. “I’m a pastor. Actually, I was visiting someone across the hall from your room. That’s how I recognized you. I’m waiting to meet the chaplain for lunch.”

He asked the parson about what church he was part of. The parson told him and was engaged in a questioning time about the parson’s church position on certain issues, its history and beliefs. The conversation led to the parson asking, “What church do you attend?”

“Oh, I don’t, sir. I’m an atheist.”

“Well, you seem to know a lot about the church for an atheist.”

“I have to attend from time to time,” he said. “I didn’t inherit my beliefs from my mother. Ever so often I take Mom to church. Actually, the pastor there is a decent sort. He’s a bit too religious right over the edge, I think, but he seems nice enough.”

The conversation continued for a good twenty minutes or more. It was one of those times when two people from opposite ends of the spectrum talked without incriminations. Each seemed interested in the other’s views. Toward the end the talk turned to the tests that were being run, his ailment, and finally his fears.

The parson saw a group coming out of a conference room down the hall. One of the group was the chaplain. 

The parson leaned forward. “Jeff, my friend’s coming. I’ll have to go. Would you let me say a prayer for you.”

“But I don’t believe in that stuff, pastor.”

“That’s okay, Jeff. I do.”

Jeff reached out his hand to take the parson’s and bowed his head as he did.

I Ain't Bragging!!

Dizzy Dean once said, ‘If it’s true, it ain’t bragging!”

My little boy, Matt, for over a decade danced with and was Dance Captain for the internationally acclaimed Pilobolus Dance Theater. In recent years he’s become a Creative Director for that company as well as the founder, along with my daughter-in-love Emily, and Artistic Director for the Pickle Shoes Dance Theater.

Pilobolus obtained a new kind of fame in 2007 when they were commissioned to develop Shadow Dancing to introduce the Best Movie nominations at the Academy Awards.

Last year the athletes of the National Football League reached out to the athletes of Pilobolus to develop the “teasers” that would introduce their weekly games on their cable television network. And now one of those teasers has been nominated for an Emmy!

You can view the nominated piece HERE.

Please remember this boy who has danced around the world, appeared with Katie and Matt and Oprah and Ellen and Regis and Kelly and Conan and who knows how many others (none of whom he introduced me to) received half  his genes from a certain parson.

And remember what Dizzy said.

Aging Complications

A young adult (anyone under fifty is young to me) entered our church a few Sundays ago. He was stooped over. He informed folks he’d apparently injured his back. He didn’t know how. In fact, it was surmised by him and the crowd around the back problem might well be the too soft mattress he’d slept on while on vacation the last week. 

I watched him struggle across the room. I kind of shook my head in unbelief. This guy was suppose to be a former jock. This fellow played ball in the church yard with the kids. And here he was all bent over with his head bent down, a hand resting on the back part of his hip, more or less moaning as he “struggled” about the church.

I couldn’t help but say to myself, “Self, would you look at that sissy. I don’t know what he thinks going on, but I’m not impressed. I get up every morning with that kind of pain in my back. But through determination and pure dedication I usually am able to straighten up by nine in the morning.” I thought about telling him how this temporary discomfort he was experiencing would, in a decade or two, become a ever present companion to his living.

Pain! Let me tell you about pain. Let me tell you about, not only the pain in my back, but the pain in my knees, the pain in my joints, and the pain that is wrapped around the pain of my maturity. I am a living, walking, breathing testimony to the fact that growing old is not for wimps.

That’s why I’m so grateful for insurance. I’m one of the really blessed in this nation. I’ve got insurance. It, along with that other badge of senior citizen status - Medicare, makes the years of my aging much more tolerable.

Please understand. I’m still active enough. I can hike with the best of them I actually can climb mountains. And year before last I challenged my cardiologist to a foot race up the stairs of Emory University Hospital. Boy was that doctor out-of-shape. I still can do these things. It’s just I do them more slowly, with much more pain, and with a much more extended time of recovery. 

Knowing my delicate condition and knowing I cannot always be the strapping senior athlete I now am, I am fully aware of the blessing of my insurance.

But in this day and age it gets complicated. The wife got one of those pre-paid cards from the insurance company. You know, basically she gave them a bunch of money and bet them we could spend it all only on things they approve in a year. Sounded good at the time. But there are complications.

Once the end of the given year approaches it pays to be aware of how much money is still on that card. Last year we ended up with quite a bit. My wife went to the drug store and purchased a bunch of stuff. The insurance company lost the bet.

There is one problem, however. Yesterday I experienced another complication of advancing age, heart burn or indigestion, call it what you will. I went to the cabinet and retrieved a bottle of the antacids from the collection. Goodness I need to eat a lot more spicy food if I’m going to devour all these bottles before the expiration date. 

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Blessings Sincere

The parson pulled up the chair at the end of the table where were gathered a baker’s dozen relatives. The table was tucked away in the corner of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. The family luncheon was in celebration of the baptism of the thirteen-year-old niece.

The parson took note of the name of the server who greeted them. She asked who wanted what to drink. In turn, around the table each gave her their preference. “I’ll be right back,” she said and scurried away through the crowded tables.

In a surprisingly short period of time she returned and quickly distributed the drinks around the table, remembering each person’s order. “Thank you, Leigh Ann,” said the parson.

“My pleasure,” she replied.

And then she took the orders for food. Once again she deftly navigated among the tables, headed for the kitchen, leaving the family to banter about each other’s foibles. The parson, in a moment, noticed someone standing beside him. It was Leigh Ann. She was patiently waiting to speak, obviously not wanting to interrupt. When she spoke she said, “I’m sorry this is taking so long, but I’m trying to hurry them up.”

The parson thanked her and looked at his watch. It was not taking too long.

Soon, Leigh Ann brought the food and again distributed the plates among the family members without asking who got what. The parson said, “Thank you, Leigh Ann.”

“My pleasure,” she replied. She disappeared again after promising to check on the group in a moment.

In a moment she did check. Not too long after that she checked again. Glasses of beverage never reached half-full, plates hosting breads were never diminished. Empty plates quickly disappeared. In short, Leigh Ann was the perfect example of what a food server should be.

Lunch over, the group stood to leave. Leigh Ann approached again. The parson said, “Thank you again, Leigh Ann.”

Leigh Ann placed her hand on the parson’s shoulder and replied in a way that captured the parson. “Oh, thank you, it was a blessing that I could serve you.”

The parson stared as she walked away. He felt humbled. He was convinced she meant every word. And in the certainty he was blessed.

Breakfast With the Parson

The parson rose early. It was a special day. No church activities were scheduled. No pastoral duties would interfere. The parson’s unique and considerable abilities outside the realm of parish duties.

Shower and shave were followed by time spent in selecting the proper attire. The event would be in a public place where attendees would know the parson therefore some attention had to be given to professional appearance. And yet actual tasks for the day demanded a utility of clothing. It was a challenging task. 

Properly attired the parson headed toward the car with Charlie Brown his faithful canine following behind, excited to be headed for his morning constitutional. Charlie Brown jumped into the back seat and he and the parson headed to their morning walk area. Forty-five minutes later Charlie Brown was back in the car with he and the parson in route to the local pet boarding facility. Charlie Brown would be too much of a challenge with the day’s activities.

Leaving the pet care facility the parson headed toward the Performing Arts Center where his unique talents were in demand. The director of the center greeted the parson with enthusiasm, knowing, no doubt, that without his contributions the day’s performances would be in jeopardy. The parson enjoyed a cup of coffee and pleasant small talk while he waited for the other talent to arrive.

Within ten minutes the door opened and she arrived. The parson’s daughter-in-love entered. She was not only the mother of his grandson but an international dance star, performing with the famed Pilobolus Dance Theater as well as the unique Pickle Shoes Dance Company. Today she, along with another dancer, would be presenting their original storytelling through the medium of dance. The audience was being bussed from schools throughout the county. Straddling her hip while being cradled by her left arm was the parson’s one-year-old grandson.

The parson reached for the child who immediately leaned forward in glee, knowing good times were ahead and rules could now be stretched. The unique talents the parson was offering this day was those of babysitting while the dancers performed.

Soon the parson and grandson headed down the street, away from the arts center and the off to explore the town. Time in the park was spent; a trip to a child’s clothing store provided a bundle for him. for three hours the two entertained themselves through a variety of adventures. The adventure ended in the parson’s car parked in front of the arts center. The parson sat in the passenger seat while grandson explored the dials and switches around the driver’s seat. And then, as if a switch had been thrown, he bounded into the parson’s lap and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Performance over daughter-in-love approached the parson. The opening of the door wakened the child. The three headed to a local sandwich shop for a bite of lunch. 

Sitting in the booth, daughter-in-love searched in the diaper bag for a bib. She turned to the parson. “His cereal is still in here. He didn’t eat breakfast?”

“Oh, no, he ate breakfast.”

“Sweetheart, what did you have for breakfast?” she cooed to the child.

The child didn’t answer.

She turned to the parson. “What did he have for breakfast?”

“A York Peppermint Patty.”

“He ate a York Peppermint Patty for breakfast?”

“He did. And he must have liked it. He ate the whole thing.”

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