The Other Side of the Tracks

I don’t know much about this place yet.
Haven’t been here long enough 
to tell you its stories 
or understands its people.  


It takes a while to get to know a place – but there is one thing about this place I do know – 
it has a train.

Now, I am not sure what this train looks like – 
I have never seen it.  
I don’t know where it comes from 
or where it’s headed to, 
but I do know we have a train, 
because I've heard it.  


Sometimes in the middle of day 
its unmistakable rhythm becomes the background, 
white-noise soundtrack for my new inner-ring, 
sub-urban existence.   


And there are those late nights, 
when its lonesome whistle interrupts 
my ongoing argument with the ceiling fan, 
and for a brief moment I find that I am not alone 
at this hour when its seems most everyone else is asleep.  


So, even though I've never seen it – the one thing I know about this place for sure is – it has a train.

I have taken up walking recently.  


After the last church meeting has finished and the boys have been tucked in their beds, I kiss my wife, step out door and spend the next hour putting my feet onto the streets of this place I hope soon begins to feel more like home.  


In part, that’s why I do this– 
to get a better sense for where I am – 
to become less of a stranger in a strange land. 

These walks do however serve another purpose.  


They have become where, and when, I pray – 
pray for the aches and pains 
of the bodies and souls of my friendly faithful. 

It is where I pray for wisdom and patience – 
both in surprisingly short supply some days.  


And it is where I pray for, and often find, the courage
 to go back tomorrow and try this again.  


Someday my kids will be able to say, 
“Oh, our dad – he’s just a wandering seminarian.” 

It was on one of these recent walks 
that I turned off onto a street 
I had never been on before 
and found myself in the midst of an industrial park:  
heating and cooling – 
packing and manufacturing – 
parking lots full of dump trucks and backhoes – 
even a place that specializes in renting industrial cranes (which is good – because you never know when you might need to rent a crane.)  


The midnight lights on in the windows 
even as the clock neared midnight 
peel back another layer of this punch-clock world 
where I now find myself living.   

And suddenly there it was – the train track.

I push through the grass overgrown with neglect and set foot on the empty tracks.  


There were stories to decipher left in the hieroglyphic graffiti of retired boxcars 
and overhanging lights 
frozen for the moment in red.  


I kick rock along this hidden stretch of rails that runs through the heart of this place.

And that’s when it happened.  

Without warning or notice.  
Every hair on my neck and arm stood at full attention.  Every sense suddenly heightened.  
My heart and breath raced ahead 
to see what was around the hidden bend. 
I pulled the head phones from my ears to listen.   

Was it coming?   

How would I know?   

Where would it come from?   

Would I be facing it head on or  

would it be sneaking up from behind?   

I was sitting ringside as pure, almost giddy, excitement 
duked it out with utter fear flapping uncontrolled 
to become the sole proprietor of the pit of my stomach.  


What was I supposed to do?


Let the four-year-old within me giggle with adventure and wait for it to pass by in a rush of glory? 


Or find the quickest exit and get the hell out of there?

I am pretty new to this whole pastor’s life.  
Most days more unsure of what to do 
than I was the day before, 
wondering if there was a handful of classes I missed somewhere along the way. 

Maybe all you can do each day is step on the barren track until the train you’ve only heard in the distance is suddenly upon you.

I guess I'll show up in the morning and see what happens...

Church Buisness

They came by horseback, saddlebag preachers traveling sometimes hundreds of miles just to get there.  They did everything they could to get there – endured every element and every imaginable hardship just in order to get there.

The first time they got there:  Christmas Day, 1784. 

And where was there?

There was Baltimore’s Lovely Lane Chapel.  And it was there, in the quiet, almost unnoticed shadow, like the first time Incarnation broke into human history, wrapped itself in swaddling cloths and landed in manger straw, that the Methodist movement in North America was born.  And once a year ever since, “the people of the covered dish” still do everything they can just to get there.

Sure, we no longer ride on the back of a horse to get there, instead we climb inside of a Honda Civic or Chevy Suburban – a Ford Focus or Toyota Prius – many still traveling the hundreds of miles just to get there.

The Annual Conference – the yearly gathering of the people who call themselves United Methodist.  It is the place where we will connect with old friends and maybe make a few new ones.  It is the place we come to attend to the “business” of the church.

The business of the church.  It can get messy and mean – contentious and cantankerous – divisive and disruptive – confused and cluttered  "The amendment to the amendment on the point of order to table the call to do something we should be doing anyways" stuff can make one wonder if God is in the midst of any of it and if the business of church is worth all the effort it takes to get there.

And this year, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there in the first place.  The year had been tough.  Turf wars over parlor paint and carpet colors, exhaustion from pushing rocks too large to push alone up slopes that nobody else seemed interested in pushing anything up in the first place only to watch them roll all the way back down again left me with little energy for even the "holiest" of conferencing.  I just wasn’t sure I was up for the four day marathon of side choosing and hair splitting – the monotony of tending the weedy field where the business of church gets done.

So there I sat, in the front pew of an 8:00 am worship service – distracted and preoccupied, going over the endless lists of “to-dos” that awaited me on the other side of all this, agitated, completely unprepared for what was about to happen. 

The service was themed around the sacrament of baptism – the ritual sprinkling of babies oblivious to what is happening to them, a family photo-opp before they too often disappear onto the rolls of the Christmas and Easter crowd.  And I could have called it – as if the dozen glass bowls filled with water on the table up front weren’t an obvious tip off – that at the end of this service we would be asked to come forward and remember an event the vast majority of us had no memory of in the first place.

And that’s when the parade began.

Down every aisle they walked to the front of the sanctuary to have wet fingers press the mark of the cross into their foreheads.  I got caught in the moment, hooked and slowly reeled in, and I did not fight it – I went willing into the waters of my parents' best wishes for a son they once held with hands full of hope and humility.

I watched person after person – people of all ages, races and backgrounds marching in silent procession. 

I watched a Native American woman drive her wheelchair right up to the front of that church – nothing would deter her from dipping her fingers in the fresh springs of her salvation. 

I saw a woman approach her clergy spouse.  When he held out the bowl of water to her, their eyes told a story of a promise held onto where recently there had been as many bad times as there had been good –as much sickness as there had been health – as much struggle as there had been blessing. 

I spot a young pastor standing in front of his mother. She leaves her blessing on his brow, their eyes as wet as the water.

I see strangers deeply connected in a moment no longer held so tightly by things that simply will not last.

Then it was my turn.  As the drops of graces traveled down the bridge of my nose  - I wept – wept for the beauty of the moment and for a Savior that made this parade possible – and for the God who reminded me of why I was there.  

Because this - this is the business of the church.