No Outlet

We were stuck.  All of us at a standstill.  Wedged in a lineup all too familiar.  

Orange barrels to the left.  

Orange barrels to the right. 

Thin layers of dust rising in blacktop heat creep up through dash and floor.  

Only with the flick of a wrist does stop become slow, the sleeveless woman inches us forward. 

Stuck like the secrecy surrounding in sprawling, sub-urban still-life.

Stripped malls selling vacancy signs.  

Coin-op Laundromats. 

The same pharmacy next to the same check cashing place next to the same three digit, blue-slushy dispenser 

same as the last corner

same as the next...

Patience at a premium. 

All of us caught in commute.

But I am a pastor – a spiritual leader. 

I have spiritual work to do.
Spiritual thoughts to think.
Spiritual words to write.
Spiritual duties to perform.
Spiritual things to say to people not quite as spiritual as me.   

I do not have time to sit in this line.  

I must commence with my commute.  I need to get to wherever it is I am going – for God’s sake, there are spiritual things that need to be accomplished.

So almost without thought, knuckles wrapped white around steering wheel veer quickly onto the first side street.  Matters taken into own hands.  Mess circumvented.   Escape route found. 

   

Sadly relief never got the chance to sigh. There they were:  Two words.  Eight black letters left against a backdrop yellow square turned on end.  Three syllables echoing across time and space:

 
Not to be deterred.  I am smarter than this. I have advanced degrees.  So press on.  Stay the course.  Bypass the confusion.  Get to where you need to be faster than everyone else sitting in that line.  

But every side streets within the side street ended in a cul-de-sac turnaround – not once – not twice, but three times, until sitting face-to-face once again with this roadside truth: 

No Outlet means no outlet.

“How many times do we have to let this guy off the hook, Jesus? Isn’t seven times enough?”


“Can’t I ride my camel through the needle nosed doors of heaven?”


“When we get there, can you get the ringside seats?”

I sit with a lot of people looking for shortcuts – escape routes –ways to circumvent the mess.  

They want a shortcut through cancer.  

A shortcut through marriage troubles and teenaged turmoil. 

A shortcut through unemployment and addiction.  

They come hoping that I am as much David Copperfield as I am pastor, wanting a magic wave of the wand:  “Pray some special prayer – evoke some holy name – crack open gold trim pages – pull out smoke and mirrors.  Anything.  Just make it go away.”
 

But most days I don’t have much more to give them except a savior who says:  

“See those two pieces of woods?  Nail them together and carry them around with you for awhile and see what happens.”  

“You want out of this?  Then grab that washbasin and towel and make yourself useful.”  

"Sure you’re welcome to come on in – the gate is always open.  (Just not sure you’re going to fit through it with all that crap you’re carrying around.)”

But honestly - I am no different.  

I travel hours to conferences, hoping to find quicker ways of filling seats then searching for stray sheep or pulling up floor boards looking for misplaced dimes.  

I scour books for secrets and tricks for running a church without hours spent breaking bread around meetings tables or answering the door for midnight knockers.  

I want healing for my people without calloused knees or a closed prayer closet. 

I listen so closely to tapes wanting to learn how to earn credibility without incursions across boundaries of privacy and family. 

So there I was back at the crossroad with really only one choice:  

Rejoin the line I left fifteen minutes ago – get back onto the only path that will take me where I need to go.