Christian Men's Monday
I had four guys out on my first run. We dropped one close by. Number two wasn’t too far from the first. And that leaves us with the last two a little bit east and quite a bit south and west.
The number three guy is a fairly tall and bald fella from Tennessee. I said you’re not from around here are you?
Nope. Tennessee. He’s a private jet pilot and mechanic. I suppose. Seems unusual. Big bold voice.
And, as a matter of introduction, he jumped right in with how disgusting the televised impeachment hearings are. The impeachment circus. Give it a rest already.
After just a couple moments while that settled, and out of the clear blue, he dragged in Hillary. Something something Hillary.
And then he announced the reason for the introduction.
"As you can tell, you all got a guy with a pretty, southern, Republican, patriot, attitude. And Christian too. He announced. In case we could not tell.
And then, just for fun he threw in abortion. What the hell happened to the 'impeachment circus'?
Well, that abortion talk kind of popped the other fella in the backseat and he jumped in on it, too.
I don’t know where any of this was going at all. I'm just trying to drive the van. I sure don't need a bunch of self-righteous buglers blowing they horns.
Tennessee still wanted to rant about the impeachment hearings. He was just disgusted: "what a waste of time" and "what a circus."
So I said ...
"You’ll notice we don’t have the impeachment hearings on in here. That's for a reason. And before we got in the van they were not on in here either. So we don’t have to turn the circus on now."
I didn’t want to beat him. I didn’t want to tell him to shut up. But…
During the pause after my statement, the little older guy kind of cracked up and went back to abortion and killing God's babies. And I thought, 'Oh my dear God have we got a long ride now.'
I do not remember where in Tennessee's announcement he stuck it but there were guns. Something to the effect that "if you don't like guns, you don't have to buy any."
We let Tennessee out at the private airport north-end area and me and #4 headed down towards Raymond in the Southwest.
Turns out the last guy there, #4, was a young-earth, anti-evolution fellow. Only 6000 years old. A fundamental biblical literalist. With lots of science to prove it all. Any mutations towards evolution are actually fractions and fragments and everything is not better. Mutations are not better. They’re either worse or they’re neutral. Everything is degrading; getting worse.
And something about genetic entropy. And DNA. And magnetic resonance and The Magnetic Fields around the earth and so on.
Apparently he talks to people, in groups, about these things, possibly with a microphone. I wanted to go in the direction of presentations in general regardless of the subject matter. But he stayed right on the the science of young universe. Anything that’s 14 billion years old, well ... he wasn’t going to be listening to any of that.
He did almost apologize for getting rolled into that abortion thing. It caught him off guard and he just shot from the hip.
I did tell him I was writing a book titled the Beautiful Route. I’ve noticed that it matters when I choose what it is I’m going to see. When I choose what it is I’m going to put in my mind. What I choose and what I’m going to consume. And I would rather consume love and joy and gratitude and forgiveness.
I think he’s a pretty dog-eared, Old Testament fellow. I don’t get the sense that grace has gotten through to him yet. I don’t know. We didn’t go there directly. I’m assuming quite a bit. But for all the foam around his mouth it certainly smells more like beer than root beer.
When I returned to base there was a single rider going east into Oak Creek. He’s Korean. He’s a pastor of a nondenominational church. And for a guy in the communication business it seems like his English could use a little work. I'm very good at understanding lots of dialects in Foreign English. After a little while listening you kind of get the get the hang of it. I had to work to understand this preacher.
He had a church for a little while in Chicago after he graduated from seminary. His church has two distinct populations. Korean, of course, and what he called an English-speaking population. I never did ask him how long he’s been in the United States.
His contract also has him doing youth ministry. Teenagers. It’s a challenge.
He is graceful and careful with his language and his estimation of who is who. And he’s much more inclusive regarding other peoples ideas and religions. He’s more of a New Testament fellow indeed.
Finally today, near the end of my shift, I come back into the building and both the Korean and the scientist require a pick up. There’s only time for me to get one of them. They are in opposite directions. And ... guess where I went.
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“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." - William James
