My third and final year of seminary was delayed a week while Cynthia and I honeymooned in Nova Scotia. We loaded up a rooftop carrier and headed out to Dayton. We moved into Roberts Hall, a newer residential building directly across the campus from Fouts Hall, my first year home. Roberts was more suited for married couples. Both buildings bred cockroaches like rabbits. Our neighbor down the hall used to collect dead cockroaches and deposit them weekly under the slot at the bursar’s window.

I just settled into fall classes and clinical pastoral education (CPE) at Kettering Memorial Hospital. Cynthia was looking for a job in labor and delivery and was quickly snatched up by Miami Valley Hospital to work in their neonatal ICU. My puny Eastway paycheck paled in comparison to her paycheck, a pattern that we would follow for the next forty years.

A month into the term and my father died of sudden cardiac arrest (see my earlier chapter about Bob Stoppert making the notification and giving Cynthia and I a blank check to fly home). I had a marvelous father the first twenty-five years of my life, mentor, and supporter of my call to ministry.

My dad and my new father-in-law, Irving, were like oil and water. Irv was the Dean of the Cabinet, the Bishop’s right hand man. Irv was the system. Dad was the crusader for the little guy, who always stood up for right over wrong, and was always vocal about bucking the system.

Dad served small steeple churches in rural upstate New York; Irv served the big suburban and urban churches. We didn’t have to worry about how our families would get along after dad died. Though I grieved his death, I was blessed with a strong, loving, and wise surrogate father, my father-in-law Irving, for the next twenty-five years. 

I was two weeks behind in my reading and classwork by mid-October. There would be no time for United Sound in my third year. United Sound was a choral, comedy, dance, skit group that traveled the country between terms each year, visiting churches served by United alumni. It was great fun pulling into an unknown town in a huge tour bus, to be assigned a host family, have them feed us a good home cooked meal and house us over night. We’d do our stick at their church, often drawing full sanctuaries of happy United Methodists. Aaron Shaffer was the director and Robert Simmons was the assistant.

Doc Simmons was the Dean of the Black Gospel Association of America. He taught fifty plus white seminary students how to sing black gospel. How to sway. How to repeat. How to move and be moved. And he was good at it. We’d sing twenty minutes of “If you confess the Lord, call him up” and have the whole house on their feet clapping, swaying, and praising the Lord. Truly phenomenal.

Doc also taught the young and naive how to play poker in the back of the tour bus between gigs, unloading the unsuspecting of excess money. Oh, how we loved both Aaron and Doc. 

The movement of the Holy Spirit was experienced where ever we traveled, whenever we performed, when we swayed and sang, and when we cracked corny jokes: “those who have ears to hear (pull out two cobs of corn), let them hear!” 

Our most notable gig was singing for General Conference in 1984, held in Baltimore, Maryland. This is a gathering every four years of about 500 elected clergy and 500 lay delegates from around the world to set policy for the United Methodist Church. It was the one and only General Conference I would attend, for I witnessed too much pride, ego, and hubris for my blood. Lots of want-to-be Bishop’s worked the crowd. Protesters for LGBT rights picketed outside. New Hymnal recommendations were finalized. Underneath it all was the common thread of United Methodist DNA, a belief and appreciation for the grace of God.

It was, and is, inspiring to witness such diversity of culture, language, and believe all under the big tent of United Methodism. Grace is how we roll. Though flawed, John Wesley, the Anglican priest responsible for the Methodist movement would have been proud.

—

The pool this morning. Three times a week, I return to the pool. 

I’ve never liked a dirty floor in locker rooms or on a pool deck. My toes curl with involuntary nerve when I see hair, dirt, or thread. Drains are to be especially avoided. Unseen bacteria lurks and athlete’s foot threatens. I wear Crocks, pink Crocks, whenever I can, burning routine deeply into my core, simplifying and making economies only a veteran lap swimmer can master. We know who we are. 

There is no rational explanation why I have such irrational beliefs about feet and deck. I’ve always thought my feet are ugly. Mine are also ticklish. Never have I hosted a foot washing service during Holy Week. Not going there. I may have been okay for Jesus, but not for me. Nope. Nadda. Zip it.

As I swim this morning, I meditate on the rest of the world who think rationally about feet and cleanliness. Consider how many children throughout the world who have no shoes, I think to myself. The shoeless children and adults who’ve I’ve worked with in Nicaragua and Guatemala are so different from me and my privilege. Where did I come from? How did this come to be?

Ten laps this morning of crawl stroke, five of breast. I finish under a hot shower staring at the drain.

—

Every candidate for ordination had to complete one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. One unit could be earned part time in nine months, as I did, or full time in three. CPE met weekly for half a day, 12 of us in the program with our supervisors, to discuss the ministry implications of our projects or call time working as a chaplain in the hospital. 

Kettering Memorial Hospital was a regional cardiac transplant and bypass medical center, operated by the Seventh Day Adventist church. It was conservatively operated. No meat. No alcohol. No tobacco. No caffeine. No fun. But, who goes to a hospital to have fun?

Caffeine was smuggled in, to make my own tea or coffee. I’d carry in my own sandwiches to avoid the meat-like substitutes in the cafeteria. Yes, they served “Blam” which was compressed in a mold to look like ham, treated with artificial color and esters (because presentation and smell is everything), and was sliced and served with a smile.

On call chaplains slept in the doctor’s on-call suite and covered all hospital floors and departments. Weekend call was especially busy in the emergency room. 

AIDS was just emerging and threatened to burn the world down. In some ways my pastoral ministry could be defined by the AIDS pandemic at the beginning and COVID at the end. Not knowing how it was spread and the realization that AIDS is almost always fatal fueled the fire of fear, requiring patient visits while donning full environmental suits. Not exactly the setting conducive for good pastoral care, holding a hand, or communicating empathy. 

I had enough of my father’s German stubborn non-conformist values that when I was yelled at for not presenting myself one weekend call in a suit worthy of a chaplain, I went out and bought the cheapest polyester suit I could afford. It looked terrible, and I looked like a fly-by-night televangelist wearing it.

I became friends with a week-end ED doctor, much like myself, and we would meet after dark behind hedges beyond the ED entrance. Over cigars, we’d talk, debrief the trauma of the day, and just plumb the facets of life.  

Most of us dislike conflict and confrontations, myself included. One member of my CPE group was a 50’s something Roman Catholic Irish laywoman on a mission. She wanted to be Ordained, and saw the Church’s gender gap as an issue of injustice that she was determined to correct, even if it meant going directly to the Pope. She also had a son my age, who, she reported, looked just like me, with whom she was estranged. Thus, I became the focus of much of her rage over the next 9 months. 

My CPE supervisor was really good. He was able to help me to see interpersonal conflict as something more than an instinctual reaction like  touching a hot stove. Rage and anger came from somewhere unknown and unexplored. Secrets and estrangement were not personal, they were signposts pointing the observant towards a course of action that reflected the grace of God. My maturity struggled to keep up. 

Dick, my CPE supervisor, took me where my secular mental health training from Eastway Community Mental Health could not go. CPE revealed an intersection of theology, psychology, and pastoral ministry that resulted in me being molded into a better prepared parish pastor, even at the ripe age of 24. 

—

The shift supervisor, a sergeant who was known to frequent donut shops and hide his cruiser behind the store, called the third shift to attention, then started to hand out boxes of 12 gauge shells. He addressed the 7 patrol officers on the shift, and one awkward volunteer seminary student posing as a chaplain dressed in a clerical collar. “These are for our 2:00 am training. Everyone make sure your shotgun is clean and be on time. Dismissed.”

“Ei eye, chief,” SK Wiley said as he gave a Gomer Pyle salute and pulled me by the shirt to the parking lot.

I had been around the Miamisburg cops long enough to learn that most juvenal delinquents came to a fork in the road at some point in their early adolescence. Some went to prison for getting caught engaging in serious criminal activity, others became cops. Misbehaving was core DNA of every cop I got to know.

The first time I rode with Steve, he asked me if I was willing to shoot a man. “What?” I asked, caught completely off guard. “You, know,” he replied, “If some dirt bag is about to cap my ass, could you drop him with the shotgun?”

“Well, kind of, yes. Er, no. I don’t know,” I answered in honest frustration. My moral compass should have been better prepared and aligned. “If you can’t, you’re not riding with me.” There it was. Truth spoken and made real. Time for me to put up, or shut up and go home. “Okay. You’re right.” Yes, I would use the shotgun locked in the cruiser to protect my officer. “Good,” he replied, then showed me how the quick release worked. Imagine that, a padre with a shotgun.

If I had to, I was willing to take a life.

Two clicks of the microphone by each of the officers on duty alerted the shift sergeant that all were present and accounted for. Our respective patrol cars surrounded the city park in the center of town. This was a clandestine operation, even the dispatcher (pre-911 era) wasn’t told what was about to go down. One shotgun per cop, and we all huddled up, with me nervously wondering how many years I was going to spend in an Ohio State Penitentiary.

The City of Miamisburg had been overwhelmed by migrating black birds, who, for some unknown reason, interrupted their seasonal trek and vacationed for an enormous amount of time in the beautiful city of Miamisburg. The Chamber of Commerce should have been proud that all these black birds considered Miamisburg a destination vacation, except for all the shit they were depositing on resident’s cars. The birds roosted in the city park.

“On ‘three’, and everyone let loose,” the sergeant ordered. Everyone nodded and separated ten or fifteen yards. Everyone looked confident, except for the one female cop, who looked undersized compared to her shotgun.

“Three!” and the city erupted in gunfire. One chambered and five in the magazine, pumps making friction, and shell casings flying. Pause. Everyone is reloading. Bam! It’s off to the races again.

The effects of the heavy antiaircraft fire was immediate. Birds fell like rain. For every bird killed outright, three or four fell from the sky, wounded, flapping, squawking and screaming like beaked creatures do in death’s throws. For every wounded black bird dropped in our immediate vicinity, another half-dozen flew in fear far enough away before overcome by their wounds, they dropped into the neighborhood swimming pools, back yards, and driveways.

Heavy gunfire at 2 am lit up the emergency switchboard at the police station. The dispatcher was terrified; you could hear it in her voice.

The supervising sergeant was great at planning and execution, but poor at anticipating potential consequences. No one was hurt. Cops were laughing like school children. I thought it funny the female officer shot right over her twelve o’clock and nearly fell over backwards. But the black bird massacre created a huge mess, angered everyone who had to get up in a few hours for work, and scared the crap out of every child woken from sleep by gunfire.

Beauty is often found in recovery.

I’ve done boneheaded things in my life, made mistakes, said things I later regretted. I’ve learned, often times the hard way, that the sweetest part of life is often found in recovery; be it an apology, forgiveness, redemption. It may be found in sobriety, stability, learning new ways for embracing life and living with joy. Recovery is a gift of God’s grace, a beautiful thing.

That Miamisburg sergeant was twisting in the wind. Before his supervising lieutenant was dispatched and sent to the city park, the sergeant confidently stood, cued his mic and requested a DPW crew dispatched to the scene, complete with pickup trucks and shovels. Overtime be damned.

Within 20 minutes there were a dozen cops, another dozen city DPW workers, and one volunteer student chaplain whacking the wounded with shovels, scooping the deceased, fetching drowned remains from back yard pools, and tossing them in the back of the trucks. The dispatcher, enlightened to the tomfoolery imparted by the sergeant and officers, was an anchor of grace fielding calls on the emergency line from concerned and angry citizens.

That, right there, my friends is how one recovers from life’s misfortunes, personally or professionally. Take it. Own it. Do it. Recover like a boss!