This is my story

 ...that the vision [of Jesus on the Damascus road] was real, Saul could never doubt. It was the most real event in his life, it changed his whole career, it has altered the course of all history and affected the entire world. The full comprehension of this great and marvelous event is fundamental in the Christian life. The more one ponders over it and the better one understands it, the more real is one grasp of the true nature of religion and of the true relation between God and humanity. Sir William Ramsay in St Paul: The Traveler and Roman Citizen 

As far as I see it, the single-most important conversation of my life so far happened in a kitchen in a home located on Madison's Cottage Grove Road, just a few miles east from where my parents live today. It was a Friday night in the spring of my senior year in high school just a month or so from graduation. A girl from my homeroom and I had gone out on a friendly date of dinner and a movie and as I was dropping her off she invited me in to meet her folks. In a few moments I was sitting at a small kitchen table in their modest home on Madison's east side getting acquainted with Barb and Bill McIntosh. At the time, Barb was an engineer for Oscar Mayer and Bill a commercial plumber. Their family had moved to Madison from Iowa the summer before and I immediately warmed to their friendly, laid-back manner. Bill nursed a cup of coffee as we spoke together.

Bill and me from 1980 or 1981

I tell this story a lot but looking back from a vantage point of (now) thirty-three years I don't really remember all the things we talked about during that hour long conversation but I'm sure much of it was simply them getting acquainted with me. Somewhere along the way I had shared that I was the president of my youth group and was very much excited about that. I think it was about then that Bill asked me the first of two questions that night that forced me to look into the mirror. The first happened rather innocuously, in stride with my description of my involvement in my church: "Jeff, if you were to die tonight would you go to heaven?" (When I tell this story I always have to stress that this question was in the flow of our discussion that night, that Bill did not suddenly jump me attempting to sell me salvation.) I thought about it for a moment and replied, "Yes. Yes I would." 

But it was his second question that sent my world reeling. As a follow-up to my answer of believing I was heaven-bound, he asked, "Jeff, if you were to die tonight and you were to stand before the gates of heaven and God asked you, 'Why should I let you in?', how would you answer?" That caught me up short. I started trying out responses like a man grasping for straws - "I go to church", "I try and be a good person", "I'm president of my youth group" but all the while it felt like I was treading water just trying to stay afloat. All these years later I still remember that feeling as if I had talked with Bill last night. None of the answers I offered satisfied me. None seemed adequate enough to such an important question. 

I honestly don't remember how our conversation ended. I don't remember any "come-to-Jesus" wrap up point. I don't even remember saying good-night to their beautiful daughter. All I remember is that while driving home I was struck with a realization that up until that moment I thought I knew God. But I had just met a man who knew Him and recognized that I only knew about Him. So, I prayed a prayer like this, "God, I want to know You like that man knows You." That was it. A week or so later I prayed what used to be referred to as "the sinner's prayer" that was printed in a gospel tract Bill's daughter had given me to read. And while that moment was real to me, too, in retrospect my journey with Jesus had already begun in that one sentence prayer I had offered on my drive home the Friday before.

Of Paul's vision of Jesus outside of Damascus, Sir Ramsay says this: "It was the most real event in his life, it changed his whole career, it has altered the course of history and affected the entire world." Apart from comparing myself to the Apostle Paul, in some ways I feel the same way about my conversation with Bill. What happened in that home on Cottage Grove Road on a Friday night late in April in 1980 in some ways changed the world - certainly it changed mine. I'll leave it to others to draw their own conclusions of how my life has influenced theirs but for certain my life went on a different trajectory from that moment on. A few years later I enrolled in Bible college feeling God's call on my life. And now I have just completed 22 years of pastoral ministry in Chetek (see Further along the trail). Certainly there have been other conversations along the way that have also been life-changing - like, the first one I had with the young woman who in time became my wife of 27 and a half years - but none as significant as my talk with Barb and Bill. I know they would never say it themselves but their hospitality extended to a 17-year-old boy changed my life and the lives of those I have come in contact since that time. If I wasn't a person of faith, I'd say I was lucky to meet them. But I know better - as do they.

So fortunate to meet these two

Further along the trail

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

A week ago Tuesday marked the 22nd anniversary of the beginning of our ministry in Chetek and to celebrate the day I drove to the Taylor County woods northeast of Rib Lake and hiked along the Ice Age Trail for the afternoon. I was in sore need of alone time and went there deliberately in hopes of hearing a "word" from God. For the past six years, the fall has become a busy time for me as I have juggled my responsibilities of both pastor and coach of Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School's Cross Country team. A lot of times at this turn of the year it feels like I pastor just to pay my way as CC coach and this fall has been no exception. So, on Monday night I cancelled next day's practice and on Tuesday morning I drove the two hours over to eastern Taylor County.

The way we were in the fall of 1991

It was a glorious day to be out on the IAT. With temperatures heading to the mid-70s and the leaves at or near peak, the hike promised to be invigorating to all the senses. More importantly, I needed the solitude of the trail and for God to speak to me. I didn't want the day to pass without the attempt to mark it with prayer and reflection. And so as I shouldered my day pack and headed down the path I began with a simple prayer, "Father, do you have anything you want to say to me?"

As I passed under the green canopy of hardwoods mottled with gold and red, I reflected on.twenty-two years of ministry: the first days, Ultra high frequency (Uhf), learning to preach, when we were CFGT, Focus, becoming Refuge, ministry at the Justice Center and other happenings along the way. For all of it I find myself so grateful to be here, to be given an opportunity to "work out my salvation with fear and trembling", to work my craft and grow and develop as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Every pastor needs people to care for and nurture, every preacher needs a congregation to listen to him and I've been fortunate over the past two decades or so to be given that. 

Along the hike there were moments when my train of thought would detour and I would start to reflect on my deficiencies, inadequacies and mistakes I've made over that span of time. Clearly, other men - and for that matter, other women - could have done it better than me. But at those times I had to forcibly interrupt that flow of disparaging reflection and get myself back to gratitude. Certainly God didn't bring me to the woods to tell me that I sucked.

Before we moved to Chetek, we were living in southern Wisconsin for a season where we hoped to plant a church in a community there. I was 26 years old and Linda and I had just become parents a few months before when we moved to town. It was a two-year experiment of blood, sweat and tears that ultimately led to disappointment. In the fall of 1990 we moved into my in-laws' cabin north of Madison in what we believed at the time to be only a temporary arrangement. But that's not how it played out. In fact, it was the beginning of maybe the darkest ten months in my life - at least thus far. Since 1982 it had been my ambition and perceived calling to be a pastor. Over the next eight years I had attended and graduated from Bible college, completed my internship at the large congregation that had nurtured me, and, after getting married, returned to school for more education. Along the way I had helped a couple of my friends plant fellowships of their own and picked up preaching gigs now and then. But by the fall of 1990 I was no closer to "breaking in" to ministry than I had ever been. During that fall of 1990 and winter of 1991 I interviewed at a couple of fellowships to no avail and then things dried up. No one was looking and no one was interested in taking on a guy with little or no experience.

I was working full-time nights and in retrospect that contributed to the darkness of that season in my life. I was tired all the time and that weariness made me vulnerable to a thought that was planted like a bad seed in my mind: that somehow or other I had "missed" my calling, that all those teachers at the Bible college I had attended and all the pastors who had encouraged me to pursue ministry along the way had, in fact, lied to me, had only said those things just to profit from the tuition money that they got off a chump like me. That's not a logical sequence of thought nor is it fair to those who were my instructors but eight years into my quest to be a pastor I was no closer to getting there. Some days it was just easier to dwell on the disappointment I was feeling at the way my life was unfolding. We lived an hour from where I worked and when you're tired that's a long time to try and fight off dark thoughts like these. But to have to do that twice a day was just wearing me down. I recall one drive to work being so angry that I just banged away at the steering wheel while I cried bitter tears to a God whom I felt had forgotten where and who I was and who had better things to do than listen to me beg Him for an opportunity to serve Him anywhere.

At the time I was working as the night supervisor of about 40 employees of a large nursing facility that oversaw the personal care of 300 disabled adults and children. I was grateful for the job in that it paid the bills but it obviously wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. One night on my rounds, I had a conversation with Dale, one of the crew I oversaw. He had been a pastor but had decided to leave pulpit ministry and open a Christian book-store in the town where this nursing facility was. Knowing my aspirations for ministry from time to time he would ask how the pursuit was going. That night I must have opened up the vault a bit more than usual for Dale gently admonished me, reminding me that the Lord knew where I was and if he had need of me He would come looking for me. Whether he knew it or not, his words were light and the curative to the darkness that was infecting my soul.

That season of feeling lost eventually ended and in time the Lord did have an assignment for me. And now look where I'm at all these years later. I've been blessed to pastor the same fellowship for over two decades in a small community that I now consider home and have experienced the joys and (at times) the sorrow that goes with the territory. As a good friend of mine once said to me: "You have a wife and kids who love you, a house of  your own and a church to work out your calling. What more could you ask for?" (I guess "a cabin in the woods" is out of the question?)

My hike along the Ice Age Trail lasted all afternoon. I had no "burning bush" moment, no Elijah-in-the-cave-beneath-Mt.-Horeb-still-small-voice incident. But something did happen that gave me something to chew on. The IAT is a 1,000-mile trail that snakes through Wisconsin over all kinds of terrain and accesses many kinds of trails - ski, ATV, road and foot-travel only paths - along the way. Having hiked about an eighth of it, I can tell you that in some parts if you've seen a mile of it you've seen it all - kames and kettles, ice-walled lake plains and, especially, eskers. Every 100 feet or so, a yellow blaze attached to a tree or post reminds you that you're heading the right way. For myself, after awhile a certain monotony can set in as I  hike mile after mile after mile. Because the trail runs along all kinds of other trails, it's easier than one would guess to get lost, to miss a turn and be still in the woods but not on the path. On that Tuesday afternoon it happened to me twice. The first time, I had proceeded a couple of hundred feet before recognizing that I had not seen a yellow blaze in awhile. I backtracked only to discover that while I was looking to my left I had missed a blaze with an arrow that was pointing right. The second time I noticed I was going in the wrong direction I actually was walking a section wide enough for cars to pass in opposite directions. Somehow it didn't feel right. And so I walked back down the hill to where the previous marker was and slowly turned clockwise until I noticed a little yellow blaze that had been partially covered by yellow leaves with an arrow pointing north.

The juxtaposition of the wide lane and the narrow path was serendipitous, a Biblical lesson come to life. It made me think of Jesus' words:
 “Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention." (Matthew 7:13-14, Msg)
The lesson I took to heart was that in this journey with Jesus vigilance is required. I can never get to a place in ministry when I say, in so many words, "I got this figured out. A little preaching, a little prayer meeting, a little board meeting, some visitation and public appearances is the sure-fire equation for job security."  In the monotony of living my daily, pedestrian life I can both lose my way - and my soul. Lord, spare me from both ends! The goal of my ministry is not just to notch years of consecutive service in one place and thus win a prize but to be found faithful and - with a wave to Thoreau - to be found doing so deliberately, sucking the marrow out of the life I have been given whether it amounts to a hill of beans or something a little bigger. Either way, I pray to stay vigilant as I hike the trail he has laid down for me.

Further along the trail

Not at home and out of sorts

“The family is dispersed. There are empty bedrooms in the house and the parents no longer have to retreat to their own bedroom for privacy. The two-seat car has replaced the station wagon. The children are independent and have their own relationships and life goals. They are gone.”

 - from “The Season of the Empty Nest” in Seasons of a Marriage by H. Norman Wright, pg. 87

Ed left from "the 40" camp-out

Suddenly we are “empty-nesters.” During the last five weeks our household of six has been reduced to three as Christine, Ed and Emma have all resumed or begun school. In mid-August, Ed returned to Superior where he is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin extension school there. Ten days later, we moved Emma, our “baby” girl, into her dorm room in Nelson Hall on the campus of Bethel University in St. Paul. And just last week we dropped Christine off at the YWAM-Madison facility near Columbus where for the next four months she will be participating in a Discipleship Training School before heading overseas somewhere for another two months. Their rapid departure has left Linda and I feeling a little – or a lot – out of sorts and not at home.

Saying good-bye to Emma

Christine in her dorm room

When we learned that we were going to be parents for the first time back in 1987, I was 25 and Linda, 22. We were living in a small basement apartment in one of Chicago's northern suburbs. Linda was the bread-winner of the family while I worked part-time nights and attended school full-time. We had been married but 14 months. Now I am 51 and she's 48. We live in our refurbished 100-year-old-plus house that has been our home since 1993. We reside in a small community in northern Wisconsin where I have served a local Christian fellowship as pastor for the past 22 years. This past April, after devoting herself to the raising of our children, Linda went back to full-time employment for the first time since before babies working now as a teller at a local bank. And this past summer we celebrated our 27^th wedding anniversary. A lot of living has gone on in the past three decades.

Where the kids would normally pose

Solomon said it first, right? “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NIV). Now we are in an entirely new season for us – the season of the empty nest. And just like we were told it would be, the silence is so loud at times it is disorienting. I felt it poignantly on the first day of school. All over Chetek parents were taking pictures of their children in their new set of clothes and shoes as they headed out the door to begin a new school year. But at 825 Fifth Street there were no “first day” pictures to be taken. What's more, there was no one to read to. Since the fall of 1994 when Christine began kindergarten, we have begun each day as a family by reading from the Bible or, as the children grew older, from other books – The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, and so many other titles. But on September 3 there was no one to read to – even Linda had to be to work early on that day. (It's true that Charlie is with us but he has the temperament of a middle-aged cat, content to keep to himself and only show up at meal times.) While Ed and Emma were excitedly heading off to their first day of classes at UW-Superior and Bethel University and Christine was emotionally caught up in her upcoming new adventure, for me it was a day of feeling loss.

 

No one to read to

Homecoming sure was different this year

“Children affect a marriage not only when they arrive, but also when they leave.” - H. Norman Wright, Seasons of a Marriage

For Linda and I we are home but not at home at the same time. I remember the first Friday night home football game a few weeks ago. During the years our kids were in high school as a family we would walk over to the football field to watch the game as well as our kids who played in the band. But that Friday night neither Linda nor Charlie felt like going so I sat out on the porch listening to the crowd cheer and clap and the distant voice of Mr. K calling the play-by-play on the loud speaker. I think the 'Dogs won that night but for me I only felt a tinge of sadness as I reflected upon memories of going to Friday night games as a family, cheering the boys on and then walking home again afterward, sometimes racing each other as we took different ways, seeing who could get there first.

Now it's just us again, like it used to be before kids, but it's like we have to figure out how to hang out together all over again. It's not that we haven't had a date in 25 years – we've had plenty. But when we returned from whatever we had done – whether we had gone out for dinner or spent a weekend away – it was always to resume our parental responsibilities and obligations. No longer. Now it's just me and her, a middle-aged couple with no grandchildren to spoil and suddenly lots of extra time on our hands. In fact, for the first time since 1994, we will have no C-WHS athletic contests, school concerts or other functions to attend this next school year. Frankly, I won't miss the parent-teacher conferences but I will miss everything else because I loved it all.

A race for the ages

Linda and I treasure the memory of Ed's last run as a Bulldog. It was the 3200m race at the Bloomer Regional in May of 2011. What transpired over those 8 laps was pretty epic. Only the Top 3 finishers would qualify for the Sectional meet and he was running step for step with a kid from Stanley-Boyd. Since the first two runners had already crossed the tape, who ever won this race within the race would be moving on. In the end, that kid had him by a step and a half. When the meet was over and Linda and I got in the car to drive home we wept yes, in part because Ed had failed to qualify, but mostly because it was over. After running in CMS or C-WHS events since he was 11, never again would he wear the purple, orange, white and black. We wept again this past spring during Emma's last concert. Because we had loved it all – even the years when we were attending concerts at all three buildings. (Christine asked me why I didn't cry at her last concert and I tried without success to explain to her that at the time I knew I had many more concerts ahead of me but with Emma it was the last.)

Emma's last concert

“…the experience of the empty nest is always something of a crisis. It can leave a devastating sense of emptiness and purposelessness. Loneliness can set in. The silent house is full of memories. There was once so much to do, and now there is so little. The crowded, busy years seemed arduous at the time. But now, looking back, it is clear that this was far outweighed by the deep, solid satisfaction of being needed.” (Seasons of a Marriage, p. 89)

Lots of empty bedrooms now

On the weekend we drove to Madison, Linda had to work Saturday morning and Ed was racing in River Falls a little over an hour and a half away. On the spur of the moment, Christine, Charlie and I decided to make the trip to see Ed run. St. Paul was but a half hour further and if Emma had a vehicle it would have been fun if she could have joined us. So while we were waiting for Ed’s race to start I called her on her cell. I asked how she was doing and how classes were going and then there was this awkward silence at which point she politely asked, “Well, was there anything else you needed, Dad?” “No,” I replied. “I just thought I’d give you a call and tell you I wished you could be here.” Yeah. I had interrupted the flow of her day and she had other things to give her attention to. Cue Harry Chapin’s ballad Cats In the Cradle here.

On the up-side, it's clean...

 I’m aware that our children will be coming and going for awhile, that Christine will probably come home in March as she figures out her next move and that Ed and Emma will most likely be home again next summer to work. But the growing-up elementary-thru-high school years are over for us and we are feeling the loss of place and purpose. We are looking for a new normal not just in terms of the ebb and flow of our week but for the rhythm of our life. It may take awhile. For the time being I feel somewhat like Bilbo, who while curled up on a rock someplace out in the wild “…dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like” (from “Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire” in The Hobbit).

Digging our way to Jesus

“After a few days, Jesus returned to Capernaum, and word got around that he was back home. A crowd gathered, jamming the entrance so no one could get in or out. He was teaching the Word. They brought a paraplegic to him, carried by four men. When they weren’t able to get in because of the crowd, they removed part of the roof and lowered the paraplegic on his stretcher. Impressed by their bold belief, Jesus said to the paraplegic, 'Son, I forgive your sins.'” Mark 2:1-5, The Message

This past week our fellowship has been hosting Vacation Bible School. It's not specifically “our” school. Since the mid-1980s, four fellowships in our community – Advent Christian, Chetek Alliance, Chetek United Methodist and Refuge - have cooperatively run a VBS annually and this year it was our year to host it. For me, this is my 21^st campaign. In over two decades of being involved in this annual evangelistic venture I have been in charge of drama, recruitment, publicity, rec, or communications at one time or another. But this year is the first time that I am serving as “director” in probably over a decade.

Grandpa & Granddaughter have team-taught

I didn't plan it that way. In fact, I attempted to recruit a few others to lead it but when those attempts didn't pan out, I agreed to do it for the simple reason that I didn't want this annual cooperative venture to die on my watch. Call that pride or call it stubbornly upholding tradition, either way working together to share the gospel is, I think, a good tradition to maintain.

I don't think I've done the best job of it. We could have done more publicity-wise (I totally forgot to put a spot on the radio and at the community access channel). I should have done more “button-holing” recruitment. Our numbers are especially low – 23 has been the high-water mark thus far (compare that to other years where we have had 50, 60, and 70-plus kids). But, having said that, all our food items were donated either by individuals or by a few of the businesses in our town. All our craft items were donated as well so that this may be the least expensive VBS we've run in years. What's more, our staff (numbering 25) are every bit enthusiastic as we have had in previous years. And of that staff (crafts, rec, worship and a few of the crew leaders) have grown up participating in VBS so that even though our numbers are not what we had hoped I can't help but enjoy what's going on here this week.

It would have been something to see

Four friends wanted to get their mutual friend to Jesus. The house was packed and apparently those inside were not from the Midwest who might have politely stepped out in order that the paralytic might be prayed for. No one budged. But these guys refused to be deterred. If they couldn't get their friend through the front door, then a little more drastic action would have to be taken. Carefully carrying him up the outdoor staircase, a common enough feature in Palestinian homes, to the roof they gently set him down and began to dig. Their actions speak of desperateness – maybe their friend's condition was worsening? Even if they had to wait the rest of the day until Jesus emerged from the place, why couldn't they have done just that? Mark doesn't tell us. Maybe they were afraid that they would be shooed away by the handlers of the religious authorities who were presently in the house. Maybe they just couldn't wait. But dig they do and the rest we know. What comes next is way more than just a healing. That paralyzed man goes home a new man in more ways than one.

My kids are the two on the right

Even a small VBS like we are hosting this week is a lot of work and does not come free. Curriculum, tent rental, a few ads in the local paper and some other odds and ends and you are way past $500 (a very inexpensive VBS as those things usually go). But like those four friends in the gospel story, we of those four fellowships still see it the same way: getting our friends – especially our young ones – to Jesus is worth the time, energy, headache and expense it will cost us. Besides, for this VBS I get to serve with two of my own kids as Ed has enthusiastically led rec and Emma has helped lead worship and been one of the crew leaders of our most rowdy bunch (yes, the older boys). To get to do that offsets whatever “burden” I have sometimes felt I have been carrying because of serving as director these past few months.

 

It's not over yet. We have two more days and that means eight more hours of “digging” in hopes that we'll get all our young friends to Jesus that he may heal them all, that those who are paralyzed in spirit (and we have a few of them) may go home on Friday afternoon changed, different, with the mysterious power of the seed of the word secretly at work within them. 

 

For the fun of it

“The glory of God is man fully alive.”

St. Irenaeus

BERT HEALY

“But, still, remember folks.”

WACKY

“Smile, darn ya smile.”

from Annie

These girls bring it

Tonight, the final curtain closes on the Red Barn Theater's (RBT) production of Annie. Since June 9, the rest of my cast mates and I have been driving up to “the Barn” for rehearsals and, for the last nine nights, performances. Tonight's show will mark number ten. With only one exception, we've been honored with standing “O's” every night. (Personally, I'm of the opinion that no matter how Daddy Warbucks, Hannigan or Rooster do the orphans save us every night. They're just so dang cute who wouldn't give a rousing ovation for them?) Hannah C, who plays Annie, has done just an outstanding job along with her fellow orphans from the New York Municipal Orphanage.

I'm the mug in the middle

For me, I've had the blessing of playing Rooster, my first real villain role. In '08, I was blessed to play Fagin in the RBT's production of “Oliver!” and in '09, Mayor Shinn in “Music Man”. Fagin is a thief with a heart of gold and Shinn is but a blowhard. But Rooster? There's just nothing redeeming about him (okay, the audience loves the Rooster – when in doubt, crow louder is my motto). But in the end the crowd loves it when he, Lily and Hannigan get their comeuppance.

The long and short of it is I've had a lot of fun.

SCENES FROM "THE GREEN ROOM"

We're just getting into character...

She's the cat's pajamas

Having fun is why I do community theater. I'm not in it for the money (“Wait, there's money in this?”). I don't do it for the acclaim of the folks who attend the fellowship of which I serve as pastor (Um, they are wonderful people but they are just not community theater kinda folks). I do it for the fun of it and because it helps my heart come alive. I suppose being a person of a religious persuasion I should have some spiritual reason for allocating so much time and money to playing around. “Building relationships” or “witnessing opportunities” are reasons that probably could pass muster if I had to defend them before a board of overseers. Gratefully, the leaders I work with and am submitted to are not wired that way. I've never asked for their blessing but they have never insinuated that I needed to. No, I'm in it just for laughs.

And for the people. I love to make people laugh both on stage and behind it. I love the people I get to work intensively with for nearly five weeks running. Donna/ “Lily”, the woman who plays my cohort in crime, is just so much fun to be with. Long before we make our big entrance in Act 1, Scene 7, we've already had our fill of laughs out back. The fact that she is so doggone beautiful means I just look better standing next to her.

Between scenes in "the green room"

The “green room” (in stage terminology, the place where actors hang out before and in between scenes) for this show happens to be the large grassy area behind the Barn. Every night at my invitation ten minutes before the show opens the majority of the cast gather together to pray for God's blessing on our performance as well as for each other. For the rest of the night, the 8-10 plastic chairs in this same area are full of members of the cast visiting, talking, sharing things light and, at times, not so light. I love to hear people's stories and, as in previous shows, I've heard bits and pieces of some of my cast mates' journeys. Only one or two refer to me as “Pastor Jeff.” Most of them call me “Jeff” or “Rooster” (which I want to believe is a term of endearment for them and not villainy). For a lot of them I'm probably the first (or only) pastor they've ever known in this way. (I'm not inferring that their pastor or priest is uncaring or indifferent; it's just that they probably don't hang out with him as they do with me.)

Tonight is strike, always a melancholy moment for me. A world is disassembled and put away for good, never to be replaced. I'll part company with the fedora I've loved sporting these past nine nights. In Red Barn tradition we'll sign the wall and then say our good-byes. And that's the hardest part of this whole thing. Sure, I'll bump into them at Wal-Mart or chat with them from time to time on Facebook, but we won't have opportunity of sitting in chairs in the Green Room again for a long time – really, if ever. People move away, get married, take other jobs, get away from theater. Case in point, before this show I hadn't worked with Kevin/ “Burt Healy” since Music Man ('09), Nancy/ “Ms. Hannigan” and Donna/ “Lily” since The King and I ('07). So, you never know when this might be the last hurrah together. That's what I'll miss the most when the stage is swept for the last time and Billy, the house manager, turns the lights off: chatting informally in the “green room” with some wonderful people I love, waiting for our cue to go out on that stage and make 'em laugh.

It always does my heart good. And in that I think God is pleased.