I had two interesting encounters today.
1st. I had just returned to my office from chaplaincy at the ambulance headquarters and there was a series of loud bangs on my outside door. It was a man I will call "Fred". Fred is very intelligent, but has some mental health issues which makes him hard to get along with. He fires straight from the shoulder, if he thinks you are a fool he will leave you in no doubt about the fact. He also has a loud voice and M.E. He keeps getting kicked out of groups he attends. In spite of this tendency I have always had a soft spot for Fred. He once called me his only friend. I had not seen him for a while so he was just catching up. In he walked with his dog and sat down in a chair and started in telling me stuff as if we had been talking all day. In the last couple of years he has discovered the Internet and has done a heap of stuff. He reads feverishly, has definite political opinions, a real sense of justice and if you want to argue with him you have to know your stuff and be prepared to listen to colourful descriptions of people. He is entertaining. He kicked me out of my office chair and took over my computer to show me all the stuff he had done on Mythology and ancient cultures etc. Incredible stuff he had uploaded with various links to other sites etc. Amongst his stuff I came across this quotation which tickled my fancy....
"To be normal is the ideal of unsuccessful people." from Carl Jung
I am not sure I am successful... but I know I am not normal. :-) He wasted an hour of my precious time, he is blunt and "out there", but in a weird sort of way I find Fred refreshing.
2nd On my way home tonight at about 9:30 p.m. I picked up a teenage guy who was hitching a ride out to the suburb just past where I live. He climbed into the van and talked about the weather. Then said a conversation opener that I notice many people use these days, "Have you had a busy day?" I responded,"Yes it has been fairly full on." giving nothing away at all. .... silence.... then, "What is it that you do?" I groaned inwardly, I hate that question. "I am a church minister." I replied. "Awe shit! Is that for real?" he said. I think at that stage he wanted to extract himself from the van. I told him about the chaplaincies also. "No shit?" he said, "What do you do there?" So the questions kept coming. "How come you got into the church?" "Why do you do it?" "Do you have a partner... like a wife?" "I thought priests couldn't marry?" It was so much fun, the drive home went fast. I got to tell him about Habitat for Humanity, the Night Shelter, the drop-in and the Ocean Grove group (since I was just coming home from it.) His last statement was, "Hey thanks for the ride. Shit you do good stuff! See yah."
See I am not normal, when I said I was a minister, he said, "Awe Shit!" If I was still a plumber I would not get that response. I think it surprised him. My old van is full of carpentry tools at the moment so I guess he would not expect a minister to be driving something like that.
Photo: A strange place for a minister to be found.
No comments:
Post a Comment