Meet the Minister
10 Things...
You will never learn about me from my Sermons
Of course, there's a bit more to the story than what comes through in sermons.
So, with a nod (but no apologies) to David Letterman, here are the top 10
things you will never learn about me from my sermons:
#10 - I can talk trash on the basketball court!
# 9 - I was a gopher on the set of one of Michael Jordan's
Hanes T-shirt commercials, and still have the shirt off MJ's back from that
experience. Sensing a hoops trend?
#8 - As an undergrad, I skinny-dipped at dawn in Thoreau's
Walden Pond.
#7 - I have broken the fingers of at least three friends playing
slow-pitch softball. OK, actually in two cases I simply hit balls that they
failed to catch safely, but still they seemed to blame me. In the third
case, I threw one high and away to the first baseman. I am, by the way,
an unrepentant Atlanta Braves fan.
#6 - I once accidentally shop-lifted something from one
of those cheap gift shops in the mall. Really. I paid for one thing and
just forgot the other item that was in the hand that was holding another
shopping bag. I walked all the way to the far end of the mall before realizing
what I'd done. It certainly wasn't a Lincolnesque 10 miles to return a penny,
but I did go back and pay for it.
#5 - I'm not proud of this, but, as an undergrad I threw
the entire 800 photocopied pages of Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reasoning
out the 9th-floor window of the library at Kent State University on the
last day of spring semester. It did look pretty in the wind.
#4 - I'm not proud of this either, but I have actually read
all of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and I must disagree: man is not a
useless passion – and neither is woman.
#3 - I was there for the first night playoff game in Wrigley
Field history (and saw the Cubs lose, of course.) I was also in Atlanta's
Fulton County Stadium when Hank Aaron hit his 716th home run– not
quite as catchy as 715, but hey....
#2 - I interviewed Howard Dean when he was governor of
Vermont.
#1 - I once had lunch at a table in Lexington, Ky., with
Cornel West and Wendell Berry and one other colleague during my time at
the Council of State Governments. (I was wise enough to keep my mouth shut
and my ears open.)
You won't find any of that in my sermons because, frankly, none of it really
matters. It's like a lot of other biographical information, somewhat interesting. . .
but not formative.
For a closer look at some recent sermons, please click on the Sermons link on the sidebar menu, or even better, come and hear it live on any Sunday at 10am! Visitors are always welcome at Clarendon Presbyterian.