ribs healing nicely

well, I'm in week 5 or 6 on those ribs... looks like they were MULTIPLE, and BROKEN. My ribcage has turned out a DIFFERENT SHAPE!

I was able to keep skating the whole time, encountering excruciating pain and the exhilaration of transcending human boundaries of comfort... just looking for an arena, some sand for a stand... yesterday I ollie aired a 3-foot road cone at about the 30th try... then I biffed hard and got a bruised up right hand, tweaked ankle, but not so bad... got to keep skating the rest of the night--focused on the bowls and just ripped rad and had fun...

you see...

before I got hooked into the "PROFESSIONAL minister" concept (which i am shedding more and more deeply), I was gonna go into the army and be in hand to hand training, blow [stuff] up, and be a real brother to my buds and love christ with them. I was looking to waste my days on this planet well... I had looked into the marines, air force (not interested in Navy), and had found out that base life was good for families--supportive, spiritually focused for chrisitians...

...because I want to die well down here...

but I met Brian. Brian was a high up seminary prof (I was a van driver who just loved jesus) and he hooked me, Judy and Aaron into Share Jesus! (the exclamation point was my idea). "I've got an army for ya...", he said.
Yearlong committment to relocate to a church in Winter Park FL.
First, Pioneer, SEED TEAM: helping, equipping, training, traveling with, a young "Associate Minister to Gen-X"

at month six, after many interesting turns, the "plug was pulled" on the mission, we were told to pack it up and go home (our house was leased out to a family of like 10 people).
the church stepped up and asked us to stay, reformed out team, all on their own, took over the program, and let me just work for the next six months... I was now a waiter for God...

But during that six months as a ministry helper guy who can equip the seminarian (by the way, that guy was the most jealous and inferiorized guy, man seminary really didn't help his issues!) I had one really cool experience. That is, among many... Actually a series of them...

I met another Brian. Surfer Brian. Surfer Brian was, first of all HUGE. Homes had the major surfer arms and chest! He was friendly, and ran a skateshop off the Waxtree Record store across from the big, white church... i really felt so RELAXED when I went to Waxtree. I grew into punk at 14-17, lived as a Jesus freak from 17-21, and began to re-enter the familiar, a changed man, from 22 to now... And now, I'm back...

But I really had a great time visiting with Brian. I knew that hanging with him, getting better on my skate, knowing those people, BEING with them, learning from them, listening to them... was life to me, in God! you know? it is where I wanna be...

...the church thing crashed and burned, and the highlights of the year--a local, grassroots skate comp, with giveaways and prizes for worst fall, suckiest run, best try, etc...
another highlight--taking a sunday school made up of guys well over 45 (most of them) over to the duplex home of about 7 skaters and their girlfriends to fill their fridge and RESURFACE THIER HALFPIPE.

During that day, these old geezers learned, saw, felt, knew, the impact that giving and love and listening and helping have on a love-starved world. I wish I could spend all my time on that day. I, the MINISTER, sat and watched videos with kids and just relaxed while my DISCIPLES went and did...

I have spent years on treadmills trying to reach into days like those... days when the waste matters...

so, that was one year's work... the rest of the year, God worked on me... I worked tables (I'm the worst server-all heart and no memory) and loved my neighbors the best I could... I lost touch with a lot of the skating world, did karate for sanity (got my first broken ribs there-friends of chuck norris, no kidding)...

I'll probly put a chapter about my two brians in some book I write in retrospect, if I ever come into a time where I feel I can see what some things meant...

but for now, I am some 7 or 8 years down the road from all that, frequenting skateparks and gettin' rad around people who've never even seen a pastor out from behind some preachin' stance...
...and i'm lonely for my geezers. where are you guys. I mean, i really loved that day. but despair closed the clouds on you, you slipped back into sleep, you let your moment in the sun pass... awake sleeper!

I'm lonely for my geezer pack.

In the years that followed that, as I worked in two churches, I kept trying to recapture the rush of that... connection! the connection of geezer to punker, christian churchman with heathen worldlies... the walls just fall... but during those 3.5 years of youth ministry, I was confronted with a LACK of spiritual intensity among the rich elders in those churches... a lifetime of affluence and entertainment had eroded thier desire to come to paddle out to catch waves...

Hey, would you help me by just mourning with me over these generations of people who are so tragically sated? I'm so lonely out here on the frontlines for those who understand what I'm talking about... or DON'T, but want to DO it, anyway...

So, my right hand is blown, my ribs are healing, my memories wash over me, and I invite you to mourn the neutralized lives of so many brethren and sistren...

Lew