"you have plenty to write about this week"
(wrong again)


i guess sarah put my thoughts into the right perspective when she said to me as we were driving away from the church sunday, "today was set up to be awkward." she was right. it hasn't even been two weeks since julie found out that she was moving. the sunday after she did, it was announced from the pulpit that she would be forced (er, asked) to preach "one last time" for us on her getaway day. there were presentations to be made. tears to be shed. people to be thanked. and all of it was entirely genuine. even the testimony at the end was genuine, if not ill-advised. so, i won't spend too much time on what i thought was right and what i thought was wrong with the service. it never was going to be a worship service. it was always going to be a ceremony. and that's fine. i should've prepared for that going in. it was stupid of me to think that it would've been any different than it was. maybe if i had lowered the bar ahead of time as i am so often wont to do, my reaction shots that were obvious (as they always are) from the choir loft would not have been so (again, genuinely) demonstrative. curse you, expectations. you foiled me again.

on to more important things. brian o'kelley made his way to birmingham sunday after lunch. brian made his way home to continue his effort to make right with his past. to reconcile debts and deeds that could, very well, have been forgotten for good. that would have been the easy way to do it. he's got a good job. he's got a new life with new friends that don't have anything to do with what he may, technically, owe to the cities of birmingham, irondale and homewood. in the city that has seen his literal and metaphorical awakening, that shit is just water under the bridge. a good story that he could share at aa or na and be patted on the back because he found his way to that meeting with the good news that he's clean and headed in a new and positive direction. all of those debts and deeds could have been forgotten. depending on certain statutes of limitation, they may have eventually been forgiven. who knows...hmm...yes, who knows? who could i ask something pertaining to "the law"? who do i know that is in the presence of lawyers every day of his work week and could find me an answer to that question that i ponder about statutes of limitation? ah, fuck. i don't really know anyone like that. (you don't count, donna. the pointedness wouldn't be funny if there was a true answer to my rhetorical question.) not anymore. i digress. running away was no longer an option for brian. for him to have the freedom that a reinstated driver's license might afford him, certain things had to be taken care of. he is here to take care of them. he is way more brave than me.

i make my return to vacation bible school (along with some good, experienced help) tomorrow. (joseph shared the way he saw things with the vbs'ers this morning.) i am excited to be amongst the fold again. it wasn't that long ago that we oversaw massive dodgeball wars followed by the clapping of that day's scripture. it wasn't that long ago, but, boy, was that a long time ago. we stick to the script now, which is probably for the best. we will, to be sure, do what we can to infect the proceedings with some fun that might not come with your regular, run-of-the-mill retelling of the story of jesus and thomas. we'll walk the halls and sneer at those that haven't seen us around these parts in a while. we'll glare at the folks that thought things were better off with us gone. we'll walk with a gait that suggests something more dubious to our presence. something that suggests we are here to begin taking back what is just as rightfully ours as those that we have all but left behind. and we'll refer to ourselves constantly in the third-person plural because a collective is more intimidating than one man. a (figurative) body, even the parts that sometimes make us sick, carries more weight than an individual that may or may not hold a grudge.

actually, i won't do that at all. i'll be nice as i always am. and i'll show the kids why vbs should be a highlight of their summer and not a momentary and unwanted pause between xbox360 and the beach. i'll just kick it with them like in the old days. that should be fun enough.

so long, julie. thanks for the book.