Young, handsome, athletic,
he cut quite the figure
in the pulpit,

a no-fool-around kind of
a guy (stern) who once
expelled me from

catechism class, but he
helped my father
make confession

of faith and if he was good
enough for my father,
he was good enough

for me, so I, too, made
confession of faith
and one time

preached on Youth
Sunday and he
told me I

had the gift for ministry.
A few years later,
after my father

had died tragically, the
pastor became a prof.
at the seminary

I attended as a student and
he barely acknowledged
my existence.

The only way I knew he knew
I was alive was when he
stopped me abruptly

in the hall to notify me
that I had misspelled
words in an essay

I wrote for the literary pub-
lication. I should have
been flattered that

he read it. Ah, pre-spellcheck.
It was as if we had no
history. My pastor,

one of the big reasons I went
into the ministry, my
childhood idol

had feet of clay. Looking back
in gratitude on forty-
five years of

ordained ministry, I see the
mysterious wonders that
God performs,

in spite of our feet of clay.