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Cyber Column by John Duncan: Life of a pastor
Posted: 11/11/05
CYBER COLUMN:
Life of a pastorBy John Duncan
I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, musing with laughter over the life of a pastor. The poet Langston Hughes has a line in one of his poems about the “circus of civilization.” I, from time to time, refer to myself as the ringmaster of the circus. As a pastor, I find myself in situations that God must deem painful, laughable or, at the least, enjoyable.
John Duncan My mind drifts to the past—one July day years ago, when a teenager fell through the roof of a boat dock and splashed in the water, and his body lodged beneath a rock, and he drowned. The sadness of his mother holding him in the ambulance still haunts my memory. The blood and the grief and the collision of “shoulda, coulda, woulda,” or at worst, “if only I had … .” In grief, people think of everything that might have changed the situation that led to death. The horror of the boy’s death, the wailing of the mother, and the flashing red light of the ambulance still reverberate in my mind.
11/11/2005 - By John Rutledge
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