I
went to the Cops and Clergy breakfast again yesterday. I’m beginning to anticipate that experience
once a month. This time I sat at a table
with a police officer, a police chaplain who is also a local rabbi, a new
pastor from a Presbyterian Church, and another police chaplain from the
Methodist Church. The new pastor seemed
fascinated by what was happening around her and had all sorts of
questions. The rabbi thought the event
had been taking place for about a year.
The police officer said it had been much longer than that, but the
earlier version had been rather sporadic.
She really wanted to know if the group ever took any specific action on
things like human trafficking and other social issues. Since my understanding of the group’s purpose
was simply to put police officers and clergy together in a social atmosphere with
no other agenda, political or otherwise, I was interested to hear the response
as well. The officer handled it quite
well. He explained that the group meets
at a different church site every month.
At the meeting if that church, or any other represented wanted to
highlight a ministry they were involved in, it was perfectly fine, in fact
encouraged, as a matter of information sharing.
That seemed to satisfy her curiosity, so we moved on to talking about
things like upcoming Citizens’ Police Academy classes (The officer was on the dive team) and the Night Watch Cops and Clergy
breakfasts that have started. They meet once
a month as well, only at 5 a.m. when the night watch is going off shift. My favorite new contact this month, however,
was one guy who was dressed in a polo shirt and jeans and kept kind of to
himself. I managed to introduce myself
to him at one point, but all he told me was his name. At our general announcement time, though, we
were each asked to share who we were and what our role was. In his quiet, unassuming way (He never even
stood up), he said his name, then added, “I’m with Homeland Security.” Wow. A
Fed in our midst. I so wanted to ask him
if he knew Cabe Gallow. (Nerd Alert:
Cabe Gallow is a character on the new TV series, Scorpion. We have been watching it since the beginning).
I
got home in time to accompany Chris to WalMart for our monthly BIG grocery
shopping trip (Read here, “Ouch”). This is the time when we get things like the
canned goods you can buy four at a time for about a quarter cheaper (Not one fourth off, mind you. I mean literally a quarter, as in twenty five
cents. But hey, it all adds up. Not as fast as the rest of the bill, but we’ll
take every penny we can get). We stopped
and talked briefly to one of the local pastors.
About the only time we see her is in WalMart. She agreed that WalMart is
the place to go to do some people watching.
Our favorite watchee yesterday?
Probably the fellow with the really thick backwoods accent. Sounded like he would be a lot of fun to
spend some time with. We didn’t stalk
him, though (Confession … I probably
would have altered my basket course a bit if I had been alone, just to listen
to him talk some more. Makes me feel
like I’m not the only strange one walking around. People are absolutely awesome).
Galatians
5:16 says, “So I say, live by the Spirit,
and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”
Father,
thank you for the awesome, weird, funny, beautiful people you create. And thanks for the venue where we can come
into contact with each other. Amen.
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