Me, Myself, and

Me, Myself, and

An expert is someone carrying a briefcase who arrives from out of town to tell you you’re wrong. No expert, I know not much about anything but a little about several things. Like everyone, my range of knowing is different from yours. Our knowing overlaps variously yet is not common, e.g., a St. Andrews Bay native, graduate of a theological seminary and the naval war college, yet expert in nothing, I’ve some knowing that others don’t. A bishop laid hands on, mashed me down, and ordained me to wear a goofy white collar that fools the naive into assuming I’m expert. Not so, yet when I wear the fool thing they call me “Father.” Who, me?

Just as when I wore the coat with stripes and the hat with scrambled eggs they called me “Sir.” Don't call me Sir.

It was only me.

Our knowing is different. Our knowing and also our having been. Stirring the knowing and the having been, each is so different that no two match. Different knowing and being.

If I offer a Sunday School class and a Bible Seminar, people come, some illusioned that I'm expert, others confident I will share my different knowing and having been. None see that my different knowing hardly fills a teacup. Barely enough Greek to do minor damage, no Hebrew, and the older I get the more discouraging my attempts at learning, but I say the first line of the shema and recognize אֶהְיֶה as the name God told Moses from the burning bush. 

No prophet, no expert, a St. Andrews Bay native, I am still, always, just and only a local.

My credential? Gone forty years, scripturally enough to return with briefcase, collar, and peripheral knowing, and be called Father instead of Bubba. And Sir.

Oh, it's only you, Tom.

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