RESTORATION

CHAPTER 1

     Once upon a midnight dreary . . . weak and weary and all that. But it wasn't really midnight. Nor all that dreary. The afternoon sun  sliced through the mini blinds plastering racing stripes on the books scattered across my formica desk. 
     I've been a pastor for twenty three years. I have traditionally given myself until Thursday afternoon to determine exactly what I'm going to preach on Sunday. I had been sitting, rapping my fingers, staring out the window, and trying hard keep my grind to the proverbial nose-stone.
     I like to think I don't really prepare sermons, it's more like they prepare me. It's my job to sit in the Lord's presence and to soak and stew until something comes, which I always hope is the Holy Spirit, though experience has taught me is sometimes just me pretending to be the Holy Spirit. 
     I had been in the the Gospel of Mark lately, and the book of Hebrews a little. I'm always dabbling in Isaiah, and of course the book of Psalms is a perennial go-to. If you can't preach from the Psalms you ain't a preacher. 
     But nothing was coming, and time was running out. Maybe I needed to get up and take a stroll. 
     Before I could roll my chair away from the desk, I heard the creek of floorboards outside my office and a moment later a light but insistent three knocks. I wasn't expecting visitors. 
     "Yes!" I said in my cheeriest pastoral Thursday-afternoon voice, "Come on in!" 
     The door opened slowly enough for a 90-year-old matriarch to dawdle through, but one of the men from my congregation-- not half that age-- came shuffling in. 
     The man's name was Vincent; Vincent Jones. I knew him fairly well, and liked him a lot. He and his wife had been attending our church for about two years, they were good steady folks. He owned an auto garage one block off Main Street, and he and his wife, Jeanine  were expecting their second child. 
     Vincent slouched in, head tilted forward, avoiding eye contact under the brim of his Minnesota Twins ball-cap. He was the only Minnesota Twins fan in the whole congregation-- maybe in the whole town, seeing we lived five or six states away from Minnesota-- but someone-- I think it was an uncle-- got him turned onto the Twins back in the eighties when they had a couple good years. 
     "Hey, Pastor Dan," he drawled, swiping off the TC and slapping it between his hands like an impatient second baseman. I motioned for him to sit down. He slumped into the black Naugahyde chair next to the end table with the ginger jar lamp and a couple booklets with some of my best story-telling sermons. 
      "Well, it's good to see you," I said, eyebrows raised and hands spread in that pastoral gesture every Middle-American knows by heart, "Always good to see you. Everything okay down at the garage?" 
     "Um . . . yeah," he answered, slapping his hat one more time and shifting his eyes left and right. 
     "Wow. He's jumpy, " I thought. 
     "I . . . I wanted to talk to you . . . " he said. 
     This was no friendly chat. I let my pastoral smile sunset down to an expression of concern. I folded my hands and placed them in front of me. "Well, you know I'm here for you . . . anytime. What's on your mind?" 
     That's what I said on the outside. On the inside I said, "Oh, crap. Vincent's having an affair!" In a matter of seconds I pictured him getting kicked out of the church, the congregation hovering around poor, sweet Jeanine and her two fatherless children. Or worse, yet, he's going to tell me he struggles with same-sex attraction. "Dang. I hate the ministry . . ." 
     Vincent took a deep breath, lifted his coon-dog eyes up to mine and blurted out, "Ahm havin' vi-i-i-zhuns!"
     My pastoral facade cracked. My eyebrows went up; my eyebrows went down. My mouth went open; my mouth went shut. I leaned forward with my head slightly tilted and my face scrunched into a question mark. "What did you say?" 
     "I've been having visions," he blurted for the second, but no less inscrutable time. 
     "You mean like seeing stuff?" I asked, flipping my fingers in front of my eyes like an old black and white TV. "You mean seeing pictures?" I reiterated, leaning forward even further. I'm afraid I spit a little when I pronounced the P in pictures. 
     "Yeah!" he punched back. Without spitting. (There was no P in his word.) 
     I pulled on all my years of pastoral know-how, leaned back, put my fingertips together and played them like an accordion. I pushed out my lips, lowered my voice, and said, "Hmm . . . I see." 
     I didn't really see at all, but it felt like the right thing to say at the moment. So I went for a Hail Mary: "And you're wondering if these visions are from God or not?" 
     "Yep," he said looking down at his Twins cap and giving it one more punch. 
     "You been hanging out with Janine's family again?" I knew Janine's sister attended one of the big charismatic churches across town. Charis-wacko is what I usually call it. I've had quite a bit of exposure to that stuff over the years. Vincent looked like a third grader who'd been caught cheating on a quiz. He shrugged and mumbled, "A little, maybe." 
     What I really wanted to do was was launch into some Colossians 2:18. That used to be my favorite verse when dealing with false visions. I had first learned that verse in the King James, where it said "people are puffed up with visions they have NOT seen"--meaning they were lying whenever they claimed to have visions. I was about to preach on that ten or fifteen years ago when I discovered that most of the better translations say "Visions he HAS seen," so I quietly buried the verse under the proverbial pastoral dais. Still-- Everybody knows that people who have visions are either heretics or lunatics . . . or both. 
     I decided to take a circuitous approach. "So you know what the Bible says about having visions don't you?" 
     "Yeah . . ." he looked up to the right and stroked his chin, "Sorta seems like folks in the Bible are having visions . . . like all the time." 
     So much for circuitous. I always hated that word anyway. "Yes, Vincent, but you and I both know we aren't living in Bible times anymore. Things were a lot different back in Bible times."
     For the first time since he entered my office his headshot up, he aimed his eyeballs like laser beams, raised both eyebrows and pronounced, "How exactly do you mean that?" 
     I could tell he wasn't going to take this laying down. Lying down either. 
     "So why don't you tell me what kind of pictures you've been seeing?" 
     Vincent shrugged a little and went back to his sheepish expression. "I don't know . . . all kinds of stuff."
     "What what kinds of stuff?" I boomed, "Dragons? Wizards? Gates of hell?" 
     I felt bad as soon as I said it. A normal person should have been a little perturbed after a jab like that, but Vincent just smiled and said, "Oh no, Pastor Dan, I'm seeing beautiful stuff. I mean REALLY beautiful stuff. Like gardens and throne rooms and mountains and rivers. And angels. The angels are really something. You'd like 'em!" 
     He added quickly, "I mean . . . if you was to see 'em." 
     Now I was the one getting perturbed. "Vincent, Vincent, you know good and well the scripture says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light! Why, most of the great heresies in history started with folks seeing angels. Like Joseph Smith. And goodness knows who-all. You know, Teresa of Avila and people like that."
     "Well-l-l" Vincent drawled, "that's why I come to you. I want you to help me figure out if this is from the Lord or from the devil. Goodness knows I don't want nothin' to do with the devil. Jeanine don't neither." 
     That put me back in the driver's seat. "So you've told Jeanine about this?" 
     "Well, only a little bit," he said, "didn't want to get her worried about me." 
     "That is very wise of you," I crooned in fatherly tones, "I recommend we keep it that way till we get to the bottom of this. So what do you think?" I cleared my throat, then pronounced with great solemnity, "Should we do a Bible study? A clear and intelligent exegesis of the text can keep, um . . . things like this from, um . . . spreading."
     A wrinkle clouded Vincent's face, but it passed quickly and he piped up, "Yes, sir! I likes the Bible. Lots!"
     It always bothers me when people talk about the Bible with improper grammar. Why can't they use proper English when they're talking the word of God? I thought this, but was careful not to let it leak out onto my face. 
     "I'd really like that, Pastor Dan. Next Wednesday okay? Would you mind if we prayed before I go?" 
     He pulled the pastoral rug right out from under my feet. That was supposed to be my line. But I let it slide. "Sure. You wanna go first?" 
     But he had already started. "Dear Jesus," he said-- paused-- then exclaimed, "You sure been mighty good to me. It was great being with you the other day. I've been on cloud nine ever since you told me what you told me. Of course Pastor Dan here's gonna help me figure out if that was really you or not. But in the meantime it sure was great seeing you, and I look forward to seeing you . . . I mean, I mean, um READING about you in the scriptures again. Real soon." He cleared his throat, glanced up at me under one eyebrow and said, "In Jesus name, Amen." 
     According to protocol, I was supposed to give the pastoral benediction to all meetings held in my study. But that prayer set me off. Instead of returning a prayer of my own, I simply said-- loudly and firmly and eyes wide open-- "A-ay-ay-men!"
     Vincent jumped up. "See ya next Wednesday!" he exuded. 
     I hate it when heretics exude. 
     I extended my pastoral hand and shook his. "You bet, Vincent, I look forward to that very much."
     That's what you call a pastoral lie. I knew God would understood.
     Vincent stood to leave. At the same moment my land-line phone rang. I picked it up. A woman's voice shrieked so loudly I pulled the receiver away from my ear. 
     "Pastor Dan! I . . . I . . . I think Baby Rita might be . . . dead!"
     "Oh, no!" I groaned inwardly and outwardly. "I'll be right there! On my way!" I slammed the receiver down and jumped up. There was only one Baby Rita in our congregation-- Dave and Ashlyn's. 
     "I'll come with you," Vincent said.
     Suddenly all that stuff about an exuding heretic didn't matter. "Sure," I said, grabbing my keys, "Come on."