What's Behind Door #2

If It's not too fattening, immoral or illegal give it a try. And pay more attention to smart versus stupid than legal versus illegal!

Then Life And Times Of Brian Waddington

Go on, you know you want to choose me

Wondering what's behind door # 2 has been a big part of my life. Taxi driver, pilot, deck hand, light house keeper, pastor, Lepled, semi professional student, lumber mill worker, dish washer and one or two other career choices that may have slipped my mind have occupied my time and energies at various times of my life.  Then there were the countless rides, drives, steams and flights to see what was over the hill and far away. Simple fact is that I just enjoy trying or finding something new.

I was going to take this back to when I got my commercial pilots license. The problem is that I can't remember the year. I know I got one and I can remember flying down to Oregon with Rick (and the hangover). I just can't remember the years or the decade when I was flying. So let's move into a time I might remember. I say might because I'm never all that sure of my memories. 

Hours later and I still don't remember the year I got my pilots license. Welcome to the reality of Dementia in its early stages. Now if I can just remember something else  from my life that will make the title of this post make sense.

Okay lets try Plan B.

Nope that's not going to work. 

Time for Plan C. (warning numbers, dates and facts my be off do to memory malfunction. But I'm reasonably sure the basic story is truthful)

I had joined the Thomas Crosby V. as a pagan deck hand. I left it as the first Intended Candidate for the Ministry in over one hundred years of marine ministry on Canada's west coast. While not exactly earth shattering it was life changing.

My first wife ( I've been married twice) thought she had found a wild colonial boy to take her away from small town, small church Canada. She ended up married to a man on the road to ordination in the United Church Of Canada. Then the darnedest thing happened. 

I remembered how much I loathed city life. As both Simon Fraser University and the Vancouver School of Theology were located in Greater Vancouver this was not a good thing to remember. 

I started asking around about possible lay ministry positions. I was gambling that there were small semi isolated communities that would be willing to take a semi trained pastor over no pastor. 

At the same time that I started looking for a lay ministry position the Church started looking for someone to use as yeast for a Native Ministry program. 

The reality was simple. Placing fully ordained ministers who weren't native in native villages rarely worked. It would take at least three to five years for the best of the ordained ministers to begin to get effective and then most of them would transfer out to a bigger richer mainstream church. This continuous shuffling  did little to help the villages. So the United church decided to setup a parallel program for full ordination. A program that wouldn't leave the villages high and dry.

A village would pick one of their own for training. While living in their village and doing lay ministry they would do correspondence courses to bring their lay academic work up to snuff and summer school at the Vancouver School of Theology to bring their theological training in line with a Master of Divinity program. When the lay minister had enough credits in both lay and theological education plus the approval of their village and the greater church they would be ordained. 

The problem was that there were few native men or women even remotely qualified to enter this program.. So when village A ( I'm disguising the real name to protect the innocent) went looking for a new minister the greater church had all of the infrastructure but no living breathing body to put into the new program. So the greater church, in pure desperation took notice of yours truly.

I had spent almost four years as a lighthouse keeper and multiple years as a deck hand on the Crosby. I had a good understanding of the north coast and its problems and had developed a decent reputation in the villages. Aside from my unfortunate status as a white man I was qualified to be the yeast. They asked me if I would be interested and I jumped at the chance.

Then the greater church went to the village that was looking for a new minister and asked them if they would take me in and train me to be their village pastor. Funnily enough Marge cast the deciding vote in my favor because she had gotten me mixed up with the engineer of the Crosby. He sang, played the flute and guitar as well as baking a mean cinnamon roll. I couldn't sing or play any instrument. But I was a fair hand in the kitchen. Truth be told I sang so badly that when it came time to sing at funerals (a very big deal in the village) The choir member closest to the pulpit had the job off turning off my microphone.

I couldn't sing but I could listen, learn, laugh and cry with the people. They took to treating me like a rather large child that had had their education sadly neglected. Elders, matriarchs, chiefs, and many others in the village took the time and energy to train me up as a village pastor. I was given the old but honored title of Village Lepled. The village gained pride and respect. My family and I were adopted and named in the feast hall. It was a good time for one and all.   

And it all came about because neither I nor the village were too scared to pick door number two. 

Brian