Larry's Petition is for the Birds in Several Ways

It's a Monday morning in Riley's Diner. Me and several deacons from Unity First always get together for breakfast on Mondays and Thursdays. I'm normally the first one here. It gives me time to chat with the people who work here, like Millie, who makes these heavenly muffins, and Riley, who owns the place, and Jake-O, this young fellow who's a short-order cook for Riley, and Dee, one of the waitresses, a feisty gal that I'll tell you more about next time.

Anyways, I'm hoping Larry's gonna be the first one here because I really gotta talk to the guy. He's one of our younger deacons, only in his forties, and can get angry -- he calls it righteously indignant -- over the craziest things. Anyone that doesn't agree with him has gotta radical liberal agenda. That's what he gets from listening to too much Bill O'Reilly.

The thing is, after Unity First's morning worship service, I go out to my car and spot this flier on the windshield. It's from Larry. He's rustling up signatures for another petition drive. As if the last one wasn't embarrassing enough. Anyways, it turns out Larry's the first one to show this morning. He joins me at the same two tables we always push together. I don't know how soon before the other guys'll start to wander in so I don't want to pussyfoot around.

I pull the flier, folded up, from my shirt pocket and hold it up for his inspection. "Mind telling me about this petition drive you got going?"

"You gonna sign it?" he asks, waving over to Dee to bring him a cup of coffee. You can't miss Dee. She's got this big head of strawberry red hair. From a distance, you'd swear her head was on fire. She looks like a chubby Olympic torch.

"Depends," I tell him. "You remember the other ones, don't you? You sure the guys at your work aren't yanking your chain again?"

"This one's different."

"They made up that story about someone planning to open a tavern with an all-night daycare center. Instead of thinking about it, you went to the next city council meeting to raise a stink. And it ended up in the paper."

"I checked it out myself this time," Larry said as Dee filled up his coffee mug.

"Like the time you started that petition drive to complain about the movie theater?" I held my cup out to Dee for a freshening-up and asked her to bring over some more cream packets. You can never have too much cream.

"Honest mistake. That's all," Larry said. "I thought they was gonna start showing those dirty sex movies."

"Until you found out 'X-Men' wasn't a dirty movie."

"I thought it was the rating. You can't be too careful with those Hollywood liberals forcing their values on us. Godless heathens."

I picked up Larry's flier and waved it at him again. "Tell me what this one's all about."

"The city council's gonna vote on putting up one of them wildlife sanctuaries on the south side of town. They say they're actually proud of it. Frankly, Unity's no place for these folks to feel free and come flaunt their wild ways."

"Larry, I don't think this wildlife sanctuary is what you're thinking. It's this place for all kinds of weird birds."

"Those pervs are some kind of weird, all right," Larry said. He ripped the tops off a couple of sugar packets and poured the contents into his coffee. "And not only that. They say it's a place for children. Family friendly, they're saying. Can you imagine? We gotta protect our kids."

"When I say weird birds, I'm talking about fowl."

"It is foul, ain't it?" He's stirring his teaspoon so hard I'm thinking he's gonna break the coffee cup. "Makes me wanna puke."

"Little birdies, Larry. I'm talking about birdies. With wings." To make my point, I start flapping my arms up and down. Dee gives me a strange look as she's carrying an order to Coop, this bearded trucker guy who pops in every week or so when his route allows. "This wildlife sanctuary is supposed to be a place for a bunch of them rare birds."

Larry starts to turn pale. The truth is finally sinking in.

"Larry, your heart's in the right place, but you just can't believe the first thing you hear or read. You gotta check out rumors and such talk. Use the mind God's given you. Lots of people say and believe things without finding out the facts." I'm getting through to Larry, but I can't help feeling sorry for the guy.

"Don't worry about it. Most of the folks at Unity are pretty good-natured. They aren't gonna make fun of you."

"I'm not so worried about that," Larry said. He pulls the petition out of his back pocket. "I just don't know what I'm gonna do with these 142 signatures."
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Some Things Just Ain't Worth Fighting Over

This is my first time doing one of these blogs so here goes. It was a couple days back when I’m enjoying my steak and eggs at Riley’s Diner. So far at the table, it’s just me and Larry, he’s one of the younger deacons at Unity First. The other deacons ain’t got here yet. Anyways, Larry breaks the news to me.

“Well, I’ll be. Brother Wright’s here, Carl.” Just when I thought nothing was gonna ruin my breakfast.

Brother Wright, now he’s the assistant pastor at Unity First. Been there for five years, which is sort of a miracle. For some reason, most of our senior pastors – you know, I don’t know why we call them that cuz nearly all of those boys have been half my age. Anyways, they don’t last more than a year. That’s when they announce from the pulpit that God has called them somewhere’s else – anywhere. God always seems to call these boys to larger churches with bigger paychecks. Just once, I’d like to see one of them say that maybe God’s called them to, I don’t know, some dirt-poor country church where a handful of old folks need some ministering. Or maybe some place in a big city helping people who don’t know where their next meal’s coming from. God’s plan for these kind of preachers always seems to be an upwardly mobile career path. Go figure.

Anyways, back to Brother Wright. He ain’t a bad guy. He’s done a lot of good at the church. He really cares about our folks. Made them part of his life. My big problem with this fellow is he’s one of those types that act like he’s never made a mistake. There’s a pretty popular phrase whispered in the hallways around our church. “Brother Wright. Never wrong.”

Me and Larry give Brother Wright a friendly wave while he makes his way up to the counter for a juice and one of Millie’s fresh-baked muffins. That’s one of the things you can count on in our little town of Unity. We’re friendly folks, whether we want to be or not.

When Brother Wright was called … That’s a preacher word for “hired” cuz a lot of preachers don’t like to think they work for the church, just God. That way when they say God told them to do such-and-such, a lot of church folk feel like they can’t question it cuz they’d be arguing with God. I ain’t never been one of those folks. Sorry, I’m drifting off course. Anyways, when Brother Wright was called to Unity First, we brought him on as minister of music, youth, senior citizens, education, outreach and maintenance. All the stuff our pastor don’t wanna do. Brother Wright still does all these things since we made him assistant pastor. We just needed to make it easier to read his business cards.

Now here’s something that’ll give you an idea of how hard-headed Brother Wright can get. When we made him assistant pastor, he insisted at the business meeting – that’s when folks at Unity First get together once a month to vent their frustrations – that he needs to be called associate pastor. Or better yet, executive pastor, which is what a lot of them bigger churches are doing. Either title, Brother Wright tells us, is more consistent with New Testament teaching. Unfortunately for Brother Wright, the voting church members weren’t swayed by his hermeneutics. Fact was he had to spend 15 minutes explaining to us what hermeneutics meant. To me, it sounded kinda communist.

Brother Wright’s working his way over to our table cuz he can’t just wave back at us. He’s gotta one-up us, you know, and make some small talk. “Brother Carl,” he tells me with a smile that looks like it don’t belong on his face. “What a surprise to see you and Larry here.” He’s lying, of course, cuz he knows me and four or five other deacons meet here every Monday and Thursday for breakfast. But it’s just a little lie, not one of the big lies, like “I didn’t have sex with that woman” or “Iraq’s got them weapons of mass destruction.” God kinda tolerates little lies cuz it’s so popular in churches. If He did deal with them, half our churches would be empty. And if He dealt with gossip, that would take care of the rest of them.

It’s about this time that Brother Wright looks at the steak and eggs on my plate. “I’ve been doing an in-depth study in the Word, Brother Carl.” Here it comes. Whenever Brother Wright shares his insights from the Bible, it involves how the listener ain’t right with God. “It was God’s will for all of us to be vegetarians. It wasn’t till Adam sacrificially followed Eve into sin and was ejected from the garden that God had created for him, that mankind began to eat meat. Clearly, a byproduct of sin’s entrance into the world.”

I looked at Brother Wright’s smile for a moment. I pushed my plate away from me. “Maybe you’re right.”

This was more than Larry could handle. The boy’s been known to fly off the handle now and then. He misses those days of the Old Testament when God would get real good and angry and do a lot of smiting. It’s not that he don’t like the New Testament. He does. He just thinks God mellowed out a little too much by that time. “I never heard something so foolish. It don’t say anywhere in the Bible that we can’t have a good hamburger.”

“Just listen to the man, Larry. Maybe he’s right.”

Brother Wright’s smile, hard to believe, got even bigger. “Thank you, Brother Carl. I’m only the messenger. My calling is to tell you what God has shown me in His Word. I don’t expect everyone to understand the nuances involved in rightly translating the Word. It’s up to you, Brother Larry, to decide whether you obey God or not.”

“That’s mighty Christian of you,” I said. And with that Brother Wright made his way out of the diner. Watching him go, I could feel Larry’s glare burning into the back of my skull.

“You’re not going to tell me, Carl, that you buy that manure for one minute.”

“You gotta know what battles are worth your trouble,” I told Larry. “Sometimes, you gotta tell someone that maybe he’s right cuz it ain’t worth all the air you’re going to waste on an argument that don’t matter.”

“If you let him take an inch now, next thing you know he’s gonna have the church serving nothing but fruits and vegetables at all the potlucks. He’ll have the bacon removed from the seven-layer salads. Who wants a six-layer salad? Where’s it all gonna end? Someone’s gotta stand up to that kinda arrogance.”

“Larry,” I said as I pulled my plate closer and dragged a piece of steak through a yolk puddle. “Maybe you’re right.”

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