Stormy Atlanta
Early morning breakfast at 5:45AM with Margaret – all the frosted mini-wheats and sliced bananas I could eat. Then a ride in Suzie, a rattletrap Corolla, to the Philly airport. On Delta, so I breeze through security and use the extra time to visit airport bookstores and sign copies of The Shack.
Rough ride to Atlanta. There are lots of storms and we have a bumpy landing. I soon find out that we are fortunate as many other flights have been re-routed to other cities. But then, not so fortunate, as our jet to Jackson, MS, was one of those re-routed. My flight is delayed two hours. At one point because of lightning all ground crews were brought indoors, and the airport ground to a standstill as we waited for the storm to pass. Again, I visited bookstores and signed books.
Baxter Kruger, Mississippi’s Trinitarian Incarnational theologian (and my good friend) and another friend, Dirk (who runs the airport) meet the plane as we de-board and lots of hugs. The evening event is a crawfish boil, and Baxter is the mater of this Southern tradition. Following are the pictures of the process, just in case you don’t know how this works.
You start with the crawfish...three bigs of live critters
This is the 'secret' stuff
'base' of the secret stuff BK = Baxter Kruger
The 'cookin' place
Salt Water bath to make the crawfish puke
In a big strainer combine sausage, mushrooms, potatoes, corn and crawfish
Into the boiling roux, instant crossing over
Dr Baxter - trinitarian theologian and crawfish cook - knows how to stir it up
Time to eat
Special skills required - little fire in the mouth
If you would like some ‘enlightening’ reading check out Baxter’s website, www.thegreatdance.org. Worth your time.
Gathering at the Krugers are many friends that I haven’t seen in quite a while, some of them from last year when I was part of a conference here. One is Bill W (no, not the AA founder), and during the evening he tells me a story that I want to pass along.
Bill was asked by a member of his church to visit a relative who was mentally unstable and had tried to kill herself four times in one afternoon. He arrives to find her strapped down in the medical psych ward, her abdomen bandages where she had used a knife to stab herself repeatedly. She then had taken an overdose of pills and smashed the glass she drank them with and used the edge of the broken glass to saw her throat open. Now she lay there strapped to a bed with a tracheotomy and unable to speak. Bill had no idea what to say. He pulled up a chair next to her and this is what he finally said to her:
“You belong to the Father, Son and Spirit. You always have. You always will. He loves you and likes you. You are his beloved child.”
He waited and then said it again and then again. He said it to her about ten times and huge tears began running down her face. Over the next weeks she was transformed. Her family marveled at the changes in her.
The truth of what Bill spoke to her is what each of us is coming to understand. Father, Son and Holy Spirit have loved us from before the foundation of the world, have loved you, have loved me. By intent we were included into the love that dances between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in exchange the Three have climbed into our darkness and blindness to heal us from the inside.
