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Ward Teacher Development Coordinator |
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Not only aren’t Church positions arranged in career ladders, but holding a job once doesn’t ensure that you won’t get the same one again. The Lord is known for many kinds of mercy, perhaps manifested not least in His well-documented willingness to grant us second chances.
More than a quarter century earlier, I’d been Billerica Ward Teacher Development Director, or whatever they called it then. And it appears that the Lord and/or the bishop decided I was having too much fun, after four years of running the choir. It certainly wasn’t because I asked to be released. But I seem to have responded to the transition more nearly correctly, this time: private tears, but no tantrums, as far as I recall. As Arlington Ward Teacher Development Coordinator, I was an ex officio shirttail member of the bishop’s Ward Council, with every expectation of serving my time and, quoth he hopefully, helping some teacher in the ward organization to do his job better—I do hold a Harvard doctorate in education, after all. But the Lord had other ideas, and before the drizzly weather cleared, He and Granny Hepzibah turned my world upside down. I’ve already told the story* in these pages. Indeed, it was the mysterious and disruptive events of 1998 and 1999 (now two decades ago) that motivated this project of personal and family history. I met Granny Hepzibah and her family, pushed entertainment** pretty much totally out of my daily agenda, and was transformed nearly instantaneously into a fanatic and soon-to-be full-time researcher and chronicler of my family history. Through the intervening decades, I’ve found our story to be far more fascinating than anything the entertainment industry emits, and I’ve come to pity wholeheartedly anybody who remains capable of boredom.*** *Please, I urge you, take a few minutes and read it. It’s only five pages long, snuggled into the segment of this account which attempts to report on the events of the year 1999. **When I called the Dish folks to request that they disconnect (and cease billing us for) the 300 or so entertainment feeds they’d been supplying (and we’d been paying for but not bothering to watch), the nice young lady probed to learn which competitor’s service had lured us away. When I replied that none had, she asked, “But what are you going to watch?” ***My sainted Mammy had no patience for children’s complaints of boredom. She always said that any intelligent person could fill his memory with great literature and call it back up as needed. And anybody with a grain of faith can always pray. |
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