Written on June 13, 2008

[For the June 22, 2008 lectionary: Matthew 10:24-39]

"LOST LARRY" by Larry Patten

There are two variations of an “elevator game” I enjoy playing . . . a pretend playing. Reality is always different.

First variation. You are stuck in an elevator with one other person. Since this isn’t reality, don’t worry, for a friendly maintenance person will rescue you before anyone needs a bathroom break. In the elevator, you’ll have a chance to learn about each other. Choose your companion. Someone from history? A celebrity? A long-lost college friend? Maybe your choice will be for lustful reasons. Or spiritual.

Second variation. You have a brilliant idea and, in order for that idea to inspire or help humanity, you must market it. Whatever your idea is—the Great American Novel or the cure for the common cold—you have an elevator ride to persuade another to “buy” your spectacular notion. But this isn’t a journey to the top of the Empire State Building. You have seconds, not minutes. What? You think a time limit is unfair? Even if the idea is complicated, if you can’t share the basics quickly and enthusiastically, few will want to listen to the long version.

Door’s closing. Get ready.

Be with the perfect person. Convince another of the perfect idea.

* * * * * *

If you ever receive e-mail from me, you’ll know I value being “lost.” I quote J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Not all who wander are lost” below my e-signature. I’ve never read Tolkien. Yup, sorry, only saw the Lord of the Ring movies (and wished the final one ended twenty minutes earlier). But at this stage of my life, Tolkien’s comment represents a profound faith statement, six words that—before I’d get from the first to the second floor—summarize God’s call to risk new ministry. Unlike many ordained friends and colleagues, I am no longer serving a church. After years in the parish, I am wandering with words, hoping sentences I shape and stories I tell may add to God’s Realm of Love.

How foolish. I am searching anew, trusting God. Lost can be good.

Except in Madera, California . . . a nice little burg fifteen minutes from home. But I don’t know Madera. And there was that one wrong turn followed by another. And I wasn’t in an elevator. It was my car. Stuck between, not floors, but streets with unfamiliar names.

First version: pick one person. For me, with a novel I’ve written—and with my desire to have it placed on a bookstore’s shelf—finding a literary agent is critical. In the publishing industry, an unknown writer needs an advocate. Good news! My writer’s group sponsored a symposium and we invited a well-known literary agent as a guest speaker. I volunteered to drive her from a hotel to a restaurant.

Then I got lost. Madera befuddled me. But how perfect, eh? I was “trapped” with a person who could help me sell my Great American Novel. Yahoo.

Second version. For good or bad, an agent wants the Great American Novel brilliantly described in one or two sentences. Sell me! Tease me to want more! Imagine Herman Melville with a modern agent: my story's all about obsession, a dangerous white whale, and call me Ishmael. Here comes Margaret Mitchell. What will she say, before the elevator stops at the mezzanine level, about Gone with the Wind?

Did I wow the agent? After all, I was lost long enough to ride the Empire State Building elevator ten times. But I have no idea. What I do know is that I prattled on and on about my novel. She wondered about a character’s motivation. I tried to explain and missed a turn. She asked me what other books my novel was like. I gave her examples and ignored the street signs. Lost we became.

Until now, I’ve also ignored Jesus’ brash, challenging comments from Matthew’s tenth chapter: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Losing. Finding.

I have fantasies. Maybe my wanderings, my writing, will be published and encourage others on their faithful, fitful journeys. How presumptuous to believe that. How presumptuous to not believe it.

And yet this is the reality. Even with the right person in the “elevator” and just enough time between “floors” to wow them, following Jesus is always unsettling and never predictable. Based on Matthew’s tenth chapter, Jesus summed up his path with and toward God by saying, “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Whew. The elevator door’s not even closed and I’m already nervous.

We eventually made it to the restaurant. Everyone had a swell time. But, to my writing colleagues (and to one formerly anxious literary agent) I’ll probably be remembered as Lost Larry.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

in Peace,

Larry