A captivating post from my agnostic brother Joshua’s MySpace page (private, must friend).

pastor tim of new hope

I backed my truck up neatly into a space on the lawn of Shrewsbury Christian Academy, where orientation was about to begin for my sons as they start their first year in school. And I would see my estranged ex wife in awkward moments.

I had changed out of my work clothes in some gravel lot on the side of the road. I had eaten and drank at a local dive. I was dressed for the city, out of style in this working class community where taste is only a sign of the queer.

Smoking my pipe as I parked the car, setting it down in the cup holder beside the stick shift before I turned the key loose of its hole, the classical music silenced, I opened the door and walked away in strange reddish uncomfortable zip up feminine cowboy boots.

….

I returned to my truck to find a business card tucked into the window. “New Hope” a local church I guess. Someone wrote on the back: “call me and we’ll have a cigar- my treat”. I guess he saw me smoking my pipe. A sign of a fellow tobacco afficianado I guess.

But I won’t call.

I’d love to smoke a free cigar. Even to drive forty five minutes north into podunk to smoke it…. but I don’t want to talk. Don’t want dig up my past to make for common ground with a religious man I would have loved to know in a time in my past. I don’t want to lead him to believe that I need jesus. I don’t want to be nice and polite and speak in his language, and know what he thinks I should want. What he thinks I really need but can’t see. I’ve already seen your precious Jesus. I’ve been baptized. Twice. I’ve been born again. I’ve known the joy of seeing grace in a new light. I’ve read your book. I’ve prayed your sincere prayer, and I left a jaded man worse for the wear.

carry on my wayward son,
there’s no peace when you are done
only deeper regrets than you knew before
deeper emptiness from that withered shallow whore.