Preacher's kid, part two

I know, I know, I know, I know. Dear ones, I've been told I came off as a bit irreverent in that last post. So before my parents have a heart attack, let me get to the moral of this little train of thought.

Here you go: The beauty of being a preacher's kid is that you get to see the cloak of saintliness come off.

What I mean by that is that after you log enough hours in the church sanctuary running around in shorts and a T-shirt and not your Sunday best, the place becomes more human. Still holy, sure, but holy in a way different than most people think about it. Holiness becomes less about pomp and circumstance and following rules, and more about the shine you see off the people in your community that you know and love.

See, you realize early on that you don't have a preacher. You have a father (in my case, a wonderful father). A father who just happens to stand in the pulpit on a weekly basis. Go home and let him light into you for those curse words you said on the school bus and you'll see -- he's just as human as the next guy.

If your dad's the preacher, your phone is the one folks call whenever things go wrong. It rings for births and baptisms and weddings, yes, but also deaths and divorces and addiction. Get woken up enough in the middle of the night for that kind of stuff and you begin to see that nobody's perfect. You see folks at their very best and their very worse, and you see grown-ups forget pretense and get real.

You see people lean on each other in a way that -- I think -- defines true community.

All this is something I try to point to in "Always Be Home." What I'm hoping to say there is that -- despite all the bullshit and politics that surrounds it -- the church still offers something valuable. And worthwhile. And, unfortunately, altogether rare.

Sometimes you have to shove aside all the institutional rigamarole to get to it, but trust me. It's there.

Preacher's kid, part one

I've heard that some of you are wondering what all this bit about me being a preacher's kid is about.

I guess I'd better explain.

I was about a year old when my father, then an engineer, decided he was called to preach. My family moved from Virginia to Kentucky so he could go to seminary. Life after that was always in transition as Dad got recruited from church to church to church.

My transformation -- from kid to preacher's kid -- was too early on to remember. But, rest assured, it was mysterious. P.K.s (what we call ourselves) are the flesh and blood of men of God, after all. So somehow, to my observers, I became a saint.

Church folks assumed I had a photographic memory of each and every Bible verse (um, no). It was as if my brother J.D. and I had unknowingly been tapped by a magic wand that made us have no desire to sin (clearly, not he case). Each and every Sunday my halo was on display, and I sure as hell had to work hard to keep off the tarnish.

If angel wings have their benefits, they were these: Spending enough time on church grounds to conduct plenty of mischief in the graveyard out back. Special weekday permission to finger the keys on the big organ. Knowing during Communion that you'd get to drink whatever grape juice was left over. (Grape juice, you ask? Yep, teetotaling Southern Baptists seem to think Mr. Welch has been around since Biblical times.)

The thing about being a preacher's kid is that the expections to perform -- and perform well -- are mind-blowing. It's excellent training ground for a career in the music business, actually. I couldn't help but be tapped to get up to sing and play, especially on the Sundays other musicians couldn't be there. I developed a stage smile so angelic that St. Peter himself would have thought I did no wrong.

Life as a preacher's kid is like growing up in a zoo, or maybe a scenic wildlife preserve. You're always on display. Your whole life becomes a staged environment.

To be continued in Part 2.