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.