The Chain

My suckery in real time is legion.  To the point of ad nauseam on this here (and over there) BLOG.  Which is why it should come as no surprise to regular BLOG readers that the connection in this POST wasn't self evident to aboynamedstu.  Captain Obvious, that's me, sans a marker, took me nearly a week to connect the dots.

To bring those who haven't read RAPTURE up to speed let me reiterate that as a kid I was horrified of a handful of things, two of which were tornadoes and religion. 

I documented my fear of religion in the early day of the Team Tinsley BLOG.  February 15, 2005 to be exact.  Reading it nearly seven years into the Buck Rogers future is a trip, considering how far I've come, and will go, this July.

I'm a Youth Counselor at church these days.  Something I would have never believed I'd become when the aboynamedstu v37 was writing FEAR FACTOR. 

Yet here I am today, on average giving 12 hours a month of my time, and self, to the youth of my church.  And in a twist of fate I can truly appreciate, preparing for my first Mission Trip ever, to Joplin, MO to help with the ongoing recovery from the devastating tornadoes of May 2011.

I tried to attend church as a youth.  Many of my friends were swept up in a religious fervor that rocked my small town.  Only problem was that many of these places of worship subscribed to a very literalistic kind of religion.  One that horrified me with all the hellfire and brimstone, Jesus is coming soon, and pissed, rhetoric.  Even so, kids, including me, will go a long way to fit in and be accepted and I pushed my fear aside and considered going on a Mission Trip with a good friend of mine who attended our town's large Assembly of God.  That is until they asked us, as a sign of our commitment, to burn our rock-n-roll records.  I could come on their trip, or so they said, but first I'd have to throw my copy of Highway to Hell by AC/DC, and everything else they considered satanic and/or dangerous onto a bonfire in their parking lot.

Needless to say, I didn't go on that Mission Trip.  Or future ones.  I gave up on the brand of religion I saw offered in my home town, which on hindsight wasn't really fair, but it was, what it is, or so they say.

Flash forward thirty odd years into the Buck Rogers future and aboynamedstu v44, God willing, will go on his first ever Mission Trip as part of an actual Youth Group.  And out of five locations the seniors in the group could have selected (and not what the Director or the Counselors wanted them to select for logistical and program reasons,) they chose, the tornado ravaged city of Joplin.  A city that is a few hours from where aboynamedstu spent most of his youth terrified of tornadoes and religion.

Talk about a synchronistic high-five.  One that could only be made better if I spot Big Foot on the trip.

Until I BLOG again...Damn the dark, damn the light.