I’d been in a closet working my ears for two hours, talking some then listening for what God wanted from me. No more resisting. No more cussing. After a half hour I accepted that I couldn’t stay to serve my little beach flock.

We like to say God chooses the weak to do his work so God’s glory will shine through; we say “look how he chose stammering Moses to be his spokesperson. But the fact is Moses was an extraordinary man; Moses knew it and God knew it. That’s the real reason he was chosen. God’s like the Godfather that way, gifts are given, something is expected. “… from each according to ability,” Marx said. That’s Karl of course, not Groucho, and he stole it from a Frenchman, but it’s something like what God said to me in my closet that September morning. So let’s kill the modesty; I knew I wasn’t ordinary. I had been given a gift, and God brushed aside my attempt to deny it in the name of humility. “You don’t get off that easy,” God told me. “You’re not bad as a pastor, but right now I’m in need of a good prophet.”

We don’t think much anymore about God having prophets and maybe that’s because no one wants the job. Over the years, God’s prophets haven’t fared that well: Moses denied the promised land, Joseph tossed in a pit, Daniel thrown in the lions’ den, Elijah starving in the wilderness, Jeremiah again with the pit routine, John the Baptist relieved of his head, and, of course, Jesus -- need I say more? Is it any wonder Jonah tried to run? Being a prophet is a rough business. Most any clergyperson in their right mind would choose a little church on the village square over being a prophet. But that’s the thing about being a prophet, you don’t choose it, God chooses you. You can say yes, or you can run and take a chance on being swallowed up by a whale.

That was my first hour in the closet -- finding out who God thinks I am. The second told me what I should do. It came to me pretty quickly that both McCarthy and Ms. Collins brought schemes that carried God’s blessing. It would be cynical to think otherwise, although I wasn’t sure Ms. Collins’ goals matched mine. But God has a strong record of making mixed motives work together for good. The trouble was, both plans had been tried before and failed. Beau had the Noah model: start with a small group cured of the culture’s faults and spread out from there. We know how well that worked in Noah’s time. Before long we were back in the same old mess. Ms. Collins on the other hand planned to trumpet my voice to as many people as possible and change them where they stand. We saw how that worked for Billy Graham. For all the good he did, during his time America became more and more grasping, shallow and militant. So many walk around wounded it’s a wonder we don’t all bleed to death. All Billy could do was apply a temporary salve. And despite all the pain that should have driven people to seek healing, the church kept shrinking. Maybe Billy’s problem was he promised too much grace and demanded too little change on the back end. And maybe now, early in the new century, it’s too late for change; maybe God wants me to help fight a war of attrition and preserve a little toehold until end times. Unfortunately, I’ve never believed in the end times drama of tribulations and raptures and second comings of Christ in bodily form.

So I continued to listen. When the Spirit quit speaking, I exercised. I had just enough space in my closet to stretch out and do push-ups. I did a set of fifty, counted to ten, and started again. At forty my arms began to give out. Finally I was done in. I stood and began to bounce on my toes, as if I was jumping rope. I reached two hundred with my calves on fire. When I’d drained away all my strength, I asked God, “What’s it going to be?” The answer came back, “You can do both son.”

Let’s be honest, God has only one message and it’s radical discipleship. Anything less is a counterfeit compromise. If you’re going to speak for God, you either speak that message or speak falsely. Beau McCarthy’s ideal village was as real as rich dirt and ripe tomatoes, a radically concrete chance to escape slavery to Wall Street and Madison Avenue, and Krissy Collins’ stadium tour was an opportunity to parade that possibility in front of the masses, to tell the people, “You don’t have to be a puppet; you can choose how you will live.” I was no fool in those days, I knew from the start that most who heard the word would be like seeds that sprout and shoot toward the sun, but without roots are choked out by the world’s promise of wealth and security. God’s path has always been for the few; anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. If every preacher in America stood up and said from now on we really are going to follow Jesus, the pews would be empty and Sunday morning tee times at the country club would be harder to get. But the prophet’s job is to issue the call; if few are chosen that’s just the way it is. The prophet hopes God’s share can be boosted a fraction, but if God says help me strip these people down to a remnant, you do that too.

Did I say, I think I did, that as a boy I knew already I’d be a pastor like my father before me? Is that the same as knowing your purpose in life? I thought it was, but now I see it was a stop on my journey. After the Sagan incident and my falling out with the church, I moved through the weeks without a plan, riding whatever waves came my way, trying to do as much good for as many as I possibly could, not looking back or forward. But day by day, more and more I started feeling something new had a hold on me, sensing inside, like Tony sings in West Side Story, “something’s coming I don’t know what it is but it is gonna be great …” If it looked then like I knew what I was doing, that was just faith and instinct working. But now in my closet my true purpose arrived like day finally turned to night for Tony. Now the future was just around the corner. Time to catch the moon, do or die. … Like I said, being a prophet can be a rough business.

A phone call from Ms. Collins finally brought me out.

“This Sunday?” I said into the phone.

“Don’t you hold your gatherings every Sunday?” she said.

“Yes, we do. But this will be different. We need time to--”

“No. We want it natural. We want it to be just like every Sunday. We don’t want you to change anything,” she said.

“But if this is going to be the kickoff to the tour we talked about, I can’t be ready to go on the road next week.”

“All we want from this Sunday is footage to cut together into a promo, and to use in the intro to your tour appearances.”

“You mean like on a night when we’d be live at an arena or stadium, people watching on TV would see me leading Sunday’s gathering as part of the opening?”

“To capture your original magic. Along with theme music … maybe still shots of you baptizing deputy Jericho, footage of you on my show, even comments from religious or political leaders on the Dietrich phenomenon. We’re working out the details. The idea is to tell the audience they’re about to see something like they’ve never seen before.”

“Don’t go making my britches so big I can’t fill them.”

She laughed. “That’s a pretty colloquial saying. You have all kinds of sides it seems.”

“I pick up that kind of thing from my friend John-John.”

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you about him. I‘m not sure he should be part of the team.”

“Why not?”

“My people tell me he has legal problems. Criminal problems, no less. You think you have enemies there in Florida? Once you’re in the national spotlight everything gets scrutinized -- not just you but everyone in your camp.”

“Is he a deal breaker for you?” I asked. “Because he is for me. I think he’ll be cleared, but even if he isn’t, I’m in the forgiveness business.”

“OK, OK,” she said. “We’ll work around it. Our production crew will be in town Saturday by noon. I’m flying in Saturday night. I’ll call you when I get there.”

I hadn’t heard back from John-John since telling him of attorney Meriweather’s news. I could see him through the screen door of his duplex, slumped in his chair with the blinds pulled and a beer in his hand. He didn’t look depressed, just lost in thought, but I’d never seen him so buried in himself. I quietly let myself in, took a seat and waited at least a minute before he spoke.

“I’m really gonna miss this little town,” he said.

What was that supposed to mean? Was he talking about going back to prison?

“No, padre,” he said. “I told you I’d never go back there, and I won’t. No matter what.”

“What did the lawyer -- Meriweather -- what did she have to say?”

“Two years for involuntary manslaughter.”

“That’s the state’s offer?”

“Yep.”

“But you weren’t driving,” I said. “Why not fight it.”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered padre. Besides, you can be right and still end up bein’ wrong -- ’specially when you’re an ex-con.”

I didn’t know what to say, still unsure what he was thinking. We had agreed from the start on John-John’s account of what happened that night, so I wasn’t asking for a new version of the story. I perched by his right knee on the arm of his old couch. “What is Meriweather telling you? Does she want you to take their offer?”

“She didn’t really say. Her fee goes up if we go to court--”

“--to hell with her fee; don’t worry about that!”

“She thinks we could lose if we roll the dice. Five years maybe.”

“And so you ... do what?”

John-John looked left and right like someone might hear him even though we were alone. He leaned in close, our faces just a foot apart. “Look padre, I know I can trust you 100 percent, but I don’t want to stick you in the middle by telling you stuff.”

“You can tell me anything. It’s safe with me.”

“Like I told you, I can’t go back to jail. I’m going to Canada with Beau, only this time I won’t turn back at the bridge.”

“You don’t think they’ll look for you there?”

“Maybe not, it’s not the crime of the century, but if they do, they won’t find me. They’d have to look for a Robert Nelson Breedlove.”

“Who is that?”

“Me, my new identity. I know a guy who handles these kinda things. Top quality paper. He fixed me up.”

“I see you’ve been growing your hair out. I never even knew you had hair.”

“Oh yea, I just kept it shaved down.”

“I see.”

“Listen padre, I’m real sorry to dump all this on you an’ muddy up the waters. I know you’re tryin’ to do something pure and right, and now I gotta throw this … equivocal thing in the mix.”

“Equivocal?”

“Yea, does it surprise you I know words like that? I know lots of big words; I just don’t use ’em ’cause I don’t want people thinking I’m tryin’ to act smarter than them.”

“Will you have this new identity by the time you cross the border?”

“I have it now. Passport and everything. I started working on getting the documents right after Mary died. When you’re an ex-con and someone dies around you … if you’re smart you expect the worst.”

A month or two earlier, this might have posed a moral conflict for me, but now I didn’t question it at all. Why would I betray a friend of the deceased -- one of Mary’s best friends -- to people who cared nothing about her? And do it in the name of justice or morality? It’s a no brainer. I was there that night. I knew it was her idea that we drive across the county. This was just bad luck and a personal matter between the three of us. I was certain she wouldn’t want John-John to pay for her drunken insistence on visiting her husband’s grave.

“When do you plan to leave for Canada?”

“Any day now,” he said. “McCarthy’s been waiting for you to tell him if you‘re in or out. You know he’s taking Becky and the boy with him.”

“I figured as much. I’ve been adjusting to that.”

“Well? Have you decided anything?”

“Yes. It’s a little complicated.”

“The older you get, the more complicated everything gets. You know when Beau first went up there in ‘69, it wasn’t complicated at all. He was angry at everyone in what we called “the establishment” for what they were doing. Mostly he was mad at people running the church, at least that’s what he talked about all the way from Florida to Detroit. He kept askin’ your old man, “don’t they read their f-ing Bibles?” He figured if they did, they’d have seen what he saw; that it’s our job -- you know, people who believe, to give the country a moral compass -- his words, not mine. For a long time, your old man just nodded, and finally he said it’s a shame the adults left all the hard work to the kids. Then he thanked us for opening his eyes. A personal responsibility, he said. I remember his exact words: “you can’t just go along for the ride and blame the guys behind the wheel -- Johnson, Nixon, McNamara.” If you do, he said, it’s on you, not them. Then he said -- and I remember this ’cause it was what made me decide to go back to keep some younger kid from going in my place -- he said even if you’re not absolutely sure you’re doing the right thing, if you feel something’s wrong, you have to make a move, because it’s when people just sit back and trust their leaders that all hell breaks loose. I guess Beau’s move worked out better than mine. There’s nothin’ good about bein’ tossed in the pen. In fact, it was hell.”

“Have you spoken recently with Beau?”

“Last night.”

“And you buried the hatchet?”

“Pretty much. He’s the same old Beau. Always preachin’ like he’s perfect. You don’t see it so much ’cause he treats you with a respect I never seen him give anyone. But we started talkin’ about old times and he went off like in the old days; goin’ on about how he watched American news all the time through the Iraq war, and how the news programs constantly would have the war lovers on, like the generals and what not, but never anyone to speak up for peace. So pretty soon people think war is the natural way to deal with problems. Same old Beau -- he always did get worked up on stuff like that.”