“Relieved of duty,” he said. On the way to Orlando I’d been worrying again about Sunday’s sermon, thinking maybe I’d take another run at it that afternoon. Now I didn’t need to worry. I was relieved of duty.

“Wow man,” I said to myself, “this can’t be how freedom feels.” Jeez it was frightening. This was the work I’d been bred for. Never went through a time when I thought I’d be a ball player, a doctor or a lawyer. Never anything but a pastor and a preacher. Always. Never a doubt. And now I was relieved of duty.

The sound was driveway gravel shifting under my car tires. Familiar. The sound of Carolyn leaving last Sunday night. How things had changed since then. Finally, it was dawning on me. The front of my house, and the church just to the south, both looking the same as a week ago, yet somehow different. That’s irony, I thought. I tucked the observation away for future reference. A favorite trick of mine. Sometime later that tucked away item would show up in a sermon, except that, unless the wheel turned again, there would be no more sermons. Not irony; just the sad truth.

Charley had been at this game long enough to know that sermons are a small part of pastoring a church. There’s hospital visits, and funerals -- they don’t call Florida God’s waiting room for nothing. I phoned the church office to make sure nothing was pending. No, the coast was clear. In fact, Charley had already called to say any such business should be channeled through him for now. He had a cadre of retired clergy he used in situations where a church’s pastor was temporarily unavailable. Of course it wasn’t usually a matter of someone being relieved of duty.

“I’m surprised to hear from you,” the church secretary said. “Dr. Webster made it sound like you were gone somewhere.”

“Why, what did he say.”

“Well, he didn’t say much. I guess I assumed someone in your family was sick … or worse.”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “Just do as the superintendent says for now -- until further notice.”

“Yes pastor, but when will …”

“Until further notice,” I said.

There it was. Officially relieved of duty. I tossed my keys onto the kitchen table, put a hand on the refrigerator door handle, then wandered into the bedroom and flopped face up on the bed. The popcorn ceiling still needed painting. I remembered seeing a can of white paint, a roller and some roller covers while searching the shed for a marijuana stash. A broom handle would work so I could paint from the floor. Screw it right into the end of the roller. I’d need some plastic to cover the bed and …. My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hey padre! It’s John-John. How’s it going today?”

A nice bright voice. Very welcome. I really hated painting.

“Real well, real well,” I lied. “What are you up to?”

“I was thinking of going fishin’ this evening and there’s one thing about fishin’ -- it always goes better when you got a good buddy along. Which is why I thought of you padre. Whaddaya say?”

“Fishing, huh? I was thinking of doing some painting, but I imagine fishing has it all over painting.”

“You have any gear?”

“Painting yes, fishing no.”

“Well, don’t worry padre; I got plenty for both of us. Pick you up around six?”

“Sure John-John.”

“Alright then.”

“Hey John-John,” I said quickly before he could hang up. “You didn’t talk to my father today, did you?”

“Your old man? Haven’t talked to him in years. Why’d you think I might‘ve …?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just wondering what prompted you to call on this particular day.”

“Just lookin’ for a fishin’ buddy. Nothin’ too complicated ‘bout that.”

“See you at six,” I said.

John-John drove an old American wagon. The tips of his fishing rods were propped over the back seat, and the far back was loaded with white five-gallon buckets, an old cooler and a beat-up tackle box. Scattered among them, empty plastic bottles and a garbage dump of old paper wrappers and empty chip bags. If John-John drove his old rig into our church lot any Sunday morning, the eyebrows of decent people would climb and he’d be sniffed out for possible contaminants. But whose loss was that? John-John knew secrets the others couldn‘t imagine, or at least it felt like he did. He was captivating, a mystery, dripping with a contagious joy, a prince of peace. You can pull out every word in the dictionary to describe what a Christian walk looks like, but the best you can say is when it’s true, you can feel it. You could feel it with John-John. Earthy? Yes. Irreverent? Bet on it. Pious? Not a bit. He couldn’t care less if anyone found his style offensive. But still, he seemed to walk in a different realm. Jesus never defined the kingdom of heaven, he just said what it is like. Well, I say it’s like John-John’s way of lifting up the people in his life. He brought to the table that same ease Jesus had, and yet I’d never heard him even once mention Jesus’ name. Personally, I loved being with him.

I wished I could bottle what John-John had and hand it out for all the world to drink, but I knew it wasn’t that simple; he had suffered to become who he is. He had knocked, and knocked hard before the door to the kingdom opened for him. You can’t just hand out the water; you have to light the way to the spring so people can draw their own. But even then, only the thirsty are going to go and drink.

We were driving north along the west side of the river. I had my arm out the rolled down window -- no a/c in John-John’s old beater -- just kind of taking in the river: watching it, smelling it, feeling its presence. We crossed under the south bridge; he slowed and turned right on a small dirt road.

“This is our fishin’ spot padre,” he said with his persistent cheer.

We stepped out onto the crushed coquina of the parking area. The sun was dropping in the western sky but the heat still hung near the day’s high. I didn’t mind. This is hard to explain if you haven’t discovered it for yourself, but the more I became one with God’s spirit, the more I became one with the world. For some Christians that’s gotta sound counter-intuitive, which unfortunately shows how much they still have to learn. To be honest, it wasn’t in the heat but in the cold, years later in Ontario’s Golden Triangle, that I came to a full wisdom on this. But here in the wet warmth of a Florida July evening, the truth began to dawn on me. God’s promise at the creation had been simple and clear: the world I’ve made is good. Don’t fight it; enjoy it.

We were at the south edge of a city park with a long boardwalk stretching along the river. The boardwalk was lined with fishermen -- couples, families, men alone or in pairs, even a few women alone or in groups all trying for the tidal river’s salt-water species. John-John said he liked to fish at the river level and led the way past the southern tip of the boardwalk, down a steep incline of dirt and heavy rocks used to build up the banks supporting the walkway above. We stopped on a large flat rock and John-John positioned the cooler nearby on some broken concrete pieces.

“Put those right there,” he said, nodding to a flatter set of boulders next to the cooler, and I deposited the stack of white buckets and the tackle box as instructed. “Hold these,” John-John said, handing me a pair of fishing rods mounted with what I recognized as spinning reels. It wasn’t my first time fishing but I could tell by the inventory in John-John’s wagon it was more than an occasional activity for him. I took the rods from him, one in each hand so the line wouldn’t tangle, and watched him scurry back up the rocks, returning seconds later with another white bucket. He set the bucket on the flat stone where we stood.

“Our bait,” he said, “won’t catch many fish without it.”

Densely packed and swimming in the water in the bucket were dozens of big, river shrimp.

“Beauties, huh?’ he said. “Jocko always picks out the jumbos for me. Ready padre?” He reached in the bucket and pulled out a red-hued wiggler. “This one’s lively! I like to give ‘em names. Whaddaya wanna call him?”

The shrimp’s legs were moving like crazy as John-John handed him to me. “How about ‘Eric the Red?’” I said.

“OK. Don’t let Eric stick you.”

As I ran my hook through the thick shell behind Eric’s barbed head, John-John drew a long pale specimen from the pail and named him “Whitey.” He pointed to spot twenty-five feet out on the river that the moving waters seemed to skirt, leaving a flat placid pool.

“There’s a deep hole there,” he said. “Try to put your bait just past it, draw it back over the hole, then let it sink a bit before slowly reeling it back.”

I released the bailer on my reel and let fly.