Ramble with Storm: Preacher, pastor, theologian

Mulling things on my morning ramble

with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

A hunter hater emails a few times a year with what he considers clever insight or unsolvable puzzles.

Frankly, most are boring and the typical cliches along the lines of comparing hunting with manhood. Now, there might be something there, not in the line that he is trying to mock (guns-male genitalia), but in the ancient rite of passage

Hunting is often one of the few rites of passage left to males in modern society.

But I digress.

Nearly calm morning. Mourning doves cooed in the ease of a sunrise in what feels like another summer day.

But the hater’s question gnawed at me. Not in the way he intended, but because I wondered why that stuff–the big questions like, `Why do I hunt?’–doesn’t overly concern me.

And it hit me.

Maybe because the question came on a Sunday, after all.

I am more of a pastor, more concerned with the every day concerns of my congregation. In other words, this time of the year: Are the salmon in yet? How do the dove fields look? Will the farmers have the corn picked by the opening of duck and goose seasons?

Pastors need a working knowledge of theological questions, but that is not their primary purpose in life.

That’s for theologians off in a university or cloistered study to contemplate.

Only one fisherman was out this morning along the town pond. That surprised me on a beautiful Labor Day morning.

When I was growing up I thought my aim in life would be to be as a preacher.

A preacher is a pulpit pounder, someone who tells it like it is.

The problem with being a preacher, a pulpit-pounder or someone who tells it like it is? It gets old and they have to move on.

As I have aged, I have learned to appreciate pastors more and more; preachers less and less.

I did not become the preacher I envisioned growing up (sin comes too naturally), but I’ve found a pastoral role that suits me as surely as the calm of the early sunrise soothed my soul this morning.