I’m out of 409 early in the afternoon on Friday. I have a school appointment for one of my sons and then a daughter’s first soccer game. I pay my tab @ Del-i-cious. Doreen wishes me a good weekend. She always does. The Butterfingers are selling like crazy, she tells me. I have a side bet with a friend that they will outsell Bita-Honey. She laughs and tells me maybe it was all the placement I did. You can now find Butterfingers in almost all their candy dishes. The lay atop the Bitta-Honies, they are mingled in with the Raspberry Zingers, the spill out onto the counter. They sell themselves though; they are Butterfingers, after all.

I roll back in about 8 p.m. I have invited a few folks to a poker game in the back room. My two sons are with me and eager to play. This is the odd generation that has watched poker as a T.V. sport and survived the strange phenomena of watching almost anyone play- celebrity poker, golf poker, political poker. Tonight it is me, my sons, some old friends and some new. Some are Terra-ists, some not.

People start to show up. Some bring beer, including a home made brew labeled “Rotten Fruit Beer.” Enticing, but I pass on drinking a beer that night. Some people do. I’m glad. Not that I am promoting beer or alcohol. I am not. It almost ate the life out of me at one point. Though I realize that the problem was not beer, or sambuca, or gin. The problem was that I felt disconnected from God and people and saw no way to remedy that. No, I am not, and we @ Terra are not promoting alcohol. We are promoting liberty and responsibility.

That is clear one moment when one of the guys cigar in hand (and lit properly. Our friend Canoe pointed out when the ritual was done wrongly), beer on the table, chips being raked in, looked around the table then looked his pastor in the eye and said, “I love this church.”

The game was played without great incident. It might seem alarming, but we had a great time. Whether the crowd was churched, non-churched or de-churched, we had a great time. Yeah, the colorful language filled catfight in the parking lot behind us was unique, but this is River Street on a Friday night.

The next morning I am not here for a prayer meeting @ 9 a.m. I am not there as men surround Roman Jaquez with prayer, scripture and wisdom as they turn the morning of his marriage into a time of brotherly care. I am here around noon and find Roman with his friend Angel getting music ready for the wedding. I make multiple apologies and even offer him one free punch. “God bless, you,” he says as he latches on quickly with a hug.

I have come back in to put finishing touches on the sermon. It is a little different this Sunday. I am moving out of the book of Acts and into a topic- Baptism. After 10 months, my routines are still not set in stone. My schedule has changed a lot. So, this one has me thrown a little bit. As I park, I see all the tents peeking from the pavement of the parking lot on the north side of the block. The Farmers Market is up and running.

I buy a few things, mainly bread, goat and sheep cheese, and pesto call BuddahPesto that tastes fantastic. I think I could live for some time on good bread and pesto. I talk to an elderly woman about her German Pointer dogs. We have been debating a new dog since Dakota died. I listen to some music, chat with a few vendors and see my friend Ray. Ray runs Jose Malone’s. We talk about music and church and life. “What you do is kind of like the jam sessions we have,” he tells me. “You pull people together and they do their thing. I like people, with definite limits.” “Amen!” I shout inside. We part with a smile and head our separate ways.

I am walking South on River Street, pass the Rev Hall windows. I glance at the show posters. They fill the windows. I know tomorrow they will be filled with Truth seekers and the curious, maybe even the contentious. I know musicians will play and a room will sing as a body of people to the same God in one voice. I know I will stand push past the nervousness and weakness that is just me, and speak Truth, plainly, strongly and out of faith. It’s our jam session, I guess, just as Ray said. And I love this church.