What if...

Ever wonder what your life would have been like if you did something else, made different choices along the way? A different school, or no school at all; dared to play ball one more year and figure out how to hit a curve; worked at McDonalds instead of hauling hay and fixing cars; dated the cute redhead that sat next to you instead of the foxy brunette? If your daughter was a son or your son a daughter, how would that have changed things? What if that curve ball led to a MLB career, or that part time, fast-food job led to enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America and working with Emeril Lagassi - BAM! - on his show? For that matter, what if that red-head became your Bonnie and you her Clyde, and the two of you ran a string of vending machine robberies all along Kansas Highway 15 up into Nebraska before being cornered by a Seward county sheriff deputy at a random mom & pop gas station with a flat tire and a trunk of coins and dollar bills? 

There are days when I wonder how my life would be different if it weren't for my black-collar job. I say black collar, because I am a parish pastor. The black-collared clerical shirt is my uniform. What if I hadn't gone into parish ministry? Don't get me wrong - I enjoy what I do (most days) and truth is I really can't see myself doing anything else. But, there are days that something else sounds tempting, or at least intriguing. The grass is always greener, you know. That's true in pastures and in church pews, except it's carpet, not the lawn in the sanctuary. What would I do? 

I enjoy working with my hands, so maybe being a machinist would be fun. The intricate precision of metalwork is fascinating to me. Whether it's grinding down with a lathe or scraper or building up with a welder and carefully-placed steel, that sounds very intriguing to me. HVAC and plumbing requires too much bending and working on the knees - no thanks - not to mention having to work in attics and crawl spaces where spiders, scorpions and snakes like to congregate. Automotive mechanics is less mechanic and more about computer tech, and I don't really care for that aspect of technology. I would rather turn a wrench than plug in. 

I think I would enjoy being an entertainer. I would love to bring joy to people's lives with music and song. To be so talented as Anna Lapwood and play the pipe organ at the Albert Royal Hall, an instrument so majestic you need ear plugs to avoid damaging the ears, or to sing like Josh Groban or Sir Tom Jones, or do both - Harry Connick Jr., sings and plays piano as well as anyone - would be an incredible experience. I can only hope and pray those musicians give God thanks for that skill they have. Or to be able to write into musical score the notes that fill a room with the sounds that move the body, mind and spirit, single notes becoming chords that build and grow like soft showers that turn into thunderous storms just to soften and dwindle and drift away into the distance with nothing left but the memories and the tears from the emotion. Oddly enough, I don't really want to be an actor - i think because actors are busy pretending to be someone else. If I'm creating a new life, I want to be authentic leather, not faux naugahyde. Or maybe I would be a writer, a poet, a walking thesaurus of vocables that merge into paper to evoke, to transport, to persuade, to change, to challenge, to entertain. To be Wille who drove Patsy Crazy, or Michner who led people to imagine they explored Alaska, or Millay who taught us that “love is not all,” or Tennyson who captured a Calvary attack against superior firepower, leaving us contemplating the foolishness of warfare over and against the bravery of those whose duty is to not wonder why, but do and die. Or, perhaps, to do both - Gordon Lightfoot haunting us with the wind in the wires on the Great Lakes, or Simon and Garfunkel singing, ironically, about silence. To be a wordsmith worthy of a person’s time spent with his words! To be able to make hearts leap or break, to soar above or be crushed below just by a turned phrase, a carefully spun description as delicate as a dew-laden spiderweb, teasing the imagination, or a delicate whisp of memory lingering like the smell of yesterday's fresh-baked bread that lurks in the kitchen. 

But I'm neither poet nor singer, writer nor entertainer. It's just me, wondering, imagining what if…

What if, indeed.