Several times during my years in the Air National Guard, folks jokingly asked me how I became an officer without knowing how to play golf. Their questions finally challenged me to rectify my shortcoming with some lessons.
With only a few years before retirement, I was on my annual training in San Luis Obispo when I found an opportunity to play my first game with fellow chaplains.
Imagine taking a virtual plane ride today and meeting me in San Francisco for a 30-minute drive south to Moffett Federal Airfield, formerly known as Moffett Navy Air Station.
With my military ID we easily slide past the Smokey-Bear-hatted federal guards. A quarter mile in, we pull curbside and walk across the lawn to the Moffett Chapel, built in the style of the Spanish Colonial missions.
I’m comfortable here because this is where, in 1994, I took my first Air Force active-duty chaplain assignment.
Do you ever find it helpful in risky situations to disregard worrisome thoughts and push yourself past tragedy, pain and danger?
Some call that approach denial. I call it “exactly what I need” as I rendezvous with 13 library volunteers at the airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
The group arrives on a humid Sunday afternoon in response to an invitation I extended in my column last year. Most hail from Missouri, South Carolina and Alabama, but two of the women—Lisa Dobeck and Terri Young—are from the Sacramento area.
I often make the claim that if I hadn’t become a chaplain, I’d have been a safety officer. That’s because when I’m on any kind of volunteer work project, I’m the guy who steadies the ladder, makes certain the lunch produce is washed correctly and then checks the perimeter for bad guys. The irony is that my interest in this subject comes from the tragedies I’ve witnessed in my chaplain career. In death’s aftermath, I’ve offered comfort to those whose loved ones were accidentally struck, shot, suffocated, burned, poisoned, fallen or electrocuted.
There is no scripture verse in the entire Bible that has given marriages more trouble than Ephesians 5:22. The words come from a seemingly clueless Apostle Paul who says, “Wives submit yourselves to your husbands.”
