Observations From Hadleyville: ROCKIN' THE RANGE

Monday, November 14, 2011

ROCKIN' THE RANGE

I am a volunteer Chaplain with the LA County Sheriff's Department. Chaplain duties include counseling, patrolling in black & whites with the deputies, and simple presence. Today I will work one of my collateral duties. I am a Range Master for one of our mobile shooting ranges. I sought this out, went through training and love doing it. Okay, I do get some looks. A Chaplain in the shooting range?! Yeah. My Granddad was a deputy. I learned to shoot when I was a kid. and it is one sport where my normal terminal awkwardness is absent.

Amazing though it sounds, the range is a great fit for me as a Chaplain. I'm supposed to minister to the deputies, their families and department personnel. Traditionally, that's accomplished by ride-a-longs and station presence. I've done a lot of ride-a-longs. You spend eight hours in a car with a deputy, responding to calls and simply patrolling the streets. I enjoy it. It's an intense eight hour session. One deputy at a time. At first the deputies look at me like: why is this person in my car, is he reporting on me for the brass? I always start a first ride with a deputy saying, Good news and bad news. Good news; I'm not Internal Affairs. Bad news; I'm a preacher.

Thing is, I meet more deputies in a more comfortable setting when I work the range. The conversation is less formal. The deputies see me out of my high, priestly environment; Why, the Chaplain might actually be a human, like me.

I'm off. Looking forward to my day.

1 comment:

Carol Anne Wright Swett said...: Hope you make some amazing connections with amazing chances to minister to officers who are always over stressed and underpaid!; November 14, 2011 at 11:51 AM

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WORDS OF WISDOM FOR WRITERS

The secret of becoming a writer is that you have to write. You have to write a lot. You also have to finish what you write, even though no one wants it yet. If you don't learn to finish your work, no one will ever want to see it. The biggest mistake new writers make is carrying around copies of unfinished work to inflict on their friends.

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it.
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WHAT'S THIS HADLEYVILLE THING?

Those of you familiar with Mark Twain’s works might recognize my blog title. As Samuel Clemons grew older, he became increasingly disillusioned with humanity. Towards the end he began referring to the Damned Human Race; employing the secular and religious epithet at one stroke.

I find I’ve not reached that level of despair myself. I still believe in redemption and I still see signs of nobility even among we fallen, damned creatures. So, I could not bring myself to call this blog “On the Damned Human Race.” I do however, resonate with another of Clemmons stories; “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.” And viola, there you have it. “Observations From Hadleyville.”