First I would like to thank the worker bees Risen for hiring me. I never did think those guys, or anybody else, would take a chance on someone with such a spotty resume as mine. There are some serious blanks in that form followed by some unusual job descriptions---2002-2006: searched for the mythic white tigers of Indonesia. 2006-2008: dove urchins in the Channel Islands. Before that I did a series of odd jobs not the least odd of which was rodeo clown. Then there are those classified missions that I am not at liberty to discuss. It was prayer, fasting and reading the good Word that kept me together during the days of captivity. And it is with prayer and humility that I intend to serve you with my words. Let me be clear from the beginning, however, that I do not consider Risen so much a job as I do a great wander into an vast frontier where Faith, Hope and Love await discovery by those willing to taste them.

It was another Fourth of July and the beach in front of my house was packed with tourists for miles in both directions. I had grown up learning not to like tourists, invaders in our playground who offered nothing but crowded waves, clogged highways and litter-covered beaches. I had been surfing this spot for decades and I didn’t know one person in the vicinity. Kind of weird to feel like a stranger in your own home, I thought.


    But it had been a tough week and I needed to surf. So I walked down the block and hit the sand with my shortest board, until I came in contact with and an endless sea of ten-foot plus fiberglass and foam. Three surfers went right; two went left in blown-out two-foot mush. The next little set was equally well attended, and fat old longboarders took every wave that come through. I felt like I was drowning in an anonymous ocean of people, when I turned on my heel and began the short trek back home.


    They were all so happy beneath their umbrellas, or hucking horseshoes, or sitting, drinking, with no more concern than a mad dog or an Englishman. Under my breath, or in my brain, I berated each of them, for they were all kooks, not worth the sand they were spending their sweat in. The surf school instructors received an extra helping of scorn.


    Then I saw him, the worst of the lot, walking along with stupid grin, dragging two Boogie boards that were connected to his belt by two cords. “Look at this guy,” I muttered, just beneath hearing range. He made eye contact and his grin broadened. I averted his gaze and looked instead to the sand. It was there and then that I was judged, not by a word, but by the sight of something I had not noticed before. His right leg was flesh colored, but rigid and hinged and made of plastic. Was he born that way? Was he a veteran who had given the limb for my freedom?
I turned back to say hello, or to say something nice, but I was too late. His two children had now caught up with him, and one of them—a girl of about ten, tore a Boogie board from his belt, while the other, a boy of maybe four or five took his free hand. Proudly, they carried that rubber liberator down to their resting place, on shore.


    Before walking home, I stood on the stairs to watch the man and the little boy make their way together, hand in hand, into the water. There they joined the girl who was laughing and yelling at them to watch her rides. The little boy didn’t go deeper than his ankles, but the man walked out further, and turned around to catch a tiny whitewater wave that was being ridden by half a dozen happy tourists on various types of soft surf craft. It wasn’t much of a wave and he didn’t ride it very well, but he did make it back into the wet sand, where he managed to stand up and then sit there in the wet sand, watching the little girl ride waves.


    I don’t know how long they stayed in that spot, enjoying the paradise that I had rejected, but I went home and thought about kooks and promised God that I would no longer be one.

Zenbo, citizen of heaven and FREEMAN, for now