An Invitation To Join The Parade

Bogged down preparing my book cover for Strangers On The Earth yesterday. I did all I could then e-mailed the result for Donald and Helen to repair the damage.

Ginny spent the entire day in a mega-meeting reviewing 36 grant contracts to disperse 13 million dollars for various worthy charities. She still has no word on whether or not she’ll be laid off Friday but she still keeps plugging away at the duties of the day as though there were no sword hanging over her head.

Last night she was amazed that I’d found those photos of my beard that I posted. Those pictures are from the Dark Ages (late 1960s or early ‘70s). We laughed to think we were once so young.

For six or seven years back then, I worked nights and volunteered at a sort of half-way house for drug addicts and street people. One of the odd things I did there for several years was to design and build parade floats for the annual opening day of the beaches parades.

We used the floats both as fun projects for the kids but also as evangelistic tools. We passed out religious tracts along the parade route. Then after the parade we’d park the float on the beach and I’d use it as a platform to speak to the crowds.

Have I mentioned that I am one of the shyest people in the world?

I really am.

During any of the evangelistic street I ever led, I never raised my voice or spoke to anyone who did not speak to me first. The way this worked was that I’d set my easel up somewhere, say in a park, and begin painting a stick-figure drawing and never say a word till people gathered to watch and someone would ask what I was painting. I’d say it’s a picture that tells a story and go from there.

Anyhow, we’d use the parade floats as a platform for that sort of thing.

Last night seeing those old photos, which had been packed away in a drawer for years, reminded Ginny and me of some of the odd things we enjoyed back in those days.

Here are a couple of more photos of two parade floats we made in different years. This first one is Noah’s Ark. The base was an abandoned boat trailer. The ark cabin is a bunk bed covered with cardboard; teens inside the cabin poked animal hand puppets through the port holes. The giraffe is a dog skull mounted on a fishing pole with the neck covered by the arms of an old coat. Notice the stuffed Snoopy on the roof.

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The Lord has given me this odd knack for seeing one thing and transposing that shape into another thing at a different angle. For instance, the lion on this next float (about persecution) is a rusty gas can fixed to a board and covered with the insulation from an abandoned freezer. This float won the trophy as Most Outstanding in the parade. Some companies spent thousands of dollars sponsoring commercially designed floats in this same parade. But by scrounging in the trash for bits of this and that, I produced our float for only $5 cash money. (I spent the cash on smoke bombs to go at the feet of John Hus being burned at the stake).

Anyhow, this photo shows one of only about three or four times Ginny spoke to the crowds ever. Normally that is just not her thing, she’s quieter and shyer than I am. But on this one occasion she felt she should be the one talking so she did.

You know, I often hear young people complain about being bored and having nothing to do, I hear more mature folks say how empty and meaningless their lives feel. The poor things don’t have a clue. I think that when a person chooses to follow Jesus, they are in for a blast! I suppose folks who are not Christians are able to have a bit of fun now and then… but they miss out on so much.

I think that’s a crying shame.

Want adventure in your life? Then just follow Jesus and go with the flow. Take a better camera than we did. It’s amazing the things you will see.