Pretty soon, we were about 40 miles in the wrong direction from where I needed to be. When I realized that he wasn't concerned at all about the direction I was headed, or that he had taken me out of my way, I asked him to let me out at the next convenient location.
I began to wonder why he picked me up in the first place. He certainly wasn't a very nice person and I couldn't figure out how he could have possibly been a minister. After all, I was the one who was standing out in the snow and the cold begging for a ride. He certainly didn't seem to know much about being a good samaritan. You never would have known that he was an ordained minister by the way he talked. If he didn't like me, or if he had something against me, then why did he want to give me a ride?
This Baptist minister reminded me of a cop who gave me a speeding ticket one time. All he could do was lecture me on the fact that I was going down the road too fast. It was like his ego was at stake more than the fact that I'd screwed up. I think I would have been happier if the minister had just given me a ticket and let me go! He was still lecturing me when he let me out of his car, way out of my way, on a side road that I had no clue as to where it was going. I was cold and I was hungry, and now I was lost somewhere in Ohio. "Hey sir!, Can you tell me how to get to Michigan from here??"
Perhaps if he'd fought in Vietnam and tasted some of what it was all about to actually serve our country, instead of just sitting around getting fat off of the poor peoples church tithes, maybe then he would have, but probably not, shown a little respect. I wonder how many people had gone one time in their life to church, to his church, to find out about God, only to be discouraged. It's amazing how experiences with ministers like that stay in your mind for such a long time. His lack of understanding regarding human kindness told me that he simply just didn't have it together. Maybe he was a minister in a church, but from what he was throwing at me, he very well could have been a mass murderer as far as I was concerned. This is one of those times when you have a choice. You can either blame God for your unfortunate experience with this kind of person, or you can simply realize that it isn't Gods fault at all for this person being the way he is...
I eventually made it back to my home town of Lansing. Much like the experience of coming home from Vietnam, no one will ever know what I went through in Washington DC. There was no home coming celebration, no congratulations. I had to rely on my own understanding that I had done something that was good. Maybe there were no measurable results, but my insides continued to provide me with memories telling me that the people I had spoken with and the purpose I had addressed were all good.
I'm confident that the many conversations I participated in while doing what I could to end the war were remembered by others as well as myself. Senator Hart, I'm sure will remember that he spoke with someone who had been close to the My Lai affair in Vietnam, who knew a different perspective than what he'd heard in his briefings or in the news media. It's like planting seeds. You can't see life, but after you water it and weed it, it grows into something that will multiply itself many times. You have to believe that it will grow, otherwise you will think that your work was all in vain, leaving you with no motivation to pursue other endeavors in the course of your life that you know are right...
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