Polar Bear Angels

What's it really like to serve as a minister? Is it just one long round of piety, prayer, Bible study, ladies' luncheons and holy living? Who and what does one come across if one seeks to meet people where they are? These are the real, unsanitized and unhomogenized, stories of over twenty years of ministry in meeting people where they are. In these pages you will meet: street hustlers the innocent trying to find their way in sometimes painful circumstances party girls odd people satisfied with their oddities misfits outcasts drama/suffering addicts church powerbrokers who make Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor look like a marshmallow Saint Nicholas impersonators and funeral parlor dates. The author tries to navigate each of these situations with as much grace and skill, tact and effectiveness as he can. The reader is invited to accompany the writer as he walks the narrow way that is high and lifted up like a tightrope. Sometimes, the author comes crashing to the earth counting only on grace to catch him. In other stories, the author titters on the edge of losing his balance and the reader catches his or her breath as the author keeps on the high, narrow path by the tiniest of margins. Those who like all of their stories with happy and neatly tied up endings may be discomforted by the realities of the human conditions shared here. Respectability and genuine, authentic human living do not always go together. Searching for an alcoholic parishioner in a brothel at 3:30 in the morning is not likely to be a good career move. Climbing out of a warm bed n the wee hours of the morning to go visit the street person who is in jail for breaking into and trying to burn down the very church that helped him, is not something one can sum up on a resume. In all these stories, the author's openness to the varieties of human experience comes through. He may not always have the best options, but he manages to find some options in every circumstance. Pastoral counselors, clergy, people interested in real stories as opposed to the predigested ones we see in the movies and on television and those who like spiritual memoir and autobiography will find much to identify with and, perhaps, a little to learn from this book. The author, Keith A. Rasey, M. Div., LNHA, is a graduate of Eastern Michigan, Yale and Kent State Universities. He has worked as a babysitter, a lawnmower, a gas station attendant, a lumber salesman, a factory worker, a union organizer, a business owner, a marketing strategist, a security guard, a minister and as a hospice chaplain. Keith has nearly 25 years of experience in ministry. He lives with his wife and partner, Diane, and their two canine children, Sunshine and Benny, in Medina, Ohio. For relaxation, he runs a five mile route with his children through a local cemetery.