John looked over the crowd, shaking slightly as he held the sides of the podium in a death-grip.  “Who are these people?” he thought, looking first at a short, young, somewhat roly-poly woman with rain-frizzed hair in the front row, then back through the uneven rows of folding chairs upon which were seated possibly the most eclectic gathering of people he had ever seen in one small place. In the back row sat a Billy Idol look-alike, next to a middle-aged man who looked way too comfortable in a charcoal-gray suit and Jerry Garcia tie.      
 
John was, all of a sudden, quite aware that he was not speaking, and that all 40-something people in the room were also profoundly aware of that fact as well. “What in the world am I doing up here?”  His arms ached and he saw that whatever life had been in the podium had left some time ago. He relinquished his grip and took a slow, calculated breath.
 
Ms. Frizzy looked up at him and gave him an encouraging smile, and at that moment he knew that the others were somehow with him at the podium as well. He guessed that many of the audience – perhaps most – had also had their first time at the podium, and knew what he was feeling. He could yell orders at a construction crew without a second thought, but in this type of thing he was definitely out of his element.
 
“Hi,” he croaked, faltered, then coughed a moment to clear his throat. “Hello,” he said in a deliberate fashion. “My name is John.” They’re not going to believe that’s your real name, you know. “Really,” he grinned, perhaps too much. “My name is John, and …” he paused and took another breath, realizing he had regained his strangle-hold on the podium.
 
Ms. Frizzy, who refused to stop smiling at him, mouthed, “we love you, John.” A man off to the right, apparently suffering from a terminal case of mid-life crisis, called out, “Attaboy, John!” and smiled satisfactorily.
 
“… I am an idealist.”
 
John desperately needed to breathe but couldn’t seem to find any oxygen.  A very brief moment of silence followed, then the room exploded in applause, just as if he were Jay Leno, only there weren’t any “Applause” signs in the room, at least that he knew of. A pastoral-looking man sitting a couple of chairs to the right of Ms. Frizzy stepped forward to shake John’s hand and give him a “you’re ok” pat on the arm before sitting back down. A pierced tweener in the 2nd row with his right arm around another pierced tweener whom John took to be a girlfriend, shook his left thumb high in the air and grinned a pierced grin.
 
Oxygen appeared out of thin air, and John continued. “I’ve been miserable my whole life.” Nods of agreement came from around the room. “Whatever I’ve been involved in, whether school, work, church – I’ve never been satisfied. I always feel like things could be better – that things should be better. The odd thing is, no matter how much I believe is wrong with the system, somehow deep inside I’ve always felt that the truth was that there was something wrong with me; that it was my fault I feel this way. Other people seem to be fine in the same situations, except for those we branded as having attitude problems. So, I’ve always wondered if it was just me: another attitude problem.”
 
John took a sip of bad-tasting room-temperature water from the paper cup on the podium and continued, “What made matters worse was those sermons I would hear about people with ‘critical spirits’ and how that was a sin.” A rumble of noises of agreement rose from the room. “My pastor – and even my friends – would warn me about being critical and how I needed to learn to submit and be patient and all that crap. You’ve all heard it.”
 
“Amen!” a beautiful black woman in her 30’s half-sang, raising her right hand high in the air. “You preach it!”
 
“For years I tried – I really tried,” John went on, tears now welling up. “I was so damn good at being good, getting along, supporting whatever I was involved in, no matter how empty it was.” Silence had settled in the room. Whatever invisible curtain had once divided the space between speaker and audience had been removed.  John knew now that the pain he was now expressing was common to all in the room, and it united them in a way that John had never before experienced.
 
“And I was miserable. All I wanted seemed so simple, but it was so out of reach. It was like I was meant to live in a different story than was being told around me.” A sob erupted from the Billy Idol twin, and John saw a couple of others dab their eyes.
 
That was just about all of what John had planned to say, but the emotion in the room prompted him to continue. He spoke from his heart, talking about his years of church participation, listening to sermon after sermon that didn’t relate, didn’t inspire, but rather just created more tension between what was expected and what he felt. He confessed to bringing friends to church out of peer pressure, while gnawing away at him was the truth that he didn’t want to be there himself.
 
What he really wanted was simply to be himself with the people around him, and have them be themselves with him. He wanted people to pray for him because they want to, not because it was their week on the prayer team. Why can’t we hear what Bob’s perspective on life is? What does Eleanor look so sad this morning? Why do we have to go somewhere after church to celebrate Frank’s new job? Why does the pastor’s agenda have to become ours? Isn’t he there to “build up” the church? Doesn’t that mean helping the rest of us grow in our own gifts? Isn’t the Christian life really as simple as the Bible shows us it is?
 
John went on for about 30 minutes, and finally stopped out of exhaustion. Suddenly he was surrounded by people, all congratulating him, hugging him, inviting him to dinner. His mind reeled, unable to handle the bandwidth of emotion flowing his direction. He made his way down to the front row and slumped down in the nearest gray steel chair, still the object of much hand-shaking and back-slapping.
 
He was seemingly thinner now, having rid himself of the emotional bloat. He wasn’t really able to register what the leader was saying about the next person to move up to the front, but smiled vacuously and clapped along.
 
Right here, right now, it felt good to be an idealist.