The Novel Pastorate Chapters From A Vocation

Rev. Michael Bledsoe, PH.D., a pastor and professor for more than twenty years in Washington, D.C., shares candidly from the chapters of his vocation--from the tobacco fields in southern Indiana of his first pastorate to a corner in the nation's capital, this is a novel of sorts, a pastorate viewed through the lens of literary characters, plot, subplots, themes and pensive resolution within the penumbra of The Holy. In forthright but poetic intensity, Pastor Bledsoe illuminates a life, his life, in service to the Church. This is no mega-church, celebrity pastor but a man in the trenches of the ordinary and mundane, ministering faithfully to a flock winding their way through this veil of tears. With him, we enter a ward in a hospital where a child left this world and hear his description: "...a child leaves the world like glacial mountains crumble into the sea. They take whole continents into the icy depths with them. There is a great shattering and the world splinters and collapses along the silent snow barrier between earth and sea. Words disappear." We overhear his complaint about the Church, "It is enough to have to stand by the grave and proclaim God's love; it is enough to stand alone by the side of a dear church member who has taken their last breath and utter a prayer and make the sign of the cross on his forehead; but to be lied about, misspoken about, gossiped about and sabotaged to boot, that is formula for a withering on the vine." Candid, poetic, and insightful prose radiates in this novel of the pastorate.Part biography, part confession, you will find the view through this window to be of genuine human interest.