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The boats leave the harbor before first light, and the chaplain's truck is already parked by the fish house. A deckhand on this dock lost his brother overboard two seasons ago, and the sea never gave him back, so the family buried an empty space. A young skipper is staring at a boat payment, a thin ...
The storm roster goes up at the service center before the wind arrives, and the chaplain's name is on the sheet beside the crews. A journeyman lineworker on this system has not been the same since a coworker made contact with an energized line two summers ago and did not survive it. A young apprenti...
The call comes at 2:15 in the morning, and the crew van rolls out to the away-from-home terminal with the chaplain riding along. An engineer on this district has not slept well since a pickup tried to beat his train at a grade crossing last spring, and he saw the driver's face in the headlight. A yo...
The cage drops at 4:40 in the morning, and the chaplain is in it, packed shoulder to shoulder with the oncoming crew as the headframe lights disappear above. A jumbo operator on this level has not been right since the ground fall that killed his partner two winters ago. A young miner three weeks int...
The crew van leaves the man camp before sunrise, and the chaplain is in it, riding out to a drilling pad an hour past the last paved road. A floorhand up on the rig has not slept in three days; his wife filed for divorce two weeks into a four-week hitch, and he is a thousand miles from home with now...
The homecoming everyone photographed lasted a day. The one nobody warned you about lasts for years. The uniform comes off, the structure falls away, and the people around you expect you to pick up civilian life like a set of keys you left on the counter. Some days that works. Other days the distance...
The second shift clocks in at three, and the chaplain is already on the floor, ear protection in, walking the line between the stamping presses and the packaging cells. A machine operator waves her over; his wife starts chemotherapy on Thursday, and he has not told anyone else in the plant. Down the...
The coffee urn at the veterans hall has been empty for an hour, but the man at the corner table has not moved. He came home from his last deployment nine years ago, and in most ways he is fine: a job, a mortgage, kids who know him. But tonight is the anniversary of the day his convoy was hit, and th...
The crew gathers at the trailer before sunrise, coffee in hand, waiting for the toolbox talk. Yesterday a scaffold plank gave way and sent a carpenter to the trauma center; today the superintendent asks the chaplain to open the morning meeting. The chaplain knows most of these workers by name, knows...
The call comes in February, when the countryside looks quiet from the highway. A dairy farmer three counties out has stopped answering his phone. His lender is worried, his pastor retired years ago, and the nearest counselor is ninety minutes away with a waiting list. The person who finally sits at ...
Living outside strips life down to hard questions. Where will I sleep tonight? Is my stuff safe? Who can I trust? When home is a tent, a doorway, or the back seat of a car, most people walk past without meeting your eyes. A street chaplain is someone who stops.
Street chaplains serve on sidewalks, i...
It is nine o'clock on a cold Tuesday night, and a man in his fifties sits on a flattened cardboard box outside a closed pharmacy. He lost a warehouse job, then an apartment, then contact with his daughter, in that order, over fourteen months. Tonight a street chaplain stops, sits down on the curb be...
