Death isn’t funny.  Not one bit.  I saw a lot of it, so please don’t take this one the wrong way.

A friend’s relative was dying and there was a last ditch effort to get a deathbed conversion.  It failed.  When I found out who the church sent to persuade him, I nearly burst out laughing and shook my head.

Jesus Christ.  

That was a swear not who they sent.

They may have as well sent one of the ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings.  He would have been more articulate and gentle.  Instead, they sent this way too self-assured pastor without much life experience or empathy.  I was thinking to myself – if heaven was filled with this, sign me up for purgatory (no – I’m not that stupid to go to the other place).

I made a good friend in Boston, a Jesuit priest.  They put their money where their mouth is.  Their training is more practical and involves real people in addition to book learning.  Jesuit priests are assigned to some difficult places.

This is key.

Also in policing.  I used to go to our Academy in Flushing.  I don’t know who built this facility but it was classic NYPD.  Brutalist, not that well thought out, ambitious without reality.  

But it had some cute parts.

We had a training section where there’d be mock-ups of various city settings – bank, bodega, bus, subway, etc.  The latter could also be found in the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

In any case, these were used for scenario based training – to simulate real life situations.  The instructors were good.  I learned how to hide a gun in many areas of my body.  Don’t ask.

Whether pastor, priest, police, it’s all the same – you’ve got to know how to handle reality.