The Lost Sheep at the Seminar of the Righteous

Last night I found myself in yet another car caravan—a rolling circus of teachers, family, and friends—headed to a theater where the menu promised seminars in education, literature, foreign languages, drama, and music. True to form, I got lost. I always get lost. I am the perennial lost sheep, straying from the flock into some bewildering subplot of my own.

So there I was, standing on the roadside in the afternoon, my car behind me, a forest looming nearby. I spoke to Jesus. Not the Sunday-school Jesus, not the icon in stained glass, but the listener—the one who stood silent while I unloaded my cargo of afflictions. I told him I was a broken misfit toy before reciting my litany of shame: the failures, the addictions, the gnawing self-loathing that had colonized my soul for as long as I could remember. He didn’t argue. He didn’t console. He didn’t offer fortune-cookie wisdom about turning lemons into lemonade. He simply listened. No contempt, no pity. Just a stillness that was almost unnerving. I’ll give him credit: he listened.

When I finally returned to the caravan’s destination, the theater greeted me with the cold reception I’d been expecting. Some people ignored me outright, others tolerated me with polite condescension, a few withheld judgment like collectors deciding whether to keep or discard a flawed coin. I was there, technically present, but still the lost sheep—the outlier drifting through a gathering where belonging was never mine to claim.