Two Days To Go

Here they are, Josh! This is the next-to-last day before I retire. It’s feeling a lot like high school graduation. I’m beginning to sense that same kind of freedom of knowing that time itself is not coming to an end, but that an era of subservient obedience is. I’m serious! Working at DAFS has been like going back to junior high, complete with a principal, vice principal and assorted counselors and advisers. I’ve shared with the various administrators I’ve worked under for the last 11 ½ years that when you treat people like children, they’re going to act like children. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was speaking to—at best—adolescents in adult bodies who understood themselves to be hall monitors charged with keeping the younger kids in line. The bittersweet truth is that little has changed about the management “philosophy” and style here, and I really feel as though I’m abandoning my coworkers as I manage to escape. Las Vegas is fundamentally immature by its very nature: naughty little boys and girls getting away with whatever they can. It is understandable, then, that the development of institutions and bureaucracies in this setting are also retarded. You can believe me that I have given hours of thought to my pastorate that failed here, wondering what I might have done differently. I have come to the same conclusion about my relationship with both the church and the county: I screwed up when I believed I was working with adults.