Ol Suit.

In those halcyon days of a yesteryear that never was and yet everyone seems to remember, life on the southern plantation was thought to represent the finest in human living. Soft, gentle, slow-paced living it was said to be. It was life in the balmy glow of early evening’s golden hour when diaphanous insects danced on yellow shafts of sunlight like so many angels suspended between heaven and earth.

The entrance to the plantation was commonly a gently curving lane, tree-lined and fenced, leading up to a magnificent, white plantation house where the resident owner, his family and servants sat awaiting the arrival of guests. He was the “Bossman” who rode over the vast acreage on horseback presiding over the larger business matters of the large estate with a dignity and manner befitting one of his social standing and class.

The plantation house, on the other hand, was ruled over by the “Bosslady”, bride of the “bossman” and undisputed dictator of the manse. To her the sharecropper would submit and come bearing gifts of the fields and trees. To her all the servants and laborers gave due devotion. Failure to do so would usually provoke a reaction so severe as to render that option unthinkable.

Thus the plantation thrummed along in rhythm with life and in harmony with the larger world . . .all because of the unfailing wisdom and unfaltering judgment of the “Bosslady”.

Now, I had lived in relative innocence for many years, assuming the last “Bosslady” had faded from the scene in sync with the disappearance of the plantation…assumed that she had been reduced to museum status and now resided nowhere but in the pages of dry and dusty history books from an age long gone. I was wrong.

Not many months ago, I was introduced to what my superiors good-naturedly (and, really, in what amounts to a bona fide case of “false advertising”) called a “simple refocusing process.” It sounds innocent enough. It promised to provide deeper insights into the truest mechanisms of one’s own heart and mind and to serve as a tool to evaluate aspects of one’s ministerial practices. It requires brutal honesty and abject transparency. The emphasis here is on the word ‘brutal’. A kissing contest with a buzzsaw would be more enjoyable.

Clueless as to what lay before me and almost skipping with joy, I was intoxicated with an blissful ignorance. Thus I willingly plunged into this process in much the same way Pollyanna approached life — blindly, blithely, and as a total naif. I had assumed that we would read some books, watch some films, share some laughs, and then head back to our homes to resume our normal lives. There would be the occasional “aha” moment and things would gradually move a notch upward. But I had not reckoned on the existence of a living, breathing “Bosslady”!

At our very first meeting I was just one of several men, mostly big, beefy, towering hulks of maleness with deep booming voices and testosterone in sufficient quantities to assure that we — operating as the herd of water buffalo we were — would be unintimidated and unmolested by any external threat. Slowly we each worked our way around the room, shoulder-slugging, yukking it up as only man can do with man. And as we did we kept glancing about for the Alpha Male that was sure to appear to lead this herd in its ReFocusing efforts. Man! It was great to be in a place so drenched in waves of masculine hormonal tides — a place so ripe for man-type conversation!

Then it was time for the meeting to begin . . .and the wheels came straight off our little red wagon (or “everything came unhinged” — you may choose whichever metaphor of horror and reality-come-crashing-down that you prefer).

There was this little, tiny blond creature — a woman, to be sure — that materialized in our midst. She spoke with a soft, but strangely commanding tone of voice as she began to share the story of how she came to be where she was, doing what she was doing. She took us to South America, Indiana, and several others points of the compass. Then, when she had almost concluded, she lowered her voice yet further and in almost a whisper told us why she was going to dismantle and tinker with every little piece of our heads, hearts, and lives: because there were real-live people out there somewhere between South America and Indiana who still needed to be rescued and we had best, by gum!, be busy trying to rescue them or get out of the way and let someone else do it! The startled and wide-eyed water-buffalo herd lowed and stamped about as it discovered to its horror that it was surrounded by a “herd” comprised of but a single BossLady! Yet, all this was but “the beginning of sorrows”…

Bosslady in the wild.

The BossLady has a way of demolishing even the best-constructed psychological hideouts. She’ll flush a person out of the thicket of their most cleverly-contrived justifications for personal and professional lack of growth, lack of passion, and lack of excellence. Like a blazing firebrand set to the dry thorns of a rabbit’s refuge, she burns down pale excuses and practiced alibis until there’s just “no hidin’ place down here!” It’s no use trying to lay low behind a hedge of excuses or carefully manipulated statistics; she is devastatingly swift in dispensing with all such feeble resistance. And the most unnerving thing of all is how, in such a gentle and calm voice, she can reach down deep and flip a person inside-out so all that internal, hidden stuff just hangs out there in the breeze …catching all the rays of truth we never wanted to face!

She’s a triple-root-canal in blue jeans…and the best friend your God-given dreams and aspirations will ever have! She loves us too much to let us waste our call or our life.

A blond tornado I never heard of so I decided, then and there, to call her “Bosslady”. She runs our particular plantation and we are her hapless sharecroppers. If we ever make it out alive, someday I’ll write the whole incredible story!