I serve as Religious Education Director at Live Oak UU Church in north Austin. And as DRE, it's part of my job - and a pleasure - occasionally to take a few days off for professional development. I did this in early February, and had a very interesting weekend at a Religious Educators' retreat at Mo-Ranch … and yes, the Presbyterians let Unitarians into the place, for a fee. It was a great retreat, restful and inspiring, put together by Andrea Lerner, the DRE at First UU Church in Austin, together with district religious education staff. The speaker was excellent; the people were wonderful. But, I had to leave early so I could be back in church Sunday morning. So, I left at noon on Saturday for the drive home.

       Mo-Ranch is in Hunt, Texas, about 120 miles from Austin in the Hill Country, and I'd come no farther than 15 miles when my oil gauge flat-lined on me, then revived, collapsed, revived … unpredictably. I didn't want to burn up my engine, so I stopped in Ingram, still over 100 miles from home, and called AAA to tow me and my poor car all the way to Austin.

        Now, I have to tell you, there have been few occasions in my life that I have dreaded as much as my occasional forced contact with tow truck drivers and towing company employees, especially when my car was towed from UT. I had pity for them … the ones I interacted with seemed miserable, miserly, and disempowered, ground down by their lives. They seemed compelled to exercise the little power they had access to through their jobs, to its most obnoxious and oppressive extreme. They were rude with impunity because poor carless people had no choice but to take it, and they took dark pleasure in forcing people to fulfill a bewilderment of petty exacting demeaning details to retrieve their cars. I had not had good experiences. I tried to feel some compassion for them. But even so, I didn't want anything to do with them. They were the dregs of humanity, from my point of view. And there I was, in Ingram, Texas, waiting to ride for hours in the truck with one. Hoo, boy.

       The tow truck came, and a brisk, pleasant but taciturn man in very clean clothes hooked up my van and waved me into the tow truck cab. I had some trepidation, as you know, but I followed my standard practice with strangers and started a conversation. I asked questions about his business. His name was Johnny, and Johnny started talking, and he talked and talked and talked. More questions from me. More talking from Johnny. And listening to him, I learned a truly amazing thing: Johnny loves his life. He's hardworking and ethical, proud of his business - and very, very happy, running a tow truck company and driving a tow truck every day. This sweet guy used to be, he says, "tough ... not mean, but real tough," but he's come to think "we have to have human compassion for each other." He talked about "the Truth" … he feels he's found some truth, but he keeps his eyes and heart open because he knows "there's always more." Johnny was miserable for many years and his unhappiness and lack of understanding cost him his marriage. In the last eight years, though, he's had a series of realizations that have brought him peace, prosperity, and joy. He loves his work, is close to his four grown children, and doesn't "hate anybody in this world."

        The turning point for Johnny when he was an unhappy tough, came when he was laid up in the hospital for several weeks with nothing to do. This was about 1994. He wasn't a reader, particularly, but took to reading to pass the long hours, and soon came upon a book which profoundly affected him. In fact, it completely changed his life. A friend brought him The Celestine Prophecy. After reading it through several times, Johnny took it as a study guide, one insight at a time, and over many months of thought and work, he turned his whole life around. Working with that book changed the way he looked at the world and other people, and he stopped being what he called a Great Pretender. And his continuing evolution, as guided by this book, has brought him to his present thoughtful, grateful, prosperous and happy time of life.

       Well. This was, for me, the equivalent of Captain Hook or Lord Voldemort or some other cartoon villain turning out to be the good guy. It's a fitting description, actually, since the picture of tow truck drivers I had in my head was certainly cartoonish: stupid, mean, misanthropic, rule-bound, vicious rednecks itching to make a buck off other people's misfortune. But that was just as unfair a stereotype as any other kind. And it was time for it be exposed and washed out, like the old, badly healed wound that it was.

       But it was hard! What in the media prepares us for such an event? In fiction, how often does the despised come up with the answer? In movies, reprobates often save the day by blowing things up or shooting people, but they're not sources of spiritual teaching! How open are we to wisdom from the dirty, the ignorant, the coarse? Now, there's a long tradition of stories where wisdom emerges from the simple. The book and movie Being There have Chance, the serene simpleminded gardener as a source of wisdom, or the idiot savante played by Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man," or of course "Forrest Gump." In these and other works of this type, wisdom springs from the character's great innocence and purity. But, in a way, we can see them somewhat as advanced cases of "out of the mouths of babes."

       We can take our wisdom in funny doses, too. We're happy to take our spiritual pills from "Calvin & Hobbes." But what about wisdom from people who fall outside our polished-up ethic of respectability or success? Where do popular fiction and movies show us wisdom from the drug addict? The homeless person? Even the teenager? Or the tow truck driver? Now cab drivers are an interesting exception. We expect the occasional cabbie to be a philosopher. And maybe, come to think of it, the daily life of a tow truck driver would have similarities to that of a cabbie. But, generally speaking, the farther away from our own style of living people are, the less we ask of them in human terms, the less we expect. And how many times must we hear it before we understand that what we expect, we will receive? If we expect nothing from someone, we will receive nothing.

       There are so many books and movies I haven't seen that there are bound to be exceptions, and I'd love to know what they are, but by and large our culture and we, too, ourselves - UUs, for all our self-congratulatory tolerance - have a class of "untouchables." In our neat and tidy lives, these are people we don't run into very often. But when we do, are we as present with them, as trusting in what they have to offer as human beings as we are with other neat and tidy people - people more like us? In our quest for truth and meaning, I don't think we can afford to chop off sources of wisdom - especially people whose experience is so different from ours.

       But wait, there's more! Back to Johnny, in the tow truck: That same conversation actually yielded TWO object lessons for me that day. Not only was my illiberal view of tow truck drivers challenged, BUT … I have a confession to make: For years I have - only in the privacy of my own home, you understand - exercised my most scornful ridicule toward The Celestine Prophecy. I considered it criminal in its success at duping innocent people looking for answers. With Martin as my sole witness, I've railed against this book for shallowness, insipidity, self-importance, and being deeply undignified. Martin, agreed with me; after finishing the book, he declared, "That Emperor has no clothes!"

       YET, here's this guy, Johnny, who seems to be a really thoughtful and successful human being at the most important things humans do - growing, learning, changing - citing this book, that I've ruthlessly trashed, as being the single essential guide in his search for truth and meaning thus far. Ohhhh. What an awakening. As Shakespeare wrote, "And I awoke, thus amazed at what I saw." And the instantaneous view this gave me of myself as a bigot and a snob was more shocking than any other part.

       Back in the cab of the tow truck, Johnny the Tow Truck Driver had talked for over an hour when he said, "Well, I've done a lot of talking. Tell me about you." Pretty open-ended question, followed by another surprise: he was also a good listener. He did not display the weakness of some big talkers, when they make a nod toward courtesy by asking about you, but they're really just waiting for the next chance to jump in and talk some more about themselves. He listened, asked questions, listened some more. We went back and forth, and the two and a half hours it took to drive from Ingram to Austin passed barely noticed. Johnny gave me his cell phone number before driving off from the garage, along with the instruction to call if I ever needed anything, anything at all. And that was the end of our journey.

       But it was just the beginning of another journey … an internal one, for me.

       As you might have guessed, after this gentle and completely unintended comeuppance from Johnny, I decided to reread the Celestine Prophecy - and with humility this time. I did. I reread the whole thing. I found it insufferable.

       One reason I have trouble taking it seriously as a spiritual source is its extravagance - it's one big melodrama. Murder, conspiracy, oh my goodness. Now maybe the pulp fiction excesses of the Celestine Prophecy aren't too different from the lightning bolts and burning bushes in the Bible - maybe all the bloodletting and hollering in the Old Testament was just turning up the volume on the advertising: a way to get everyone's attention. In that light, maybe the intrigue, police/church conspiracy, open gunfire on crowded city streets, murders, raids and other titillations of the Celestine Prophecy have a noble heritage: it's just New Age "wrath of God type stuff" to quote Ray from "Ghostbusters." But, I have to say, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The cheesy B-movie bit doesn't do it for me in a spiritual work.

       But maybe its biggest sin for me (if there is such a thing as sin) is that this book asserts that "enlightenment" can only be attained by grasping the specific insights laid out in this book - and that they must be acquired in a certain order, the order provided here. This is profoundly un-UU; I reject it. It even proclaims all religions subordinate to itself, asserting that in order to really understand any religion, people will have to attain these insights first - and in the right order, remember.

       However, even given all that, it is not my intention to trash this book.

       It was important for me to reread it, because with all my charlatan warning flashers going off in my head, I didn't remember - or maybe I didn't see in the first place - when I first read it years ago the real values in the book. There is a great deal that's really useful in this book. It provides guidance toward practicing some of the spiritual values which are constants among all faiths: gratitude, honesty, awareness, presence, connection among people, true generosity, and drawing strength from beyond ourselves - from the universal Source that some call God. In one of the book's closing pages, a character states, "ultimately, our increased perception … will open us up to a Heaven that is already before us." It also states that other people are our primary teachers in life, if we're really open to them and what they have to say. The characters come to realize that the more truly connected they are, the more they will see the beauty and innate power and worth of people and all other living things. And the more present they can stay with that sense of beauty and worth, the more quickly each individual will evolve toward greater understanding, which in turn yields a yet stronger connection with the higher power.

       It's the good stuff. The core is sound. It's just the packaging that turns me off. So - I'll face it - I'm being snooty. But so what if it's a silly book? It's the pulp fiction approach that made these reminders about the spiritual nature of human beings accessible to many, many people - people who wouldn't read Emerson, or Lao Tsu, or Rumi, or Hildegarde of Bingen. I can't have a complaint with this book. I just need to wake up and smell the popcorn, or whatever.

       Obviously, this event has not completely overthrown my personal experience of The Celestine Prophecy. It has, however, served as a potent and important reminder that different people find truth and guidance from different sources. And nothing, and nobody, can be dismissed as a potential guide.

       With due apologies to Andrea, my ride in the tow truck was at least as beneficial as the meticulously planned, programmed and intentionally spiritual retreat. But then, what are coincidences for, anyway?

Amen and blessed be.

"We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are and, renewed by their grace, move boldly into the unknown."