Prelude

Prelude
One of the great challenges in my life is to actually live by what I believe. “Do the next right thing” has been a bench mark of how I have tried to live my life since finding 12-step recovery in l987. I am a planner, someone who can tell you what I will be doing and where I will be doing it seven months in advance. However, I did not plan for “retirement”. I had thoughts about what it might be like but I had spent the last 39 years of my life in some sort of ministry, where my life was framed and shaped by the ebb and flow of pastoral ministry. The last thing I ever imagined doing in my retirement was being a glorified taxi driver for the ride share company, Lyft.
In November of 2015, basically to keep from jumping off my balcony and to make some goof around money, I decided to follow my wife Mary Kay’s lead and give Lyft a try. Thirteen months and 3195 rides later I have decided that the amazing experiences I have had while picking up complete strangers and taking them to whatever destination they choose, is worthy of a “blog”. This did not begin as my idea but rather my daughter Amy Piatt’s, who said to me as I had shared the 137th great Lyft story with her, “Dad you need to write a blog about this”. Hell, I really did not have a clue what a blog is. “Dad, it’s like a pastor’s column, a mini-sermon”. So that is what I am going to do. Once a week I am going to share with you the beautiful, painful, bizarre, funny, weird, grateful, prophetic, sad, hopeful, kind, mean, mostly wonderful experiences I have had with total strangers as I pick them up in my little red Mitsubishi Outlander Sport.
I received verbal permission from Gabe, Lyft Denver ’s General Manager, to use both Lyft’s name and stories as long as I respected people’s anonymity. So what I hope to create is a sort of “Taxi Cab Confessions”,“People of Denver” meets— “Retired Pastor/narrative theologian, recovering drunk, 3rd generation Colorado Native, Bronco Fan, political junky, father, grandfather, and lover of life.

Each Sunday I hope to create an opportunity for you to ride along with me in “Red” and be touched by ordinary people who reveal the extraordinary.
Onward and Upward,
Mark