Alrighty, so its about time to get started on this whole blog thing, and what better way than to introduce Mr. NormaL T Joey and he Rainbow Family of Living Light. Since this is a photography blog that is where we will start. This is NormaL T:
I met NormaL T (Normalty as he says it) while hanging out in the courthouse square on Easter Sunday (resurrection sunday as he called it). NormaL T is a street preacher, but not your average street preacher, no no no. NormaL T is a member of The Rainbow Family of Living Light, that is, a modern day hippie. NormaL T's real name is Pastor Rodney, and his life consists of travelling hundreds of miles through the countryside on a "Loaded Touring Bicycle" spreading the "Good News of Jesus Christ" to people especially to "The Rainbows". On Sunday, Pastor Rodney was joined in his quest by 'Michael':
And the man i'll call 'Mr. Unashamed':
Michael and Mr. Unashamed are both members of a small local church and joined with NormaL T for some street preaching at the corner of Gurley and Montezuma Streets, also known as Whiskey Row. Realizing that this would be an interesting and unique opportunity to observe these people I decided to join them and take some pictures of them in action.
It started out normal enough, each of them taking turns shouting words of encouragement on the corner, people looked on only half-interested most of them just passing by looking slightly embarassed and in a hurry to get on their ways. NormaL T and his friends were cordial smiling to everyone and allowing everyone to pass. The first interesting thing that happened was the arrival of the 'Hail Satan' kid. Now i'm not entirely sure why people feel the need to do this, but this one wasn't even very confident as he waited until he was halfway accross the street to utter his cry. Here he is:
It seemed that this little outburst started to get peoples attention and I began to notice people congregating in the surrounding grass area obviously interested in the message(s) being conveyed. I'll admit these men seemed to have quite a good grasp of what they were saying and they conveyed a more relaxed non-fanatical christianity than most i've met on the street.
Of course I knew the arrival of law enforcement was inevitable. The courhouse has contracted 'security guards' and anytime anything unusual happens they make the call to the police. I'll blog about that another time. Anyways we all saw the officer approaching from far off and I could tell that at least Mr Unashamed (who was new to the street preaching) was a little nervous. This cop was extremely polite, told us he was just curious what they were yelling and that he appreciated their right to be there. He left informing them to be sure they weren't blocking the sidewalk and wishing them a Happy Easter, no big deal.
Well it wasn't long before I saw the wonderful Courthouse Security officer approaching and watching from a distance. Shortly thereafter an officer arrives in a black and white vehicle. This officer was nothing like the first and much more the cocky overconfident jerk so many people expect police officers to be. I say this only because its the truth, I harbor no ill feelings toward the police at all. This officer informs us that there have been "numerous" complaints of the preachers blocking the sidewalk and forcefully stopping people from passing. This was not true at all and we had more than enough photographic evidence to back this up. We told him this and he then admitted that it was courthouse security who had called, but that we could be arrested for "Disorderly Conduct" NormaL T politely reminded the officer of an incident which recently cost the city $3,000 for arresting a street preacher for just the same thing. Shortly the first officer arrived, calmed the second officer down a bit and they both left without further incident.
This is the second officer here.
Both are in this image, the one facing the camera is the friendly "First Officer".
This is where it got, perhaps, 'spritually interesting' first a young lady who only gave her Hebrew name, which I can neither spell nor pronounce approached and asked Michael "Why?". This led to a very long coversation about the preachers feelings about the savior versus the young ladies. This young lady was very intelligent and well read and presented a good anti-argument, it seemed also that Michael and eventually NormaL T gave her something to think about. She was noncommital in the end but very appreciative and they prayed for her:
Then a man approached seemingly out of nowhere and declared that he had lots of drug and alchohol problems and his life was a mess. He said he had been clean and sober for 14 days and wanted to stay that way, he asked for someone to pray for him as well, so they did:
I'll be watching for this guy downtown from now on to see if we can't follow up on his story. As for NormaL T he is leaving for another bicycle journey. You can read more about him on his myspace page
located here. All in all it was a very interesting and enlightening experience, and a fitting one for an easter sunday. I hope you've enjoyed the story and the images.
