Street Evangelist

Reports from the street evangelist

My name is Shirley Taylor and I call myself the street evangelist for women’s equality.

Last week I went to an office to do business.  I had been there before.  I had talked about women’s equality with the manager.  So last week I was back and we talked about women’s equality.  I gave her my card which says “Shirley Taylor, street evangelist.” She said, “You need to meet my cousin. She has a Street Evangelist ministry in Houston where she feeds the homeless.”

I leaned over to her and put my hands on her hands and looked into her face. I said, “My ministry is not to the homeless, it is to people like you. In offices, at the grocery story, the library, while buying a blouse at J C Penneys.”

I told her that God has called people to minister to the homeless, but that I am not one of those people.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye