Your calling is not a

destination. It is a journey that

doesn’t end until you die.

In a former life, Ed Cathey was a physical therapist, but I

never knew that man. The man I knew was no doctor; there
was nothing clinical about him. At the ripe age of seventy-
something, Ed, who had long since left his practice at
Vanderbilt Hospital, held down a part-time job as a chaplain
at the Nashville Rescue Mission. He had tried to retire but
instead ended up attending to the spiritual, emotional, and
physical needs of homeless men who congregated in the
overcrowded courtyard every day.
To be honest, Ed looked out of place. A clean-cut
African American gentleman from Chicago, who spoke the
most proper English I’d ever heard, didn’t quite blend in
with the roughneck crowd of drug addicts, disabled
veterans, and thugs you encountered on a daily basis at the
mission. Always wearing neatly pressed button-down shirts
tucked tidily into well-ironed slacks, he was the picture of
elegance and grace. Which contrasted with the drunken