I ambled behind Dylan as she dashed past these graves and many more. Seems like every year I move a little slower, not due to aging, but rather on account of my habit of pausing before the tombstones that mark people I have loved. The number goes up all the time. I add the years written in stone between birth and death. Sometimes I scratch out the math in the freshly dug dirt with a stick. Then I launch my tool into the woods using a sidearm delivery. The dead fragments of the great living trees spin counter-clockwise through the air and settle to the ground once again. The past provides the material for the future.
Maybe I should preach about that.
I lingered for so long out there that Bonnie had already left for school by the time I returned home. She is the head librarian at the middle school because she is the only librarian at the middle school. Still, I am proud of her career. In addition to offering extra assistance to the students required to enroll for the summer, Bonnie spends the “off season” ordering a few new books and repairing many damaged old ones. She is well-versed in the art of book binding. Budget cuts to the public system wear on her, but Bonnie remains faithful. She, too, tends the stories, trimming the wicks that future generations might see by their light.
Without my beloved to share a morning cup of coffee, I called my best friend. McPherson answered on the second ring. He has been divorced for so long now that he says he might as well have been a lifelong bachelor. And he is always glad to meet me at Evy’s Diner.
The Reverend Doctor Brian S. McPherson is a Presbyterian pastor and so very Presbyterian in his devotion to the original languages of the Bible. Like most of his denominational ilk, he is eager to drop this knowledge of Hebrew and Greek into every theological conversation.
“Wheeler, my good friend,” he typically begins, pausing to rub his beard. “Wonder how that verse reads in the original?”
I took the same languages while at Moravian Seminary, but have not kept them up nearly as well. I have not kept them up at all. This is one of the many reasons to be grateful that I am not Presbyterian. Another would be John Calvin.
McPherson quotes John Calvin nearly as often as that other JC, the one known as Yeshua in one of the ancient languages. I have to admit that the theological forefather of the Presbyterians offers an occasional gem. He once said that every color in the world was given to proclaim God’s glory. That is truly lovely, I readily concede. But as far as I can tell, the man spent far more time brooding and sulking.
McPherson jumps immediately to his hero’s defense. Calvin’s most infamous theory of total depravity is totally misunderstood, my friend argues nearly ad nauseam—this is especially true if you have just eaten his cooking. McPherson explains that it is not as though everything is depraved per se, but that sin touches every aspect of our lives, even our virtues. For example, Calvin insisted that total altruism is utterly impossible. Even when we try to be generous, our actions are tainted by self-centeredness and pride.
It is a wonder, then, that I offered to pick up the check for our coffees this morning.
The painter actually beat me to the church.
Due to my audience with McPherson, I arrived a little past nine and found a young man in his van, biding his time with the help of a cigarette. I led him inside and down the stairs into the fellowship hall. There, I was obliged to remain far longer than I had anticipated, as he kept picking up what might have been the tail end of our exchange of pleasantries, stringing along another question or comment to further the length of our conversation.
“So, what do you ‘Mormons’ believe, anyhow?”
I explained a little about Moravians, including our Z-man and the importance of the thirteenth of August. Perhaps we were both loitering. My schedule was clear. I thought I was going to have an easy day.
He painted as we chatted, returning his brush to the open bucket held in his other hand and then back to the wall, steadily layering fresh paint one smooth stroke at a time. Brush to bucket and back to wall, over and over again, as words passed between us. He eventually worked his way to confiding in me about his brother-in-law, a young man who died last Saturday while returning home from the second shift at the arsenal. Another driver under the influence had crossed the yellow line painted down the center of the road. Brush to bucket and back to wall—the painter told me about his sister, now a widow with a daughter set to enter kindergarten. What should he say? Did I have any advice? I watched him paint, striving to think of a sensitive response that would acknowledge his pain and perhaps point beyond it.
When Nathaniel was only two years old, he had drawn himself up to his full height and declared with righteous indignation, “I do not like words. Do not!” His mother and I were in the habit of spelling out certain terms to avoid confrontation like c-double-o-k-i-e. My son’s comment was memorable because of the nature of my vocation. Whether spelled or spoken, sung or prayed, words are my medium. People look to me to paint, however imperfectly, some vision of the mysteries of life.
I shared with this painter that my mother had died in a car accident when I was twelve years old. There was nothing said for a long while after that.
Brush to bucket and back to wall.
He filled the silence, slapping some worn clichés in the space between us. Only the good die young; our loved ones are now in a better place; the sun dawns just before the darkest hour; God never gives us more than we can handle. He heard those words at the funeral, as part of the sermon. And he wanted to know what I preached about yesterday.
I told him a story of McPherson’s about a particular children’s sermon in which the pastor asked a half-circle of kids gathered in the front of the church, wiggling and squiggling before him in their Sunday best, what was grey and had a long tail and ate nuts and climbed trees. One little boy, suddenly stilled, his brow furrowed with concentration, raised his hand.
“Preacher, I know the answer supposed to be ‘Jesus’ but he sure sounds like a squirrel to me!”
After we had both laughed a little, I told him I was sorry for his loss, sorry for his sister and his niece. He nodded and resumed working. Brush to bucket and back to wall. I’ll be praying for y’all, I added, judging by his accent that he was from the South. He smiled.
As I remember this exchange, I am thinking of all those prayers I have offered to God, Sunday after Sunday, every day of the week; all those words lifted up one at a time, over and over again. There are despairing moments in which they seem to cover nothing at all, much less someone’s pain.
Yet when the painter stepped back to appraise his work, I sensed a sacred space had opened between us. That had sure felt like prayer to me.
The light plastic of the church’s phone felt strangely heavy, as the news of Bud Thompson fell upon my ear. Dorothy had just learned of an explosion at Pleasant Shade involving her husband. She was desperately trying to find a babysitter. Could I go and be with Bud? Of course, I assured her, and promised to pray. As often happens, my petitions were interspersed with my memories. So much of prayer is a calling to mind.
On his feet all afternoon at his register, his bright smile ground into a tight-lipped grimace by the flood of inconsiderate shoppers, Bud crosses town in his equally exhausted old Honda in order to stand vigil at the night desk of the Pleasant Shade Senior Living Community. Everyone calls the place a “nursing” home, including the residents, which constantly serves to remind Bud of how