Dismissals

One morning, in the neighborhood hardware store, I was set to buy a screwdriver, just right for a chore that day. A woman at the checkout was talking on her phone. I waited. The storekeep held out his hand, “One key, dollar seventy-eight.” Still talking, she lifted a shoulder to squeeze the phone to her ear, dug deep in her handbag and placed a wadded bill on the counter. The storekeep eyed her and lay her change on the counter. A coin rolled to the floor. She glared. The storekeep came from behind the counter and gave her what I would call a gentle, arm’s length push out the door. They had words. When he returned, I looked at him. He…

I don’t know if he was a packrat but somehow an awful lot of stuff got saved … old letters, Christmas cards (“I paste over the writin’ and send ‘em out again!”) and enough ornaments for the Washington Mall. There was a stack of shoeboxes full of yellowing photographs and a half dozen busted lawnmowers in the garage. One day, I chanced to drive by his house. The curb was piled high. I stopped and asked. He said, “I heard the preacher say how you will never see a U-Haul trailer behind a hearse and that got me to thinkin’.”

“What is saving you today?” That may be the best question ever asked, a question that, once in mind, is never far from your lips. Barbara Brown Taylor, a fine preacher in the Episcopal tradition, was once in a quandary … a sermon was due, it was Saturday evening, and inspiration was in short supply. She chanced to speak to an elderly preacher who said, “The question is: ‘What is saving you today?’” Barbara’s sermon came easily with that question hovering over her typewriter. It is a profound question and the answers to it are as varied and consequential as any you might imagine. In the best of times, in the difficult times …. “What is saving you today?”

I’ve been a preacher for some years but I’m still tempted by books with tips and techniques on preaching, thick commentaries that elucidate, expound and explicate scripture, books that unpack the original Hebrew and Greek. Now, more than then, I’m with Huckleberry Finn. Huck knew a few things about getting the words just right: “I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come: for I’d noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth, if I left it alone.” [Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain]

After church, we gathered for a Prayer Walk, a walkabout in our church neighborhood. We walked and paused to pray and greet our neighbors. The prayer that started us on our Prayer Walk began something like this: “We can never know what or whom we will encounter or what will happen once we are beyond the church’s door. There is no script, no strategy. It is said that we, as Christians, are to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. That may be, but we are, as well, to be the heart and the mind of Christ …”

The man came to see someone who was not at home. The old lady bid him enter, sit and wait. She fell back into the rhythm of her day. She wiped applesauce from baby’s face, examined homework, adjusted the TV, answered the ‘phone, cleaned a spill, folded laundry, started the preparations for dinner, and looked in several times on a boy in a wheelchair in the front room. When the man arose to leave, he said to her, “Thank you … for all you have done and for all you will do.” She answered, “It is nothing.” But it was everything.

It’s a great mystery to me: How ought my workaday life reflect my commitment to Christ? Whether I am a laborer or tradesman, a salesman or sailor, how am I to bring the Kingdom into the land? How does my daily work reflect my values as a Christian? I came upon the words of Dorothy Sayer from her 1942 essay, Why Work?: “The first demand on a carpenter’s religion is that [the carpenter] should make good tables. What use is anything else if in the very center of [this] life and occupation, [the carpenter] is insulting God with bad carpentry?”

At a church conference long ago, a priest encouraged us to write to prisoners. I sat in the back next to the wall. My mind wandered. I wished I had a newspaper. I was certainly not thinking that I should write to prisoners. Then the priest said, “There is one prisoner no one has been able to sustain a correspondence with.” Next thing I knew, I was standing, calling out, “I’ll write to him!” I was like a kid at a sandlot baseball game, “Pick me! Pick me!” That was 18 years ago and I’m still writing to that prisoner.

Eric Lichter told of being at a Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner at the home of a rabbi in Jerusalem. There, Eric spoke plainly of his, “… displeasure with and possible disbelief in God.” The rabbi replied that Eric’s questioning of the existence and benevolence of God was, “… proof of his being a true Jew, unafraid and even inspired to question that which we are taught to believe.” The rabbi went on to explain that a Lichter is one who lights the way for others. And Eric had thought Lichter was just German for one who, long ago, lit the gas street lamps.

Eighteen now, he was living at the homeless shelter. He left home to get away from an abusive stepfather. Once out the door, dumb choices and bad luck landed him at the shelter. I asked if going home might be better than the shelter. Very clearly not. He was on his own now, there was no way he would return. Life’s not easy at the shelter but he found hope there. He was off the street, working toward permanent housing and enrolled in the G.E.D. program. Sometimes, hope is all we have. Sometimes, hope is all we need.

I was 21 when I hired on. I worked in various locations and ended up at the company headquarters. It was good work and good pay but no one stayed long. Outside the president’s office, a big bulletin board with a sign: “Gone But Not Forgotten!” Thumbtacked to the cork, maybe a hundred photos of former employees, some pictures recent, some old. No one complained about my work and I thought I’d stay awhile but, one day, a young secretary came up to me and said, “Smile!” The flashbulb went off and I knew it was time to move on.

In 1963, my mother had a summer’s work in Paris. I, barely a teenager, went with her. Paul, the son of my mother’s co-worker, was a few years older. Still, we became good friends. Paul spoke French and knew Paris well. We traipsed about Paris … the Louvre … Notre Dame … Eiffel Tower … we drank espresso and smoked Gauloises cigarettes. Summer ended. Paul wrote once but that’s the last I heard from him. Recently, I set out to find him. Too late. Paul died in 1992. I will read Paul’s letter a few more times then I will mail it to his son.