One Afternoon

I had driven Keith to a clinic around noon for his cataract procedure.  Since he would be there for two to three hours, I went to get a sandwich and to read my book. After lunch, I took a short walk past the shops in the town center.  When I got back to my car it was close to two o’clock.  I still had some time before I needed to be back at the clinic.

As it happened, this clinic was located in the town where, over forty years earlier, I had done my field work when a student in theological school. I hadn’t been back since.  “Why not go see it?” I thought. I could visit the scene of my earliest attempts to act like a pastor. As I drove over, my mind traveled back to that time. I knew that those attempts had very mixed results.  But since it was a quiet Tuesday afternoon, it was unlikely that I would run into anyone who remembered me or my fumbling first steps so many years ago.

After a wrong turn or two, I found the church parking lot and was on my way to the entrance when a man heading to his car saw me and asked if I had a key to the building.  “No, I don’t” I said, and told him who I was and why I was there.   He introduced himself, opened the door and offered to show me around, saying he had been in the congregation since 1970 when he and his wife had young children.  While my name rang a bell, he didn’t remember much about me (good!).  I told him that I had spent most of my time as youth leader and therefore wouldn’t have taught his children. We talked about a few people that I had known.  Some had passed on, some were still part of the congregation. After touring the building and as we were heading out, he said, “There’s something I’d like to show you, which wasn’t here then.”

We walked over to a beautiful, flourishing garden. Mature flowering fruit trees stood tall, some hydrangeas still showed a few blossoms, a cobblestone path wound along beside perennial borders, interspersed with small plots of colorful flowers. A large granite boulder stood at the entrance. To my surprise, my companion’s name was engraved in it.  “I notice that this space honors you,” I turned to him. “You must be…”

“Actually, no,”  he interrupted. “This garden is a memorial to my son.  J was killed  running cross-country in high school when he was hit by a truck. This piece of land had been donated a few years before his accident and so far the church hadn’t decided what to do with it.  Until one day, J’s teammates approached my wife and me with a plan to turn this into a memorial for J. We began a fund-raising campaign which helped buy the materials,  but, truthfully, the garden became a reality primarily because of the hours and hours of sweat equity those kids put in.”

Inviting me to sit with him on a garden bench by the path, he began telling me the whole story: how running cross-country was a huge part of J’s high school days;  the irony and  tragedy of the way he died. And about the healing that began when the young athletes came forward with their idea. And how many of them, now in their forties, still came to help maintain the garden and to spend a few moments remembering J. This father talked about his son with such love and awful sadness mixed with overflowing gratitude for the beautiful space where he came often to simply sit in silence.

We parted after a while. Driving away, I began to realize that our brief encounter had been an unplanned moment of grace. Because, after the stumbling, mistake-ridden beginnings of a young pastor at that place, I had returned all these years later and was given a second chance to be that pastor.  A few moments in a garden became an opportunity to be present, to listen, to allow time and space for someone to tell his story.

It was as if my fledgling ministry had been redeemed and transformed by one simple encounter.  And why not? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that holiness had appeared in a garden.