wind blows deeply

Tonight began my official gift giving/receiving season. While the entire thing was rather magical -- full of anticipation, a dash of surprise, a strange mixture of relief and joy when the gift appeared to be just the thing and the perfect ending -- I will tell the story of dinner. A dinner that ended with a most unanticipated "gift."

(Some names and details have been replaced to protect the individuals featured in the story. I'm impressed I was able to use the entire alphabet to do so.)

How do you tell a story?

Do you start with once upon a time or Guess what??? or so I've been meaning to tell you? Do you start and then go back to make sure you have given enough background? Do you rehearse beforehand to ensure you can be succinct yet engaging?

Do you write it out by hand or type on your keyboard? Or are you more of an oral story teller and make sure your audience is gathered 'round?

Are your stories private or do you share them with reckless abandon? Are you an onion with infinite layers that can be pulled back to reveal yet another savoury detail? Or perhaps you are a bit of a selective open-book: you don't mind sharing but a bit of prodding is required.

How do you choose your audience? Anyone who will listen or the most trusted confidant? Does the same story matter in the same way to each recipient? If you think not, do you hope it does anyway? Do you have stories but no one to share them with? Or someone with whom a story is not available to share?

Do you have an expectation for reciprocal story telling; I tell you mine and you tell me yours? Or is the listening just as important as the telling? Is there such a thing as a story listener?

What do your stories say? When you step away from the black and white sans serif and the space between the lines turns to multiple shades of grey, is the story still the same? Is the story the same one, repeated with a slightly different setting and minor character changes? What is the theme, the mood, the moral? A resolved ending or a cliffhanger? Just another story or one invoking changes?

What legacy do you leave as you string these letters and these words?

After my last quote of Dr. Remen's, Atticus implored me to read her books. In looking into things further, I came across another quotable. Perhaps this is the truth behind meeting you for coffee: I value you with my time. I treasure your stories and offer you mine in return.

Everybody is a story... When I was a child, people sat around the kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way wisdom gets passed along. Despite the awesome powers of technology many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to one another's stories again.
Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom

There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.
Storypeople

Once upon a time there was a frog. The frog sat on his lily pad in the middle of a big pond. Along came a fly. The frog was hungry, so he stuck out his tongue and ate the fly. The end.

Addendum: Then a snake ate the frog and a mongoose ate the snake. A fox ate the mongoose and a bear ate the fox. Along came a hunter with a big gun but the bear ate him too. [Betcha didn't see that one coming.] The end (again).

She began by asking, "You've heard of Collective Soul, right?"

Oh, of course. It's almost like I grew up on them.

She continues, "Well, last week, Erin and I went to see them. We had the worst seats in the place. Second row from the back in the nosebleed section. But, since we couldn't see them, we decided to go talk to them afterwards."

How in the world did you get backstage passes?

"No, no. Not backstage passes. We waited around their bus until they came out."

Oh, like groupies.

"Sort of. Anyways we ended up talking to them for a while. Then one of the guys gets a call on his cell from one of the other guys who has already left for the bar. So the first guy asks us if we'd like to go to the Toad ... if we'd heard of it."

The Toad, really? Weren't we just there for Jack's birthday?

"Yup. Anyways we ended up driving them ..."

Whoa, hold up. You drove Collective Soul to the bar?

"Well, they were just going to take a cab. And we had driven downtown, so we offered them a ride."

OK, let me get this straight. You stay after the show, hang out by the tour bus, talk to Collective Soul, they ask you to go out the Toad, you agree and offer them a ride, which they accept?

"Exactly."

So you just hung out at the bar?

"Pretty much. Erin made out with one of them in the back for a while. But we stayed until close. Their tour manager had been calling for a couple of hours because they were supposed to be on the road for their next show. We just waited outside with them until their taxi came and said our good byes."

That's it?

"Yup. We hung out with the band for the evening," she said.

I was a bit late meeting them. I've tended to be a bit late for things these days. Five more minutes of sleep. Shirts that really do need to be ironed before I can wear them out of the house. Too many papers or reports or notes or things that I have to take with me for the day which I scramble around to find before leaving. Or maybe a hurried sip of coffee before running out the door.
This time it wasn't really my fault. Lorna was the one who was late, and she was driving. We arrived at the restaurant about 30 minutes later, and the others had already dug into a spinach cheese appetizer.
Don't get me wrong, I loved being there, but perhaps my chronic tardiness has made me see things with a new perspective. Or perhaps I've simply redeveloped an old perspective.
I sat, enjoying the laughter and stories. Thoughtfully responding to questions of love and life and dreams. Krista still a little jet lagged from a recent trip. Jess with stories and examples from her family, the slightly older and wiser perspective. Leah quietly slipping in her early acceptance to med school, so discretely we almost missed it.
Despite the wonderful conversation, I began drifting out of it and watching the tables around me. The couple sitting right beside each other. The table of women, who, having run away from husband and child and abandoning all else, gathered for an evening of dress up, drinks and dessert. There were old friends, and families, and just the guys and couples and the inlaws.
And although it was just one evening, that's how most gatherings appear from my perspective. They are my friends and yet I don't really belong. I observe and fail to truly become connected. It's all very superficial really,

she said.

When I was little, my family used to go on these vacations. We didn't stay in hotels or go to famous places or anything like that. We'd all load into the station wagon and head off. After we'd driven all day, we'd stop at some camp site and set up our tents and make dinner.
On one of these trips, when I was 8 or 9, we stopped for lunch at a camp site and I went off to explore. There were the tallest black spruce trees I'd ever seen in my whole life all around. There was also this fence that stretched in either direction for as far as I could see. It was so high that I couldn't see over it.
In those days I was really a pretty good climber, and I'd had quite a lot of experience climbing back home. In fact, I'd climb just about anything. But this fence was simply not climbable. So my only option at this point was to find the tallest tree I could find. And then I had an idea -- if I could see all this, just imagine what I could see if I climbed even higher!
So I continued my ascent. Now, I knew all about climbing, given my prolific experience, and I knew that there was a limit to the weight any given branch would support. As I continued, I carefully analyzed each branch, one by one I made my way further up the tree.
There it was, the top of the tree. A few feet above my head. The branches weren't as thick in front of my face, and as I parted them to view the expanse below a strange sense swept over me and began rushing by.
Branch after branch whipped past my head. I kept reaching and trying to grab ahold of something, anything. Although I don't remember it, I must have hit some branches on the way down because I remember things slowing down. Then, after either moments or eternity, I was finally able to grab one of the lower set of branches before dropping myself to the ground.
And that's what happened the day I climbed the tree to see over the fence,

I'm at Elkhorn Resort and I've decided to take a walk.
Autumn smells wonderful. Perhaps it is the decaying leaf smell or the smell of moist earth or the sound of wind in the poplars.
I picked up a leaf - mostly yellow and brown--mosaic--a few geometrics of chlorophyll grenn - and drops of rain or dew fromt he day earlier.
Then a speck of colour in the faded grass. A solitary blue bell swaying in the gentle rolling wind. Here and there a smll rose hip - a cluster - showing through grasses and wild oats.
Then venturing into the tress - a small sparrow alighting branch after branch depper into the grove, away from my pathy.
They leaves have turned yellowgreen or yelloworange. Then blending with the greyish-brown trunks and the occasional evergreen.

I'm in a house with my brother. My parents have left for the afternoon/evening. I'm busy doing stuff and then my brother has three of his friends over. They park their car in the driveway behind another car. They are hanging out in the living room, when I remember I have to go downstairs and "set" this thing I think to clean the air or something. Basically I have to take this rocket, about a meter and a half long, with what I remember to be an 'active' tip into a holder thing. The front arm, where the tip was to go, had to be folded back, and there was another arm on top to hold it down. Then there was a ball to place at the back end of the rocket which lined up with activator switch. So I pressed the activator button and ran upstairs. I should mention that I think the rocket was lined up with the street outside.
So I'm upstairs and asking my brother's friends if they've heard anything yet. (They have no idea what I've been doing.) In my head I'm picturing this thing going straight up into the air and parachuting down or something. But, no, they haven't heard anything. All of a sudden there's this huge bang, and we wait a minute, and look outside and there is this huge hole in the house across the street, and a neighbour is gesturing about what happened and points towards our house.
So I'm freaking out, and then the cops come, and I explain that although I'd love to help, I've watched too much TV to know not to say anything without a lawyer.

It was a crazy dream. I woke up at 4:37 with my heart racing and a million questions in my head. At least it was only a dream.

I sat, with two friends, in the picture window of a quaint restaurant just off the corner of the towns-square. The food and the company were both especially good that day. As we talked, my attention was drawn outside, across the street. There, walking into town, was a man who appeared to be carrying all his worldly goods on his back. He was carrying, a well-worn sign that read, "I will work for food." My heart sank. I brought him to the attention of my friends and noticed that others around us had stopped eating to focus on him. Heads moved in a mixture of sadness and disbelief. We continued with our meal, but his image lingered in my mind. We finished our meal and went our separate ways. I had errands to do and quickly set out to accomplish them.

I glanced toward the town square, looking somewhat halfheartedly for the strange visitor. I was fearful, knowing that seeing him again would call some response. I drove through town and saw nothing of him. I made some purchases at a store and got back in my car.

Deep within me, the Spirit of God kept speaking to me: "Don't go back to the office until you've at least driven once more around the square." And so, with some hesitancy, I headed back into town. As I turned the square's third corner. I saw him. He was standing on the steps of the storefront church, going through his sack. I stopped and looked; feeling both compelled to speak to him, yet wanting to drive on.

The empty parking space on the corner seemed to be a sign from God: an invitation to park. I pulled in, got out and approached the town's newest visitor. "Looking for the pastor?" I asked.

"Not really," he replied, "just resting."

"Have you eaten today?"

"Oh, I ate something early this morning."

"Would you like to have lunch with me?"

"Do you have some work I could do for you?"

"No work," I replied. "I commute here to work from the city, but I would like to take you to lunch."

"Sure," he replied with a smile.

As he began to gather his things. I asked some surface questions.

"Where you headed?"

"St. Louis."

"Where you from?"

"Oh, all over; mostly Florida."

"How long you been walking?"

"Fourteen years," came the reply.

I knew I had met someone unusual. We sat across from each other in the same restaurant I had left earlier.

His face was weathered slightly beyond his 38 years. His eyes were dark yet clear, and he spoke with an eloquence and articulation that was startling.

He removed his jacket to reveal a bright red T-shirt that said, "Jesus is The Never Ending Story."

Then Daniel's story began to unfold. He had seen rough times early in life. He'd made some wrong choices and reaped the consequences. Fourteen years earlier, while backpacking across the country, he had stopped on the beach in Daytona. He tried to hire on with some men who were putting up a large tent and some equipment. A concert, he thought. He was hired, but the tent would not house a concert but revival services, and in those services he saw life more clearly.

He gave his life over to God. "Nothing's been the same since," he said, "I felt the Lord telling me to keep walking, and so I did, some 14 years now."

"Ever think of stopping?" I asked.

"Oh, once in a while, when it seems to get the best of me. But God has given me this calling. I give out Bibles. That's what's in my sack. I work to buy food and Bibles, and I give them out when His Spirit leads."

I sat amazed. My homeless friend was not homeless. He was on a mission and lived this way by choice. The question burned inside for a moment and then I asked: "What's it like?"

"What?"

"To walk into a town carrying all your things on your back and to show your sign?"

"Oh, it was humiliating at first. People would stare and make comments. Once someone tossed a piece of half-eaten bread and made a gesture that certainly didn't make me feel welcome. But then it became humbling to realize that God was using me to touch lives and change people's concepts of other folks like me."

My concept was changing, too. We finished our dessert and gathered his things. Just outside the door, he paused. He turned to me and said, "Come Ye blessed of my Father and inherit the kingdom I've prepared for you. For when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, a stranger and you took me in."

I felt as if we were on holy ground. "Could you use another Bible?" I asked.

He said he preferred a certain translation. It traveled well and was not too heavy. It was also his personal favorite. "I've read through it 14 times," he said.

"I'm not sure we've got one of those, but let's stop by our church and see." I was able to find my new friend a Bible that would do well, and he seemed very grateful. "Where you headed from here?"

"Well, I found this little map on the back of this amusement park coupon."

"Are you hoping to hire on there for awhile?"

"No, I just figure I should go there. I figure someone under that star right there needs a Bible, so that's where I'm going next."

He smiled, and the warmth of his spirit radiated the sincerity of his mission. I drove him back to the town-square where we'd met two hours earlier, and as we drove, it started raining. We parked and unloaded his things.

"Would you sign my autograph book?" he asked. "I like to keep messages from folks I meet."

I wrote in his little book that his commitment to his calling had touched my life. I encouraged him to stay strong. And I left him with a verse of scripture from Jeremiah, "I know the plans I have for you," declared the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a future and a hope."

"Thanks, man," he said. "I know we just met and we're really just strangers, but I love you."

"I know," I said, "I love you, too."

"The Lord is good."

"Yes, He is. How long has it been since someone hugged you?" I asked.

"A long time," he replied.

And so on the busy street corner in the drizzling rain, my new friend and I embraced, and I felt deep inside that I had been changed. He put his things on his back, smiled his winning smile and said, "See you in the New Jerusalem."

"I'll be there!" was my reply.

He began his journey again. He headed away with his sign dangling from his bedroll and pack of Bibles. He stopped, turned and said, "When you see something that makes you think of me, will you pray for me?"

"You bet," I shouted back, "God bless."

"God bless." And that was the last I saw of him.

Late that evening as I left my office, the wind blew strong. The cold front had settled hard upon the town. I bundled up and hurried to my car. As I sat back and reached for the emergency brake, I saw them... a pair of well-worn brown work gloves neatly laid over the length of the handle. I picked them up and thought of my friend and wondered if his hands would stay warm that night without them. I remembered his words: "If you see something that makes you think of me, will you pray for me?"

Today his gloves lie on my desk in my office. They help me to see the world and its people in a new way, and they help me remember those two hours with my unique friend and to pray for his ministry. "See you in the New Jerusalem," he said. Yes, Daniel, I know I will.

"I shall pass this way but once. Therefore, any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again."