Nothing’s an Accident
Yesterday was a good day because I spent the day with my friends the Willetts. You know those friends that are always there for you and even if you haven’t been together for a while you just take up where you left off in the conversation. We raised our kids together and grieved our losses together and still consider our kids each others’s. Verla and I left Pat, Simon, and Andrew on Chestnut working on Simon’s car and supervising Reno, the Hispanic man who was doing yard work and went to Katherine’s house in Paris to a scrapbooking party held by Katherine’s daughter Stephanie.
I just kept having “ketch-up” experiences (that’s “cats-up” in Verla-speak) like seeing Katherine and Billy in their farmhouse again***(last time I was here it was a wedding and Andrew and I danced together)(last time I saw Billy he was having a deep conversation with Joe, and Joe told me later how much he liked him)(last time I saw Stephanie she wasn’t such a mature, fascinating young woman)(last time I saw Antoinette she wasn’t a poised, capable mother of 4)***and I started to work on my England scrapbook again and then went back in time to a little over a year ago and I was in England with Sharon and Uncle Bob and Aunt Carol***(seeing St. Paul’s Cathedral for the first time and hearing the choir at Sunday service)(the sign MAKING POVERTY HISTORY which we laughed at because we knew we were spending so much money on this trip that we would be making poverty history in our own lives)(playing the TEN FOODS I WOULD BRING TO DESERTED MAGIC ISLAND)***and Verla drug out pictures from the past and asked me to help her identify the dates***(the pictures of our 6 kids outside our under construction home on Carlton Drive) (the pictures of Pat and Neal and Bill Bryson and Dean and a man I can’t remember and Wayne loading the moving truck) (pictures of THE FIRST GRADE MAGIC show with Monica and a magic wand) (play group with Michele at Nancy Brown’s at Halloween and at Marion and Abby’s at Christmas)***and then we went to Mass together at St. John while I left Greg in the Willett yard and celebrated Katherine’s birthday which is the same as Caitlan’s by having a Mass said for her***(saw Tom and Kathy Fister who kept my kids when I would have the next one) (saw the playground that Verla and I had to fight to be able to build for the kids at our new school)***.
I had brought Greg Brown with me because I had left him alone all week, and I just couldn’t leave him at Kelley Ridge without me again. Simon and he got along very well (Simon, the Cornell architecture grad who Ian to this day refers to as “mybestfriendsimon”) and I think this is why Greg was willing to wait in their yard for me without digging out. After Mass we all went to O’Charley’s (Verla, Pat, Katherine, Billy, Stephanie, Simon, me) and talked a lot with Simon about his trip to Italy and about what he was going to do when he got back to Ithaca (he left this morning). He talked to me about building my house in the Valley.
So what’s not an accident? I had originally thought I would go to church at St. William’s in Lancaster, but because I was in G-Town, I went there and slept in on Sunday morning. Then, when I did get up, it was pouring rain all morning, and so I couldn’t go back to Kelley Ridge and mow as planned, so I did my favorite Sunday morning thing and listened to the radio. Of course, I was doing chores at the same time, since I seem incapable of not multi-tasking these days ( I realize this is no longer a virtue). When Morning Edition was over and I had listened to Dr. Zorba’s health advice, I realized that the Car Talk guys were next and that I had listened to them on my way to G-town yesterday. So I changed stations. Now I changed stations to AM religion radio because I had been to Mass yesterday. So I decided I would switch to AM and listen to something religious since it WAS Sunday–maybe the 1380 Catholic station, although I realized that the Mass would already be over. That’s when the Holy Spirit took over (PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE RADIO!!) and stopped me at 1340 AM and I was transported to First Baptist Church in Richmond, KY (Sharon’s church)to witness the singing of the Youth Choir and the Baptism of two people, and the message delivered by Pastor Bill Fort (whom I consider a personal friend–I taught his kids). I ended the broadcast on my knees and in tears. There is no division, no Baptist or Catholic or Methodist in the Body of Christ. There is only Christ and those for whom he died. How I was so blessed this day, I have no idea. I just know I was. It wasn’t an accident any more than going to Mass on Sat. or having already listened to Click and Clack was. http://www.firstbaptistnet.com/ Thanks, Bill.