BoldUlysses.com

Windy today. Rent clouds scurried across the sky. I went running mid-afternoon and had to fight the gusts during the last uphill stretch. I tell myself that the cold air is more dense so my lungs are getting more oxygen per inhalation, but somehow that doesn’t seem to appease them. They just want more.

I love this song. It brings back strong memories of one of the best concerts I’ve been to–a Dar Williams show at the Cradle in Chapel Hill. Elyse and I went. Standing room only. She stood in front, me behind, and in one near-silent lull between songs she yelled out, “We love you Dar!” which of course precipitated spontaneous and warm cheering from the rest of the audience. I remember singing this song, too–Dar led everyone in a singalong. She played “After All” as well. Oh, it was fantastic. Life was simpler then too. Work and home, treading water.

I met with an older gentleman from my Bible study church group on Thursday night, in the first of what I hope will be many more meetings. His name is Larry, just turned 68, and he lives near downtown Kernersville with his wife Jan, born three years to the day before him. She and Larry have been believers since the late fifties, and have a heart to minister to the “grad & career” singles groups in the church. They take a back seat role, though, not teaching or leading per se, but participating in events and helping out with classes behind the scenes, sending out prayer/praise e-mails every Monday and greeting newcomers on Sunday mornings, among other things.

I’m convinced God’s got in me this place for a reason, and when I meet people like Larry and Jan it builds my faith. Larry and I talked for three hours on Thursday night, chatting about his life in the latter half of the last century, through all the changes and upheavals. He flew airliners for Continental for years and years and has many thousands of hours under his belt. He has stories of flying Twin Otters fifty hours a week in Alaskan winters, times when he and his fellow pilots would fly all day, come back to a one-room apartment, lay out their bedrolls and crash, only to get up at the crack of dawn the following day and fly again. He’s active and doesn’t look a day older than 55, lean and trim. He used to ride dirt bikes (motorcycles) and after he heard I was an avid car mechanic with substantial experience, he spontaneously showed me a glossy brochure for the Triumph motorcycle he’s got his eye on. We talked about the environments in which we’ve had our best conversations, and I shared that some of my most memorable talks were just me and another guy hunched over the engine bay of a car, tinkering. He beckoned me energetically into the garage and showed me his tired Honda XR350R dirt bike. He suspects the front fork is bent and he can’t get it kick started. He’s interested in fixing it up with me. I sat on the seat of the bike, arms folded over the handlebars and he sat on a pile of two-by-fours and he talked a little about how he and Jan found each other in the university in the late fifties. He said he had dated a number of girls before her and been through the whole rigamarole we all go through, thinking about it from every angle, wondering if she’s the one and so on. Then he met Jan, and after just a few encounters he knew. He said he wanted a companion, and he knew he had found one. I wanted to exclaim that I wanted the same thing, all sorts of things that would have been superfluous, useless, unneeded. I wanted…I don’t even know what I wanted. I just smiled.

He showed me old flying textbooks, hand-illustrated instrument license textbooks and others published in 1959, 1963 and so on. They’re priceless. The care taken with each image mirrored the care evident in the word choice–so clear and perfectly allied to the concepts. He brought out props and teaching aids he had made for his students when he was an instructor and stacks of note cards he made for himself to memorize reams of procedures in his airline days. I wish you could have seen it all.

I’m amazed and humbled by the people God puts in my path to befriend. I’m bowled over with silent emotion tonight. Tonight.