The Gift of Being Part of the Cloud

The plane was late getting home, but for once the delay was almost a positive.  In a strange sort of way it served to sustain the glow of the day.  I traveled on Saturday back to the "fatherland" -- not simply Texas, but my hometown of Abilene, Texas -- on the occasion of my home church's 125th anniversary celebration.  I would be filling the pulpit during the worship service.  It wasn't without some trepidation.  After reading my sermon to Lori on Saturday morning she hesitantly asked, "are you going to be able to get through it?"  Emotional poignancy, after all, is rarely lost on me.  I speculated, by way of reply, that I didn't anticipate much likelihood that I would.  Laura, our longtime family friend -- informal "daughter" to my mother and "sister" to me -- was so certain that I would be a bundle of nerves that she presented me with a pocket cross just before the service began for added strength to hold onto. 

For the record, I only experienced one major knot in my throat.  On the phone from the airport I could proudly report home that I had, indeed, "gotten through it,"  although I wouldn't call it my most effective delivery.  Which is not to take anything away from the occasion.  Homecomings necessarily take on almost surreal qualities -- echoing memories that can almost be louder than the voices actually present; phantom faces of beloved pillars no longer alive, but present in the same way that amputees experience phantom feelings of limbs no longer there.  So many things have changed -- the carpet, the furnishings, the arrangement of the rooms, the staff, the town; but mysteriously and inexplicably almost nothing has changed.  Such is the power of nostalgic projection.

Notwithstanding visits through the years, I have now been away from Abilene much longer than I actually lived there, but in immutable ways it is nonetheless still home.  Perhaps that sense is further confirmation of the oft-cited conclusion that the character of certain times, however brief, will always trump the quantity of other times less formative.  Whoever I might have become had other cities, other congregations shaped my world, and whatever role genetics no doubt play, the fact remains that I am who I have become in large measure because of the fingerprints of those people and that community on my very soul.  I can no longer find my way to very many places around town -- whole neighborhoods have emerged since I've been gone -- but the primary arteries of the city are stamped on the inside of my eyelids.  I no longer know the ins and outs of congregational life there; no longer could tell you what is behind every door in the building, but the fact that for many years throughout my childhood and youth I could has left an indelible mark on the way I look at faith and discipleship and the very nature of the Body of Christ.

Before and after the service, people were gracious -- perhaps even proud.  I might more honestly describe them as "charitable."  But that, I now realize, was beside the point.  What I in my bundle of nerves and apprehension had lost sight of is the fact that it never was a matter of how well I might or might not "do" in the midst of their celebration.  It wasn't about performance, but presence.  Like the family they genuinely are, they were present to love me no matter what -- happy simply to welcome me home.

I, of course, was only part of the day.  While I might have been narcissistically focused on me and the contribution I might make, all of us present were simply emblematic of the hundreds or thousands of others who have animated congregational life in that place over the course of a century and a quarter.

It was wonderful to see old and familiar faces.  It was a delight to wander those halls and look at the pictures on the walls and to laugh at old stories and remembered experiences.  It was humbling to reconnect with many who had driven some distance to gather there once again.  And it was certainly an honor to preach for the gathering -- to be invited to bring something of the Way and the Word.  But the comprehension that ultimately filled and redeemed the extra airport hours at the end of the day was the inspiring sense of being one moist and airy molecule in that great cloud of witnesses.  That is gift, indeed.