April 2008
 

On Brief and Chance Encounters

--or Another Lesson in Perspective                                                                  from the Pastor

Today I got mad at a Jaguar.  It didn’t crash into my car; it didn’t cut in front of me, and it didn’t blare its horn.  It was simply minding its own business, its shiny black exterior gleaming every now and then and its leather seats looking like a pair of buckskin gloves. It sat there, engine running and lights still on, in the parking lot of the local Eagle Cleaners. Yet, I was mad, angry at an inanimate object.

            But maybe, just maybe this has something to do with my day.  I met a young woman my age today who is dying.  She has AIDs, hepatitis, and herpes.  She is confined to bed and to a shortened life. She doesn’t drive a Jaguar.  She doesn’t drive.  She doesn’t even walk.

I finished my work and raced to the cleaners to make their 7 pm closing.  While I sorted my clothes into three piles, the young man who waited on me chattered away.  “I won’t need these all at the same time,” I tried to explain to him.  I was trying to avoid having to pay for all of the clothes at once.  The last time that I was here I noticed that they take those paper twist ties and plastic bags and connect the lot after the cleaning.  I didn’t want to have to pull them apart.  I knew the cleaning bill would be high, so I tried to sort according to priority.  “I won’t need this dress for a while,” I said as I showed him my one best party gown, the one that I wear each year during the holidays. 

            “Oh,” he says as he glances at the tag.  “This can’t be cleaned; no wash, no dry, no iron, and definitely no dry clean. No anything.  We would need a release.” 

            “A release?  For this?”  I choke and stammer.  Permission to clean?

            “It’s the sequins, ma’am (when exactly did I become a Ma’am?); we couldn’t be held responsible.  The sequins might melt.”

            He goes on to tell me about temperatures and the imminent disaster of melting sequins and I calculate the value of the dress.  Twenty-five dollars at Marshall’s.  On sale from maybe a hundred.  But the dress is pretty; it’s my holiday princess dress—though I am no princess and the holidays are few and far between.  I silently wonder how I cleaned the dress last year.

            “If you want, we could get the perfume or deodorant smell out of it for about fifteen dollars.” 

            Somehow I don’t like discussing deodorant smells with this young man.  “No thanks,” I say.  “I’ll take that one home,” wondering how in God’s good name I will clean the smell of sweat.  I knew I shouldn’t have danced every song at the company party.  I continue to sort the bag of clothes and ponder my options.

            Behind me, I hear a man pour clothes on the counter.  Dress shirts, business shirts, fine linen slacks.  He stands with arms akimbo, his glasses poised on his nose, and impatiently waits.  He dumps; I pick and choose.  He belongs to the Jaguar, but I don’t know it yet.  I am still busily sorting my clothes into urgent, not- so- urgent, and hopefully-I-will-pick-these-up-before-you-give-them-away-in-30-days.  I am mentally calculating paychecks.

            The counter boy (when did he become a boy?) continues to warn about burnt sequins.  I am tired.  I want to go home.  I want more than anything not to have to worry about my clothes…or burnt sequins.  I can’t get the young dying woman out of my mind. Somehow the clothes are completely beside the point.  But I need clean clothes; I have an important interview in eight days. 

“They will be ready on Monday,” the young man says.  He is a bespeckled, slender young man with no backside.  His pants look as if they will fall to his ankles at any moment. 

“But I don’t need all of them by Monday,” I say petulantly.  Here’s the truth:  I wish that I would have bought cotton.  But I can’t find a wash-and-wear cotton suit. 

            The impatient man watches us.  The counter boy gives me three receipts from the computer totaling at least $90 and a smile.  The smile is free.  He tosses my clothes in three separate bags behind the counter.  They remind me of body bags.  I briefly wonder if I will ever see them again and pick up my rumpled party dress—with its sequins still intact.  The man shifts ever so slightly onto the balls of his toes.  I look for my coupon and ask the counter boy if I have anything still at the cleaners that I haven’t picked up.  “No ma’am,” he says.  “Okay,” I say.  “Thanks.”

            I turn and pass by the waiting man, his clothes in a heap on the counter.  They actually look good even in a heap.  We do not speak.  I leave.

Outside the Jaguar pants like a well-behaved Labrador waiting for its owner.

            I am angry and I want to cry for a world in which sequins can melt.  I want to cry for myself, for the impatient man, and for a young and very sick woman who will never wear a shimmering party dress or ride in a Jaguar on this side of eternity. It is the feeble but unmistakable beginning of a prayer.

It is part of our Christian tradition to tell and share stories.  The stories that we share do not have to be about monumental events; they may simply be a witness to the daily events of our ordinary lives.  But in the living of our lives, we sometimes catch glimpses of the divine heart that beats below the surface of life. The stories that Jesus told were deeply rooted in the everyday activities of his community—a farmer sowing seed, a man with two very different sons, a group of women awaiting a bridegroom.   Several years ago, before I came to this church, I found myself writing about this brief encounter.  It is a true account—written one day after running errands in Palm Beach County, about two years before coming to Southampton.  I still wonder and pray about the individuals in the story: a young, desperately sick woman, a persistent clerk, and an impatient man.  For we never fully know the ways in which our brief and chance encounters may shape and form us, or in what ways they may reveal something of God’s compassion for the world.  In the stories that persist in our memories, we actually may find something precious to hold onto, something of our yearning for the kingdom life that Jesus saw and believed was truly in our midst.                                                                                                                                                                     --Rev. Dee