“Hope in the Unseen”[1]
~
We find Rev. Wendell this Sunday . . . casting his fly rod in Pike’s Creek. No one knows who the “Pike” was that the body of water was named after. That history has slipped away like a leaf in the current of a babbling brook. Today, on All Saints Sunday as Christians around the world remember those who have crossed the River Jordan, Rev. Wendell stands in his waders.Pike’s is roaring past his knees like a river. Heavy rains earlier in the week have swollen Pike’sCreekwith muddy brown torrents. There would be a better chance of a trout jumping into Rev. Wendell’s pocket than striking his cast. Still, he zips his line with a contented look on his face. It is his vacation, and he is enjoying his time.He casts and waits. He hums the old spiritual about down to the river to pray. He casts. And waits.
His thoughts ebb and flow with memories of the teenagers he has taken fishing as part of their Confirmation classes: Allison Leigh, who caught a nice sized trout on her third ever attempt at casting; James, who everybody called “Buster” and who talked the entire time about comic books; and Bryan, who remains the only child never to catch even a single fish. Even Buster managed to hook one while babbling on about Batman! Rev. Wendell remembers the boy Bryan standing in the quiet sunshine of a perfect day, the shimmer upon the water like a poem. And yet, they caught nothing. Nada. Zilch. On the drive home, after stopping for ice cream sundaes as a salve to dcotor the disappointment, Rev. Wendell attempted to frame the experience for young Bryan as a spiritual lesson. Fishing is like praying, he counseled as the boy gobbled his three scoops, The process is more valuable than the result. It’sall about the experience itself. Bryan had paused. And then he said: Sure is nice when God answers your prayers though.The boy’s voice comes to him as if carried on the water.And Rev. Wendell reels in his line.
Little Bryan with freckles on his cheeks grew up to be Private Jenkins with a five o’clock shadow. He came home from Iraq in a flag draped coffin. They said there were hardly any remains,for the nineteen year old was obliterated by an IED while on foot patrol. Rev. Wendell walks to shore.
An hour’s drive later, his wife, Bonnie, meets him at the door.
“Hon? You don’t look so good. What happened?”
He shrugs.“Yet another opportunity to cultivate humility,” he replies with a sad smile. “Any messages for me?”
“Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Barbara Jenkins stopped after church looking for you.”
“Bryan’s mother?”
Now it is Bonnie’s turn to nod sadly.
“She said she’d be at the church, praying. I told her you were on vacation and not coming back until tomorrow . . . Hey!”
Rev. Wendell was already out the door, his car keys jingling in his pocket.
“Honey? You’re not even going to change clothes?”
~
Barbara’s car was the only one in the gravel parking lot. The decals shaped like yellow ribbons attached to the bumper of her old Toyota had faded so that they were barely legible: Support Our Troops. Pray for Our Troops.
He enters the back of the sanctuary very quietly. A small woman’s gray-haired head is bent forward in prayer, just barely visible above the first pew. Rev. Wendell assumes Barbara hadn’t heard the door close behind him. He is standing there trying to figure out what to do when she finally speaks: “I knew you’d come.”
The sound of her voice stuns him. The silence had been that thick.
“Barbara,” He manages. Then Rev. Wendell advances down the center aisle in several long strides. Only now is he aware of the slight squish in his boots from water that had seeped over his waders.
Rev. Wendell sits a couple of feet from Barbara in the same pew and fiddles with his fishing hat decorated with ties. Barbara’s eyes remain closed. Her hands remain clasped. She whispers: “Today he would have turned thirty.”
There’s a stained glass window on the wall to Barbara’s left. Rev. Wendell looks past her to contemplate the figure of Jesus holding a young lamb on his shoulders wrapped around his neck. He thinks, Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden. He sighs: “I am so sorry.”
Barbara doesn’t move. Rev. Wendell waits. Then he speaks again:“So, I was on vacation and . . .”
“Yes,” Barbara answers. “Bonnie told me. Catch anything?”
“Well, no. And what you don’t know is that I was actually remembering that time I took Bryan.”
Barbara turns her head toward him as her eyes fly open. Rev. Wendell sees that they are red from crying.
“My Bryan?”
“Yes, I was remembering how we went fishing on a gorgeous spring morning . . .”
“And y’all didn’t catch a thing!”
Rev. Wendell smiles back at her.
“And we didn’t catch a thing. He was a good sport about it.”
“Well, as I recall, the ice cream helped brighten his spirits!”
They share a quiet laugh, which echoes in the otherwise empty sanctuary.
“Rev. Wendell? Can I ask you a question? A question about prayer?”
He nods. And waits.
Barbara begins to rock in the pew as she speaks:
“Every morning,every evening, I’dget down on my knees and pray for my Bryan. I’d pray he’d come back home. I’d prayed for him every step ‘round the house. Passin’ by his room, the mini-fridge stocked with his favorites Cokes,or that old rug where he’d lie on his stomach and watch Mr. Rodgers, Sesame Street. I’d pray for him. Pray that he’d come back home.”
Rev. Wendell nods. And waits. Barbara rocks. And speaks:
“I know the Good Lord saw fit to take my Bryan to Heaven. I know he’s there.I believe with all of my heart. But, Reverend? I haven’t been able to pray ever since . . .”
She stops rocking in the pew. She looks up as if searching for the words written on the ceiling.
“You remember how you was standing there before my Bryan’s open grave?You asked us all to bow our heads. And I did. But I couldn’t pray. The words wouldn’t come. It was like I was all dried up. And here it is all these years later and I’m still like a dried up river bed.”
Rev. Wendell starts talking and he keeps talking. The words pour forth. He reassures her that it was alright, even understandable. That grief is a terrible heavy thing. That the Apostle Paul wrote how the Spirit helps us when we are weak. That when we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit prays for us with sighs and groans too deep for words. Rev. Wendell says all these things and more. Much, much more.He speaks a flood of words. But the more he says, the more distant the look in Barbara’s eyes.
Finally, he just stops.
Barbara just shrugs: “Well.”
He looks at her, wondering what he could have said differently and blaming himself for not having said the right things.Finding no answers in her face, he looks down.
Rev. Wendell sees that he has dripped a puddle onto the carpet—two wet dark circles, one from each of his boots. Hethinks to himself: at least I can fix that.
“Excuse me a moment, Barbara.”
Herises and starts toward the door to the left of the pulpit, intending to fetch the small wet-dry vacuum. As he passes the piano, however, he stops. For, suddenly,he had a vision of Jeremiah Saunders, the man who had served the church as custodian for as long as anybody could remember. By the time Rev. Wendell had arrived, Jeremiah was an old man—his brown hands gnarled with veins, his wiry hairgone all star white, his eyes watery and red. Still, he had cleaned every Friday afternoon right up until his Sunday morning death.Jeremiah’s back would give him trouble, but he used to say,“What’s weighin’ you downain’t but a pebble in the road.” And Rev. Wendell would think, wow, who’s the pastor here?Once,while emptying the wastebasket, Jeremiah had offered to teach him to play “Amazing Grace” on the piano. The young Rev. Wendell had protested. He didn’t know the first thing about playing.
“Why, it ain’t nothing,” Jeremiah smiled. “Alls you need is them black keys, Pastor.”
Rev. Wendell had looked at the old black man in disbelief. Jeremiah continued.
“Good Lord’s my witness. Alls you need is them black keys.”
Jeremiah had been dead longer than Bryan Jenkinshad been alive, but it was as if the old man was standing right there as Rev. Wendell puts his hat on top of the piano and sits down on the creaky bench. With his right hand, he begins to pick out the melody on the black keys just like Jeremiah had showed him that long, long time ago. Closing his eyes, he begins to sing:
“How sweet the sound . . .”
And he can see young Bryan there in the river, the sunlight shining all around him and shimmering upon the surface of the water.
“Was blind, but now . . .”
The voice of Barbara Jenkins sounds out from the first pew:“I see.”
[1] The image of fishing as prayer, specifically not catching anything, is indebted to Winn Collier’s new novel, Love Big. Be Well. I highly recommend this book!