For Wilshire Baptist Church
This morning I had breakfast with my lifelong friend Ken, and then I drove a route through some of my old stomping grounds in Richardson on the way to my mother’s house. I passed my junior high and high school and the childhood homes of other friends I grew up with, including a girl I was fond of for a while. I wondered where they were and what they were doing now.
Sitting across the table from Ken earlier, I saw the same buddy I had sat across from thousands of times over the years and especially during high school and college when we were inseparable. In my eyes he looks the same as he always has, but our conversations now are about wives, children and grandchildren instead of girls we’re thinking about asking out and wondering what married life will be like someday.
We’re definitely older and hopefully wiser, and while some memories of our growing-up times still entertain our conversations, we’re definitely just visiting those times and living in the present with more mature bodies, minds and spirits. I told Ken how just the day before I visited my primary care physician for my first annual physical under Medicare. He made a note on his phone to make sure he gets ready for the same in June.
Driving back toward home, I listened to a CD of Christmas carols arranged by Kurt Kaiser, partially because Kaiser’s arrangements are fantastic to the point of being suitable for any season, and partially because I haven’t quite let go of Christmas this year, just like I haven’t quite let go of my younger years.
As I listened to Kaiser’s moody, melancholy take on “I Wonder As I Wander,” I found myself wondering about this life that God gives us: how it starts, how it plays out and where it ultimately takes us. And I wondered too about how it is so different for each of us: long for some, short for others; rich with experiences or impoverished by blandness; a breeze or a struggle from dawn to dusk.
And I wondered about the stretching and shrinking of time I felt while sitting across from a steady friend of 50-plus years and feeling young and old all at the same time.
These are all just wanderings of the mind and spirit I’m writing down while sitting in the Mokah coffee shop at the Life in Deep Ellum church and community center pastored by Jenna Sullivan. I’m hanging out here while LeAnn is in a meeting a few blocks away. When she’s done I’ll pick her up and we’ll wander down to the Hill Country for a few days to give our legs and spirits a stretch.
As I sit here, they’re playing music from the 1970s like “Going to California,” “People Are Strange” and “I’d Love to Change the World.” I look around, and I’m the only one in the room old enough to know and maybe appreciate this music. Age has its benefits.