Inspiration

There isn’t a season in the year that hasn’t somehow inspired me, except perhaps late March through early April, when winter looks like car soot, and it appears spring doesn’t have the determination to making a showing. But summer, late summer when there is a deep green in the trees and the warm weather is assumed, may be my favorite time.

Yesterday evening my family shared a pizza on the patio of a Charlotte restaurant with some long time friends. Thinking it over the morning after, I’ve just about concluded that our evening was sacramental. Our getting together was an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Like Holy Communion, it was mundane. In church, we make a big to do before God, and call people forward, and then give them a piece of bread and wine. In the Methodist tradition we haven’t even given it a chance to ferment: it’s just toddler drink – one would think we could serve better. But then we celebrate, and mystery happens.

I would describe last night as joy. And it didn’t involve a plane ticket to get out of the city or Ticketron. We arrived in our late summer attire, flip flops, and t-shirts and shorts all of which had the smell of us from a hot afternoon. We drank iced tea and ate pizza and laughed at ourselves. We came up with the idea of water rugby. A few of us would like to pull together a team. We talked about how much our kids have grown, their perceptions of the world and their schooling. We talked about dating way back when and the awkward and funny moments we have found ourselves in. In other words we just talked. If there had been a spy at a back table gathering information, he would have fallen asleep. It was mundane and just another summer night, and yet it was sacramental.

Looking over the newspaper this morning and seeing the photo of a bombed out neighborhood in Lebanon and terror in the eyes of a middle aged man, I realized that’s what most of us want. Whether Jew, Muslim or Christian, the vast majority want the mundane. Be it pizza or falafels, we want our simple and familiar food, and to enjoy it with old friends on a restaurant patio without having to consider whether or not it’s safe. We want a quiet place to live. We want to be sacramental. We want to be an out ward sign of an inward and spiritual grace. We want joy.

Call me naive, call me hopelessly optimistic; I’ll call it faith, but I still believe it can happen on a late summer evening, and one day in every town and on every restaurant patio.

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us.”

Ben’s email address is ben.devoid@dilworthumc.org if you would like to contact him.

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