Three Amusing Old Men

This is the story of three people I saw today that made me laugh. I know one of them, the other two are strangers. This first guy-Darrell is an old man who has some sort of dementia, lives in Tacoma, and comes into the bakery every morning. He has no social perception (he will interrupt intimate conversations all the time) and is a very evangelical Christian. While he is sweet some of the time, he is also frustrating. This morning, he amused me by hurriedly buying a peanut butter cookie, running outside, and feeding the peanut butter cookie to the crows. It was rather shocking, because he has very little money. I'm still not quite sure I understand.

The next old guy that made me laugh was someone who got on the bus in Gig Harbor-he was wearing bright yellow track pants, a bright yellow jacket, and a very purple watch cap. If that wasn't enough to make me smile, he was listening to 1980's motivational music (like "Eye of the Tiger") very loudly on repeat. Yet again, I don't understand! Who was he, and what was he trying to psych himself up for?

Lastly, I went for a walk when I got home from work. There's one road nearby my house that goes up a hill and has no outlet, so it's quiet, and I like to walk it. It's the type of road that people wave to each other on. But evidently, one guy thought it was too much effort to wave while driving his car, so I got an index finger raise instead. Maybe he could give the queen some lessons on not overexerting oneself!

Step 2 in Journeys

I've begun a project called "Journeys: A portrait of our community of faith" that I'm doing within the church. No matter what I may tell you, my real motivation to do this was to have an excuse to sit and talk to people because I was feeling lonely one week. I'm also hoping that it builds up the community. The premise behind this project is getting people to talk about life, God and the journey that he takes us on.

So far, I've interviewed two couples, John and Wahnyce Beck and David and Carol Eddy. Both interviews have been encouraging and fascinating. I don't know if you're allowed to call it a trend or a theme yet when you've only interviewed two sets of people, but I noticed that God's steadfast love and reading scripture keeps coming up. Not too surprising, coming from Christians.

It will be interesting to see how patterns develop, and I'm curious to see if there's going to be a difference between how younger and older people answer. I wonder too, if there is something that ties all of the people at Manchester Community Church together that makes our community unique. What does each person bring to this puzzle we call church?