Santa Barbara Mission
March, 2010
A recollection of an Encounter at Starbucks last week:
I could feel the woman’s gaze upon me. Her yearning came toward me. It felt like I was her mark at a bar. I sipped coffee, intrigued and nervous, as she read her Bible. She sat beside me like a lover yearning to connect with God. She turned to me and spoke from mid thought. Her voice chimed and lilted. She was so upbeat, talking of God’s grace, His love for us, His awesome breadth and depth.
After the words of glory she said this: “Jesus paid the ransom for our sins with his death upon the cross. Now the world is but a dirty bubble.”
I had been reading St. Thomas Aquinas just before she began explaining that the world is going to be destroyed and that we are all flawed.
St. Thomas, help me! There in my hand were his words:
“I have come to learn that God’s compassion and light can never be limited; thus any God who could condemn is not god at all but some disturbing image in the mind of a child we best ignore, until we can cure the dark.” *
The woman called herself Grace. Her eyes shined as bright as her silver hair. I saw her light and fear wrapped up together. I liked her. I liked myself as we spoke.
I know I am a sinner in the sense that I do not reach my potential outwardly. But am I flawed? Are you? I say "No". And Grace is not flawed either.
So I replied to her in halting words, afraid at first of her scrutiny.
“Last night the moon
was a sickle scything
the silver of our field.
How small I was
beneath singing stars
that shimmered.”
She sat without breath for a moment, seemingly stunned by my enigmatic reply.
So I continued!
“The stars looked so small to me.
"Yet they (the stars) are really suns
and galaxies and huge planets!
They are magnificent!
Creations!
Everything is reflecting light
everywhere in the dark of space.”
She smiled thinly. Our eyes met. Then she averted her gaze. Then she reengaged with a long sigh. She used my name like we were long time friends. “Rick, have you accepted Christ as your personal savior?”
I did not tell her about the time I knelt at the altar and prayed in a church as open as the sky. That is too personal to be scrutinized.
Instead I replied. “I am supremely loved. God lay beside me in the field as we admired the creation together.”
Her lips pursed. She withdrew from me, said her farewell and walked out the coffee shop’s door. She stepped into the shimmering danger of the morning, smiling and clutching the sacred text.
I fell back into the sun warmed back of my chair. I opened myself like a window. I remembered how life was spread wide and glorious across the twilight sky. Then I heard a song float down from the coffee shop's speakers. The tune was sweet and innocent like the sound of a lover calling me back home.
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(c) Rick Sievers, All Rights Reserved
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