A Friend

A Friend

Sunday morning rolled around again, December 14, the Lord’s Day. And this morning I didn’t dread it at all, not like I used to. I’ve kind of taken the day back and I sure hope the Lord doesn’t mind. It’s harder to find ways to use the day in December though. The ground is frozen solid and so there’s not much I can do to help the flower bulbs left in the ground until spring. I did think about going into the office to try to organize the stacks of paper lying on the floor behind my desk. These unprecedented layoffs that my company is currently experiencing are really not good for my morale. I do want a rest from all that. And so I decided to visit an old friend.

I say old; he is 39, that’s 10 years younger than me. He is old in the sense that my friend Lyle, and I have been through the wars together even though we’ve only known each other for about ten years. And so I threw on my favorite old sweat shirt and headed for the bus stop.

Lyle makes a bus run between South Bend and New Buffalo. There is a Casino in New Buffalo that finances the bus run so that people who don’t have the money for gas can afford to play the slots. I don’t have much money in my billfold so I don’t fear losing much. Actually, over my lifetime, I’m quite sure I’m up at the casino. I hate losing so much that I don’t play much at all. In my old sweat shirt the guards would want to throw me out anyway. This morning, it will be enough to ride the bus with Lyle.

As soon as I saw Lyle drive up in the bus I got what I came for. That warm feeling of acceptance that I always get when I see him. As I boarded the bus I told him that I was carrying my pen and paper because I was planning to write a piece for my blog about him. That kicked off a long, torrid discussion about all the nasty stories I’d probably include about him in my blog.

Lyle greeted each of his customers with the same accepting smile that he did me as they boarded the bus. The Casino goers, most of them elderly women in their 60s or 70s, each paid their $1 fair for the ride as they boarded. As we watched the late comers straggle in from all corners of the parking lot Lyle had a story to tell about each one.

Soon the trip got under way and I picked up the Sunday Goshen news that I’d brought with me to catch up on the local news. There, staring back at me, from the front page of the sports section was my daughter, Alisha. She’d had her first varsity start on her basketball team yesterday in a win against Concord. They rewarded her with a nice picture on the front page. I proudly passed the paper around the bus telling the elderly gamblers of my daughter’s success.

After that little excitement Lyle and I resumed our conversation sparring easily about the Detroit bailout and the crisis in the housing market. I was getting what I came for; a chance to rest and to forget about everything, to be myself. Lyle and I share a common history that we can bring into these conversations. Our stories are separate yet similar even though they did not merge until about ten years ago when we were introduced to each other by the pastor of our Conservative Mennonite Church.

Lyle has a way of bringing my stories out. He was so painfully honest with me soon after we first met that I became humble enough to take my own stories more seriously. The only stories I really know are my own. Lyle has a way of bringing those stories out of me. I’ve always viewed him as something of a hero. I’ve often wished I could be as open as he’s become in the ten years that I’ve know him. When our stories merged we were both trying desperately to fit into a culture where we couldn’t seem to fit. We both moved on from our common church experience but the friendship has grown. Lyle never has given up on me or stopped witnessing to me about Jesus and the value of a church community. Even though I make wild fun of him when he does it he just can’t seem to stop. I do suspect that he spends more time driving old lady gamblers up to the Casino than gathered with worshippers on a Sunday morning at his church though.

In the early days Lyle would often tell me of his struggle to find a place in the youth group of his childhood. As the bus cruised smoothly and quietly on toward the casino I dosed off and thought more deeply about our shared stories among the Amish Mennonite culture with its tightly knit youth groups. Lyle’s in Goshen and mine in Traverse City Michigan. I remember being 16 years old and taking 3 weeks off during my sophomore year to attend a Bible School in Carbon Hill Ohio. Our youth group, in Traverse was very small. In fact there were only 4 of us in the high-school of 3,200 kids. I longed to be around other young people who understood what it was like to be Amish Mennonite. Around other kids who understood why I dressed so differently and why my sister wore a bonnet with a cape dress dipping well below her knees.

I really felt at home during that 3 week term at Bible school in Carbon Hill Ohio. I took a creative writing class from an old man named Amos who looked totally Amish in his bushy beard and black hat. I learned a lot in his class. I still remember his instructions. “When you write, you must give up something of yourself.” “When you write, never use two words when you can use one.” “When you write, never use big words when you can use small.” He carried the simple life he lived into the creative writing that he taught. I got through the three weeks of Bible School without incident. I did organize one trip outside of the Bible School though. A bunch of us students went to a local ice skating rink under the guise of a shopping trip. At the rink we rented ice skates and spent an hour in worldly bliss ice skating. I can remember loosening the top button on my long sleeved white shirt and skating brazenly around the rink feeling the fresh cool air blow against my neck. I never dared to wear anything but black pants and a white shirt securely buttoned to the neck anywhere around the school though.

I remember the last day of Bible School. There was a huge crowd of people present for the final program. It seemed like thousands to me coming from a youth group of 2 boys and 2 girls but it was probably two or three hundred. I sang in the choir and was so proud to be a part of that community. And there was a girl. Her name was Cheryl. She was from Sheldon Wisconsin, an Amish Mennonite community that also sent a load of young people to the Carbin Hill Bible School. I’d found the courage to talk with Cheryl a few times between classes and the thought of getting to know more about her thrilled me. After the program Cheryl and I stood together on the fringes of the crowd admiring all the people. All the boys had gleaming white shirts and all the girls had on black dresses. Instinctively I reached out and found Cheryl’s hand. To my surprise she did not pull away but let me grasp her hand in mine. We stood there in the crowd, in the moonlight, and there I felt like there was no one else in the world at that moment, but us. I didn’t hear the excited voices of all the old aquaintences renewing their friendships around us. I could see was the sparkling glow of her bonnet strings against the rich black material of her cape dress. I could feel a commitment to this thing, whatever it was. I knew that God was smiling down on me.

We parted ways that evening. We all headed to our various small communities in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. Our pastor, from the Traverse Bay Conservative Mennonite Church, had driven the 8 hours down to the final program in order to bring us home. As we drove home I thought about the letters I would write to Cheryl. Not a week had gone by before I was called down into the basement of our church by the pastor who had been at the final Bible School program. There was a grave look in his eyes and a high pitched tense tone in his voice as he spoke about the seriousness of the activity that he had witnessed between Cheryl and me. I felt at a loss for words as the pastor made a few other comments about the rebellious nature of my behavior. I could not think or speak as I meekly walked back up to the main floor of our church. I had never even thought of doing anything that would be offensive to Cheryl. She of all people would never be hurt by me. I did know what sex was and I was not as naïve as one might think. But I had never thought or even dreamed in that way about Cheryl. I did know about sex though and I did feel a lot of guilt. I’d for sure never let our pastor know about that. There were plenty of things that the pastor did not know about my life outside of the confines of our insular community. Lyle may have talked about things more openly when he was a kid but I had learned as a young person how to move in and out of our community and to keep secrets. I knew about sex because I had, on more than one occasion, slipped a Playboy magazine under my shirt. They had the magazines just down the road from my house at the local convenience store. I’d have been way too embarrassed to pay for them and I don’t think it was legal to sell the magazines to a 15 year old. But it was not beneath my dignity to slip one under my shirt. When I would get to a private place I could barely breathe as I’d look through the pages and pages of naked women amazed at their beauty.

But that was not what it was about for me with Cheryl. It was never about anything as dirty or nasty as sex with Cheryl. It was about the beauty and fulfillment of community and commitment. Never the less the pastor’s words weighed so heavily on me that I never got around to writing the first letter to Cheryl. She eventually drifted from my thoughts and I never did write a letter to her.

Suddenly Lyle coughed and I jolted up from my dreaming. I felt quite stupid that I wasn’t able to be a better friend. But Lyle did not seem to mind. He apologized for waking me up and we talked about mindless things and presently pulled into the Casino so that our passengers could get off the bus.

With an empty bus we drove back to South Bend listening to the radio as loud as it would play singing whenever we knew the songs. When Lyle pulled into his break area I even asked him for a cigarette. I smoked it with him even though I’m not a very good smoker. I sucked smoke in deeply and then forced it out through my nose like you see in the movies. I nearly died right on the spot as the smoke hit the tender nerves of my nostrils. I proudly watched the smoke drift away into the cold winter day and looked Lyle full in the face and probably felt like church people do when they share in communion on a Sunday morning.