Holy Stories

I have enjoyed the brief journey into anonymity that my monthly farm trips have provided. Not the nobody-knows-me-here-so- I-can-do-what-I-want anonymity, but more the I-can-be-just-Robert- here-without-always-being- the-pastor kind of anonymity. I visit with neighbors. I go into town to eat Mexican food at Olivia’s or Angelica’s, browse the disorganized aisles of the Wilson County Hardware store, or wander through the H.E.B. to stock up for my stay. And the entire time, I’m just Robert. Don't misunderstand. I do enjoy my work as a pastor. Sometimes, however, it is a relief to lay the clerical collar aside (metaphorically speaking, since I am a Baptist) and just be me.

To disclose to a stranger that I am a pastor often changes the entire nature of the conversation. Things become superficial and stilted. They choose their words and topics more carefully. Suddenly questions of election or eschatology become important to them. Or they feel compelled to tell me how much they enjoy Joel Osteen. But they stop talking to “me” and start talking to “a preacher.” I suppose they assume that the trivial subjects of life wouldn’t interest me and my high calling or that the significant subjects of the world are things I probably wouldn’t understand.

Sometimes, however, they hear in the word “pastor” a connotation that I’m glad is still there. They hear, “This is someone who will listen to my story.” People want to tell their stories and they want someone to listen. That need offers one of the holy privileges of pastoral ministry. People sometimes talk to us openly and frankly. You never know which of these two responses full vocational disclosure is likely to produce.

I have discovered that the opportunity for pastoral listening is mine whether or not I’m wearing “the collar.”

Back in April I made the trip to Floresville, with only twenty-four hours to spend there before heading to Killeen to visit with my son and his family. I had work to do. I had to pick up the lawn tractor from Tractor City where it had been repaired. The lawn needed to be mowed to keep it under control. The clothes dryer needed the attention of a repairman. (A family of field mice had made a home in it during the winter and had chewed the wires to the start switch, shorting it out, and causing the premature death of one of them inside the dryer. Welcome to country living.)

I had picked up the mower and was unloading it from my truck. J. from down the road saw me working and stopped by to see if I needed help. We spent twenty minutes talking about what was going on in her life. When she drove off, I cranked up the old Murray lawn tractor and began mowing.

I was a hundred and fifty yards from the house, near the county road, when a red pickup pulled up to my drive. I turned off the mower, wiped my brow on my sleeve, and walked toward the gate. The truck driver was a woman in her 40s, I’d guess, who appeared to have lived a hard life. She was wearing a ball cap with a logo from some trail riders association. She was looking for her quarter horse, which she suspected her husband had stolen from a farm down the road when he ran off with another woman. (This is not a C&W song, but it has potential.) I listened as this total stranger poured out her life story in great detail.

I looked very un-pastoral. I was wearing old, dirty jeans, work boots, a filthy white tee shirt and a camouflaged ball cap that said “Tractor Supply Company.” After a while I told her I live in Houston and only visit the place a few days a month and I’d seen neither her horse nor her husband. That’s when she asked the question that Jonah-type pastors hate to hear: “Oh, what do you do in Houston?”

Fearing Response #1, the temptation is to lie. Or at least to obfuscate. (Like, “I lead a large, non-profit volunteer organization.”) But I told the truth: “I’m a pastor.”

“Really?” she asked. Then she told me that she’d been reading from Psalm 31 that morning. She explained the comfort a couple of particular verses had brought her. I offered to pray with her and after we’d prayed I looked up to see her wiping tears from her eyes. She said, “I believe the Lord sent me by here today.” She thanked me for listening and praying and she got back in her Ford 250, which had been running the entire time, and headed down the dirt road.

I had resumed mowing for almost twenty minutes when Mr. L. arrived. He had come to repair my dryer. I showed him the utility room, helped him remove the drum and left him to his work while I returned to mine. After about half an hour he came out of the garage and I rode the mower up to the house. He explained what he had done and what the charge would be and took out his receipt book. I was his last call for the day, so for the next hour he wrote down one word on the receipt about every five minutes. He filled in the remainder of the time pouring out his story: five children, divorce, grandchildren. I leaned on his pickup and listened.

Less than fifteen minutes after Mr. L. left, S.. drove up from down the road. She’d seen me mowing the ditch and came over to tell me her son would be glad to take care of that for me with his tractor and shredder. She told me of the new home they were building on their own. You could see the frame arising on the hill across the road. She told me of her husband’s death at age 43, of rearing three sons on her own. I listened.

Not long after S. left, A. drove up. A. had been a great friend to my grandmother over the past few years and had cared for her well. We usually get a few minutes to visit when I’m at the farm. I listened to her stories of recent work and of some of the dreams she and her husband have for the years just ahead.

By the time the day was over I’d talked with and listened to more people than I usually talk to in a week in my own neighborhood at home.

The pace of life is different there than in Houston. Conversations take precedence over tasks. You don’t call ahead for visits – dropping in is preferable. Being a neighbor matters. So you stop what you are doing and lean on a pickup truck and talk. And listen.

The issues of life are not much different, however. People struggle with families, with health, with jobs, with finances. And people have dreams.

Sure, I’d like to leave the clerical collar in Houston. But apart from any professional role or title, I will still listen to those stories. I’d like to return to the city with some of the rural pace of life, remembering to take time to listen to the holy stories of God at work in the lives of the people around me.