My Friend Jim

 I was on my way to the grocery store. I went out my front door and saw my neighbor working on his garden. 

“Hi, Jim”

“Hi, Brad”

“Hey, did I tell you I preached at my church last weekend.” 

“You had a preacher at your church.”

“Haha, no, I preached at my church.” 

“Wow, cool, what did you preach about?” 

Jim lives across the street, but he used to live in the house I live in. In fact, he built the second floor onto our house when he owned it. He told me a story about a woman he loved who slipped into some form of fundamentalism. He seemed heartbroken by it still. .

“Well, my sermon starts with a story about my youth. When I was in high school, my coach told me I could win an Olympic gold medal, and I believed him. It changed my life.”

“It gave you purpose!!” 

“Yeah, exactly, I knew my goal, my destination, and I disciplined myself. And most Christians don’t know their destination, so they don’t know how to get there. That was my point of telling the story. They think they are going to heaven, so they pray a lot and tend to the health of their soul. But, in fact our destination is justice, just community. When Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God, He was talking about justice.”

“Yeah.”

“So our goal is to model the ideal of how human beings ought to live together. And then I said ‘How do we do that? We apologize.’”

As I talked, I noticed Jim started to cry. His eyes welled up with tears. Jim is elderly. 

“I often think during the day,” Jim began, “‘what is my purpose? How can I find meaning in the moment?’ I ground myself.”

“Do you know who Victor Frankl is?” I said.

“I have heard of him.”

“Yeah his famous book is Man’s Search for Meaning. He is a holocaust survivor. He observed why people die or kinda lost hope in the concentration camps. They lose purpose.”

“Right. They say, ‘People get old when they stop striving.’”

“Yeah. I remember talking to a pastor once. He said to me 'Brad, you are too hard on yourself.’ I said, ‘No, I am not hard enough on myself.’ It is work and challenging ourselves that makes our life exciting.”

A tear went down Jim’s cheek. 

“I love you, Brad”

“I love you too, Jim”

We hugged, and I got in my car. As I got in my car, I remembered a discussion I had today at lunch with my pastor. We were talking about pastors who demand loyalty. They are insecure. My pastor said, “They are not comfortable in their own skin, in who they are.”

I laughed. I had a deep sense of my own ability to connect with my neighbors. I love open, transparent, authentic discussions, connections with folk. 

How can I not be happy? I just made a human connection with my neighbor. Life is good.