Minutes to Memories

“In our first meeting John asked what my expectations were. I didn’t have any. I had never done this before and didn’t know what to expect. I only knew I wanted to explore the personal dimensions of faith and prayer with a guide instead of working by trial and error as I had been.” – Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

Peterson’s quote applies to my lunch today.

Bruno turned 71 yesterday. He is a retired UCC (United Church of Christ) pastor who lives in Ocean Springs. He spent the bulk of his ministry years as the director of the Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, a ministry that reaches out to the poor. This, Bruno discovered, was his niche.

I’ve admired Bruno for quite some time now. Many people are defined by one word, and the word that comes to mind when I think of Bruno is “gracious.” Not a bad word to define your life if you ask me.

I still remember the first time I met him. We were at a meeting of religious leaders, hosted by the mayor of our city. We went around the room to introduce ourselves, and Bruno identified himself as a retired United Church of Christ pastor. Since it was his first time to attend that meeting, he went on to explain that this was different from the group popularly known as “Church of Christ,” though the two are often confused. When my turn came, I introduced myself as the preacher at the Church of Christ and explained to Bruno that there was absolutely nothing “united” about us!!! :-)

Bruno is a gentleman in the true sense of the word, and when he made a point to track me down once and tell me that I was different than what he expected – and that this was a good thing – I took it as the compliment it was intended to be.

Some time back, I had the idea of asking Bruno if I could sit down with him on a regular basis and just talk – partly to learn from his years preaching good news to the poor, but mostly just to learn from him. He graciously (there’s that word again!) agreed.

So today was day number one. We’re planning to get together at lunch on Fridays when our schedules permit. To just sit and talk. To become closer friends. I am unbelievably excited at the opportunity, and Bruno simply added to my excitement by mentioning that we might have some of these conversations on his sailboat from time to time. I have never been sailing, but I have wanted to for a long time now.

I wish every day was a "change your life" sort of day. I’m funny that way. I have this sneaky suspicion that I’ll look back sometime down the road and see that today actually was one of them.