Chance Meeting
My son, Robert, gave me a gift certificate to The Frisky Oyster for my birthday. Lori and I decided to use it last night, and go out to dinner after church. We usually go to 4 PM Mass, and since St. Agnes is a quick stroll down Front Street from the restaurant, we wouldn’t be in any danger of being late. Not so.
Much to our surprise and delight, two people we knew from our Brooklyn days were at that Mass. We stopped to chat. One of the women is a parishioner at our former parish, St. Andrew’s. She had come to Greenport to preach at St. Agnes about her experience with the Franciscan Lay Missionaries in Kenya, relating it to the day’s Gospel story of Martha and Mary. I first met her and her family when Lori and I sold Equal Exchange coffee in St. Andrew’s vestibule once a month as part of my Social Justice Committee project.
A second woman came down the steps and smiled broadly when she saw us. Mary B- knew Lori way back from work. She invited us to come over for a glass of wine some evening in August. She and her partner share a home right on the Sound. Situated where we are now we’re oriented more towards the bay; but I remember from our motel and sailboat days sunsets on the Sound are pretty beautiful and mellow.
Is it chance or more when two threads from the past are brought together in the present? It was the strong spiritual community of St. Andrew’s; and a rediscovery of the beauty-and awe-in nature out in the North Fork that got me back on a good path in faith and religion. I know I am blessed to have them both in my life.
