September Evening

The last Saturday evening of September falls tonight and I have loved this day immensely.  West Plano seems unusually calm on this Saturday.  There is probably some calendar reason for this but I will content myself that it is the product of something more grand - like a 'decide to take it easy and not rush' choice, instead of something other.   Perhaps this is naive of me.  After all, we WP people do cluster.  We've not learned the grace of slow.  One night at this function, then another at yet another.  Like a covey of quail we roost in a pack.   But tonight all seems, well, settled, calm, and personal.  Folks walking alone through Steeplechase Park.  Mall parking lots, even church lots, empty.  I wonder?  

My grandparents new the rhythm of life and passed the same on to my parents in my early days.  In the 50s, you worked hard all week  and on Saturday you geared down.  Sunday's you just went to church and rested.  Or, if feeling really ambitious, you went 'visiting.'   There was always someone to see that wasn't expecting you but prepared when you did - and glad to have you.  Food would just appear, and coffee, always fresh coffee,  would be put on.  We kids would play and the adults would talk - talking us right into a a lazy drive home with September's breeze wrestling through the open window of the car.  It was Sunday!  And I don't remember worrying, ever back then, about a paper that was due, or sports, or anything at all.  

Every once in a while I drive by the home I lived in then.  It still stands.  A white frame, two bedroom with an add-on, near Abrams and Trammel.  Across the street from the house is the train track where I would put penny's - hoping to find them flattened out by the trains passing by.  That same track now carries commuters from Richardson, Plano, and McKinney.  

I wonder who lives in that house now?  I wonder if inside there is a boy and whether his Dad works on Saturday?  I wonder if they go to church on Sunday, and if they  ever take drives in September afternoons to go 'visiting'?  Then, I come home to my place here in Plano -  resolved to bring a piece of that time to the folks I now know.  Whether at the game on Friday night or the church house on Sunday, I try to salvage a part of what I learned back then, the best parts, and bring them to my life and ministry now.  Occasionally I make headway.  Like tonight, as I pull out onto Park to find and evening like this, with nothing on my calendar at all, and come visiting... you.

Pastor Sam