Home from vacation on Monday. All week to reorganize and prepare for Presbyterian worship this Sunday in Red Deer. They finally have a new minister coming next week, so delirious joy abounds in their midst.
Rose this morning to a cloudy and chilly morning. It rained in the night, so everything is dripping. Planting perennials will wait till afternoon, I think. Went walking in a fog, and surfaced a memory that is foundational for my faith life: Mr. Farmer singing on Easter Sunday in Transcona. Cold March Easter - howling wind, roiling clouds. A parka Easter rather than a bonnet Easter.
Mr. Farmer was the blind operator of a little canteen at the gates of the CNR shops in my home town. Almost 3000 mean passed through those gates daily, and they all knew "The Blind Man." Only the Church attenders knew that Mr. Farmer had a rich bass-baritone and sang solos from time to time.
Easter Sunday, 1943 or 1944: I was eight or nine years old. Mr. Farmer's daughter Joyce led him to the choir rail, where he stood straight, his hands on the railing. One organ note sounded to start him off, and then it came pouring out of him a cappella - gentle but powerful, simple yet rich. When I try to remember Mr. Farmer's voice, I get a picture of polished dark oak: solid, gleaming deeply, and rich beyond imagining.
As he sang, the clouds above us opened for a moment or two, and a shaft of sunlight beamed in the arched window high on the south wall of the church. It flooded the spot where Mr. Farmer stood like a spotlight. He stood there, bathed in sunlight, and, as he sang, eyes closed, a broad and warm smile spread over his face at the warmth he felt. He looked as though he was welcoming an old friend. In the most profound but simple way, my interior life was changed in that moment. I believe my faith-life was born that day, 'born from above' as John's Gospel puts it.
The memory came back to me as I read a piece by Jean Vanier on the 'net about "Seeing God in the face of others." I'm sure that's what happened to me that day. I'm sure that experience lay behind my strong desire to have my first tattoo be an image of Moses' 'burning bush that is not consumed': the presence of God in light and heat.
I never learned Mr. Farmer's first name. I rarely saw him outside of worship. He was a "friend." Yet, in some ways, I owe the beginnings of whatever trust I have in God to the image of his face, brightened and opened by the sun on a cold and dark Easter morning. Through my life there have been other "Mr. Farmers," but none so basic as the Blind Man who helped me to see.
Rose this morning to a cloudy and chilly morning. It rained in the night, so everything is dripping. Planting perennials will wait till afternoon, I think. Went walking in a fog, and surfaced a memory that is foundational for my faith life: Mr. Farmer singing on Easter Sunday in Transcona. Cold March Easter - howling wind, roiling clouds. A parka Easter rather than a bonnet Easter.
Mr. Farmer was the blind operator of a little canteen at the gates of the CNR shops in my home town. Almost 3000 mean passed through those gates daily, and they all knew "The Blind Man." Only the Church attenders knew that Mr. Farmer had a rich bass-baritone and sang solos from time to time.
Easter Sunday, 1943 or 1944: I was eight or nine years old. Mr. Farmer's daughter Joyce led him to the choir rail, where he stood straight, his hands on the railing. One organ note sounded to start him off, and then it came pouring out of him a cappella - gentle but powerful, simple yet rich. When I try to remember Mr. Farmer's voice, I get a picture of polished dark oak: solid, gleaming deeply, and rich beyond imagining.
As he sang, the clouds above us opened for a moment or two, and a shaft of sunlight beamed in the arched window high on the south wall of the church. It flooded the spot where Mr. Farmer stood like a spotlight. He stood there, bathed in sunlight, and, as he sang, eyes closed, a broad and warm smile spread over his face at the warmth he felt. He looked as though he was welcoming an old friend. In the most profound but simple way, my interior life was changed in that moment. I believe my faith-life was born that day, 'born from above' as John's Gospel puts it.
The memory came back to me as I read a piece by Jean Vanier on the 'net about "Seeing God in the face of others." I'm sure that's what happened to me that day. I'm sure that experience lay behind my strong desire to have my first tattoo be an image of Moses' 'burning bush that is not consumed': the presence of God in light and heat.
I never learned Mr. Farmer's first name. I rarely saw him outside of worship. He was a "friend." Yet, in some ways, I owe the beginnings of whatever trust I have in God to the image of his face, brightened and opened by the sun on a cold and dark Easter morning. Through my life there have been other "Mr. Farmers," but none so basic as the Blind Man who helped me to see.
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