Opening Hands

Yesterday, while I was finishing a small garden project in the courtyard at Open Hands, an organization here in Santa Fe that provides services to the elderly and disadvantaged, a young bearded guy dressed in college cap and t-shirt appeared in the courtyard. We greeted one another and began a conversation. As we talked I learned that he was the staff leader of a large group from Glorieta Baptist Conference Center that had been volunteering at Open Hands all week. Most were teens, but there were also adults in the group.

Our conversation centered on this young guy as we made our way with words. I’m naturally curious about people, but his strong southern accent in this land of many accents caught my attention right off. “You’re from the south?” Affirmative.

“Where?”

“Alabama,” smiling.

“I have Alabama roots,” although I’ve been there only once, and that trip just a year ago.

 I immediately became curious about this Southern Baptist boy who later revealed his dyed-in the-wool conservative leanings when I asked him his opinion on women in the ministry. “It depends…” he responded. I was ready to tell him about  someone I have finally started reading only recently. Barbara Brown Taylor, an ordained Episcopal priest, now teaches religion at a small college in northeast Georgia, after a 20-year career in parish ministry. In 1995 she was voted one of the 12 most effective preaching voices in the United States by Baylor University.

“Oh, well, never mind,” I replied.

“Wait,” he protested in his most earnest southern drawl. So I gave him my short story’s worth of information on Barbara Brown Taylor.

After listening to this guy’s young story, learning that he’s confused about what he wants to do with his life, after three years of college, the most recent semester an apparent wipe out, I instinctively started mining his short academic life, as always eager to question and suggest, and finally throwing in a little of my own life of missteps and saves. Somehow he’s convinced that he’s made too many bad choices already—from engineering to computer programming to, I don’t recall. He loves acting. He also loves his summer work on the staff of Glorietta, where his job includes acts of generosity, such as he led this last week at Open Hands. IN a very telling comment, he observed that the young people he’s leading come from parents whose generation doesn’t give much thought to serving others.

As I finished watering my new plantings, he sticking to me as I moved around the garden, the group inside the center began a chorus of standard Baptist hymns. “How Great Thou Art…how great thou art.” “When they get to ‘Amazing Grace,’ I want to sing…my favorite,” I smiled. “Oh, I’m sure they will,” he smiled back.

Tools and supplies put away, new plantings watered, I made ready to leave, my brief job here complete. We walked into the great room where everyone else was gathered. It was already past time for the clients to start boarding the vans for their afternoon return home The ad hoc choir finished a hymn and began chattering over one more selection. I wished my new friend the best and put my right arm around him in a half, but heartfelt embrace. He returned the gesture. I would have given him one of my bear hugs, for which I am known, but I held off. My friend Peggy says that the Holy Spirit was present for this Friday afternoon meeting in the garden, that we were blest. I’m inclined to agree.

Opening Hands—Santa Fe New Mexico (July 12, 2008)

R. Harold Hollis