25 Years Later

I was in Winnipeg this past weekend, hanging out with some very good friends from a long time ago.  This is a picture of my teenage tribe, except for Garth and Shaun who didn't come until the next day.  I'll bet if I dig through my bins of stuff I will find a picture with exactly the same people, in virtually the same position, taken about twenty-five years ago. We all look great in this picture - look at us smile!

I was in Winnipeg for two reasons:  this reunion of the youth-group gang, and a reading from The Camino Letters at the McNally Robinson bookstore.  The man who organized the youth retreats when we were all young was Ted Dodd, and Ted happens to be my taskmaster for Chapter 4 of the letters.  At McNally Robinson Ted read his task to me and I read my letter to him.

I found this difficult to do without crying - especially there, especially having not seen Ted for years before that day, and especially with this gang of old friends watching me.   It's strange (but not really) how deeply I still love all of them.  I haven't really kept in touch.  I left a long time ago, and left some love behind.

At church on Sunday morning, at the reunion worship service, Ted talked about The Diviners and the river that flows both ways.  Life is like that.  He also talked about the need to propel the things that we knew back then into this broken world, and he is right.  I was glad to be reminded.

And then I went to McNally Robinson to read, too nervous to eat lunch, not sure of what shade of lipstick to put on ....

This is Linda

The first stranger who arrived for the reading was a woman named Linda, who came to introduce herself and to tell me that I looked exactly like my mother.  She heard about the reading through Ernie Bies, the man who helped to edit a book about Hearst, Ontario where my family is from.

Linda lives in Winnipeg, and was a schoolmate of my sisters in Hearst, long before I was born. She didn't know that I was about to read Chapter 4 when she told me that I look like my mother.

Linda didn't really know anything about the book at all.  But with those few words she gave me all that I needed for that day in Winnipeg, a place that one of our kids calls "the heart of the heart of the continent."  So true.