There’s a fellow I chat with now and then who works nights at the parking garage where I park my car. He found out I’m a minister (don’t ask me how — for a city of 100,000 people, New Bedford feels like a small town). Turns out he’s a churchgoer. Though we don’t talk theology or narrow denominational differences, we appreciate the fact that we are each religious in our own way. The closest we have come to a theological discussion went something like this:<\/p>\n
“So where are you pastor?” he said.<\/p>\n
“First Unitarian,” I said.<\/p>\n
He nodded, paused for a moment, then said, “What I like to say is:– Got God?” He tends to talk in short epigrammatic sentences.<\/p>\n
I replied, “That about sums it up.”<\/p>\n
As I said, we don’t talk narrow denominational differences. Anyway, tonight I had a meeting of the endowment committee. It was a good meeting, but when I got done I realized that I was exhausted. Felt like maybe I’m fighting off a cold. I drove over to the supermarket to buy some chicken broth, just in case. As I pulled into the parking garage, I was maybe feeling a little sorry for myself.<\/p>\n
The friendly fellow from the parking garage saw me as I waved my pass in front of the sensor to let the gate up. He slid back the window in his booth. “They got you working late,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Yup,” I said.<\/p>\n
We sat there for a moment with our windows open to the damp November evening.<\/p>\n
“Night meeting,” I said.<\/p>\n
He nodded, and I slipped the clutch back in. I parked near the top, climbed down the stairs, and started to head across the street. When I was in the crosswalk, I heard the window to his booth slide open.<\/p>\n
“Keep up the good work,” he said.<\/p>\n
Telegraphically short, but somehow the right thing to say. I turned, stood there in the middle of the empty city street, and pointed back at him. “You, too,” I said.<\/p>\n
It’s not exactly cold tonight, but too damp to linger, so I turned and walked home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a fellow I chat with now and then who works nights at the parking garage where I park my car. He found out I’m a minister (don’t ask me how — for a city of 100,000 people, New Bedford feels like a small town). Turns out he’s a churchgoer. Though we don’t talk theology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-bedford-mass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}