The call came in the middle of the night. The parson was on-call for crisis intervention. He responded as quickly as his aging body and hybrid car would allow. Turning into the parking lot he saw the flashing lights of the Life Flight helicopter landing on the pad.

Inside the Emergency Room the Nurse-in-Charge briefed him on the situation. The patient was only three. The illness, so seemingly just a childhood malady, had taken a quick turn for the worse.

The parson talked with the family, but the encounter was brief. Personnel were scurrying about. Air Flight nurses were handing the parents maps to the hospital the child was being flown to. The mother’s sister rushed in. Pandemonium was the order of the day. Confusion, dismay, anger, grief, all reflected their image on the face of the parents. “Everything will be okay,” said the mother’s sister. But they all knew it was not going to be okay.

Soon the gurney was empty, the IV stand void of the bags now attached to the hooks on the helicopter. The rotors beat the night air with persistence, and the fragile bubble of a craft turned above the pad, pointing its nose toward the waiting medical facility. The parson stood with some of the family watching the flashing lights recede until they were lost among the twinkling stars. And then the family members piled into their cars and with agonizing slowness followed the path of the copter.

Inside the parson talked with the nurses. He called the pastor of the child’s family and gave him as much information as allowed.

With heavy heart reached into the nurse’s station and pressed the button to open the exit doors. As they swung toward him a sound captured his attention. He listened. It was the sound of a sob. The parson let the doors close. He listened. Again, he heard it. He opened the door to a linen storage closet. In the corner of the closet, under the bottom shelf a woman in scrubs was curled into a ball and sobbing uncontrollably. The parson moved forward. The woman turned.

“Oh, parson,” she cried, “I couldn’t save her. There’s no hope she’ll make it. What can I tell those parents?”

The parson sat on the floor beside the doctor. He held her and let her cry. And then together they went to the chapel.

In the early morning hours the parson headed home with the certain knowledge that he now knew for certain with a parent asked for the name of a doctor which name he would give.

Credits: Life Force Helicopter picture from Adventist Health Systems, Gordon County, Georgia - Crying photo by subscription with Clip Art Dot Com

The plane’s wheels touched down. It was chilly in Portland, Maine. Three plus hours on a less than spacious Delta Connection cramped muscles. The short hike to the car rental area was welcomed. Within a few minutes we drove away from the airport, delighted to discover the highway onto which we’d turned was the avenue to our destination.

We were not in Georgia anymore. This road was rough. Wear and tear from dozens of feet of snow each year combined with applications of salt and scrapings by snow removal equipment contributed to a new meaning of “washboard road.”

Mountains rose on both sides of our journey. Snow patches streaked their sides and topped their peaks. We were in a quiet place that in places seemed a step back in time. The inhabitants we learned quickly are wedded to a practice foreign to those who dwell where we do. When the speed limit sign read thirty miles-per-hour they drove thirty. When those signs read forty that’s the speed they assumed. No one seemed to be possessed of a need to get there first.

We settled into our mountain village lodgings. Nestled in evergreens off the road it was spacious and warm with a fire burning. Looking up through the trees the slopes that a few weeks before had hosted hundreds of skiers looked lonely. We settled in ready to begin our explorations the next morning.

Bright, bright daylight burst through the window. We awoke to the discovery daylight arrives at five in the morning in New England. Our start was early. Our idea of vacation is to stay away from places tourists visit. We take the back roads, those byways marked by numbers in squares and circles on the maps. We saw New Hampshire sights most tourists have missed since the roads were paved.

Hunger set in late in the afternoon. A challenge of back roads wandering is the lack of adequate restaurants. Where do you eat when you’re not sure where you are? We saved on that first day by the sign in front of a church that was built in the late 1700s. It read: “Chicken Pot Pie Supper, All-You-Can-Eat $7.00” We parked the car in the lot behind the church.

“Come on in this way,” said the lady at the outside door of the church’s kitchen. Several women were there piling the pot pie on plates. We were motioned to the dining area where three rows of tables were arranged across the room. We sat down. Those sitting to the sides and across from us continued talking. We waited. One of the women from the kitchen placed steaming plates of pot pie in front of us with the whispered word, “Enjoy.”

The table contained bowls of beans and cold slaw. We were to help ourselves. People across the table continued to talk – to each other. “Excuse me,” I said, “would you pass the slaw?” She did and then turned back to her conversation companion without a word to me.

I turned to Lynn. I whispered. “We’re going to stay here until someone speaks to us.”

We did. And finally they did speak. The lady across from me discovered we graduated from the same university. We were no longer strangers. And over homemade desert we shared our stories. But it took a while to get to that place.

From Georgia to Maine we just have problems welcoming the stranger to our table or pew.

Credits: Mount Washing photo from Clip Art Dot Com; Supper graphic from Church Art Pro

By subscription with Church Art Pro

Ms. Parson and the parson stood at the rail embedded in the rock to protect tourists from falling headlong into Thunder Hole. The place was Acadia National Park. Thunder Hole, located on Desert Island, is a big attraction for visitors to the park. The park interpretive sign says anyone standing where the Parson and Ms. Parson stood witnessed “an ageless battle – the power of the ocean vs. the steadfastness of rock.”

It was low tide as the two stood looking down. There were not waves crashing into the crevice which concentrated the power of the surf in such a way the water on contacting the rear wall would leap sometimes forty feet. Without any danger of being soaked they stared into the crevice created by hundreds of thousands of years of constant pounding by the surf. The smooth walls of the crevice bore witness to majesty of the movement of nature. Below, nestled in the back end of the crevice was a boulder recently tumbled from the upper walls. Soon, in geological terms, it would be small rounded pebble battered about by the sloshing and gurgling of the water’s movement.

The moment was mesmerizing. The rough, hard, seemingly impenetrable granite stone and the tidal movement of the liquid danced for eons to shape what lay below. It was humbling; it made one seem so small in the wonder of God’s creation. Somehow, with the low tide and absence of the crashing waves, what they saw grabbed with greater awe.

After a long time the Parson and Ms. Parson turned and quietly walked up the steps leading from the overlook. One third of the way up they extended polite greeting to a man coming down, and then near the top they spoke to the other five people in his group. The Parson turned to look back down the path to the wonder of nature. As he did, the man yelled up to his companions, “Don’t bother. It’s a dud!”

Credits: This post was made before the parson returned and his pictures of the Thunder Hole were uploaded. This picture comes from Google Images and specifically THIS SITE