Life and Faith

Haunted

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 3 Comments

Door-AjarToday, after lunch after worship, I went to one of our senior living communities to preside over our monthly communion there.  I love doing that – extending the morning’s table to a group of our saints who can’t make it to the church in the morning.  For some, it’s too hard to physically get into the van that brings them to church, and then too hard to climb even a few stairs.  For others, one hour-ish is just too long to sit in a less than comfortable pew with restrooms too far away.

So we take church to them, gladly.  Two retired clergy who live in this place, and who worship with us regularly, organize the whole thing and I appreciate that.  These two guys could easily play Statler and Waldorf – the old Muppets commentating in the balcony. They love to make cranky observations about church, but I’ve learned as I watch them minister to the saints at communion that you only have to dust off that fine powder of curmudgeon to discover some sweet and compassionate men.

When I arrived at our communion place, which is also where people gather to watch movies and assemble jigsaw puzzles, one of the deacons told me that a regular wasn’t feeling well enough to join the group; could we take communion to her?  Of course.  As we went to her room, we passed one room where a church member recently died.  Farther down the hall, we passed the room where that woman’s husband died a year or so earlier.  Other people now live in those rooms.

It was odd passing those rooms where I spent a few very intense hours as they lay dying.  It’s odd that other people live there now.  It’s odd that those place which were so holy during those dying days are now rooms for another purpose.  Is the holinesss still there?  Or did it leave with the soul of the departed?

After communion I stopped by the hospital to visit another member who has been unconscious in the intensive care unit for ten days now.  She’s another saint of the church.  At 93, she’s been taking French lesson.  As I entered the ICU, I passed by the room where a member was recovering from a stroke.  She has since passed, but I remember the conversations she and I had in that room, and the prayers shared there with family and friends.

So I’m feeling a bit haunted today; haunted by the memory of people who have died, haunted in spaces they inhabited, haunted not so much by their death but by their absence.  It’s odd to feel haunted on the first day of Advent.  Of all the things this season is about, mourning loss or even just remembering it doesn’t quite fit the bill.  It’s a season of light and dark, of portents and hope, of God breaking into the world.  It’s not about our breaking out of the world, or about emptiness.

But maybe it is.  Maybe Advent is about loss, in a way – the loss of the old way of doing things, the loss of the old understanding of how God does things. And maybe it’s a little okay to be haunted by that.

Stuffed; or better, My Cup Runneth Over

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEarly this morning I was on my way to the grocery store for eggs and Rainier beer, because it’s Thanksgiving, of course.  As I drove along the familiar route, I looked up to the steeple of the Methodist church, and noticed a bird on top.  It took me a moment, because I wasn’t sure if it was a real bird, perched atop the cross on top of the steeple, or some sort of weather vane thing. It was 7:15 on Thanksgiving morning and no one else was on the road, so I just watched for a few seconds until the bird moved its head, and the mystery was solved.  Because I was driving toward what was left of the sunrise the bird was silhouetted, and I couldn’t tell what it was, but I guessed it might be a seagull.  Interesting.

For the rest of the drive I thought about the bird on the cross on the steeple.  Maybe it’s keeping watch, or having its own little vigil for all of its bird-kin who gave their lives today that we might enjoy turkey and dressing and the works.

I got to the store and immediately went to Starbucks, because Momma hadn’t had her morning coffee yet and it would just be better if I did.  I got my eggs, and noted the Safeway does not sell Rainier beer, and picked up a few things to make a pumpkin cheesecake I hadn’t planned on baking.  I thanked everyone at the store profusely for working on Thanksgiving.  They were all quite gracious, and said no problem, that’s why we’re here.  Nice.

On the way home I thought about food.  I thought about my plan to eat so that I’m full but not stuffed, and my intention for exercise today.  Then I thought about all the people who will be getting their Thanksgiving dinner at a shelter or soup kitchen, if they get any Thanksgiving at all.  I thought about the cut in food stamps, and the food that flies off the shelves at our local food pantries, and maybe yours, too.  I thought about the woman at my parents’ church who died recently, about her personal ministry of collecting food from  local stores and driving it out to the fields to feed the migrant workers.

Last night at dinner our daughter asked about the Great Depression.  She’s reading the American Girl “Kit” books, and wanted to know what a depression is.  I told her that her grandparents remember the Depression, and how her great grandmothers would give food to anyone who came to the house who looked hungry.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but it does stir stuff up, stuff about the privilege of having a table of friends or family to eat with, the privilege of drinking good wine and eating an ethically-raised turkey.  It stirs up stuff about people who don’t have community or food; it stirs up stuff about the gloss of the first Thanksgiving story.

We’re joining friends whom we love for dinner today; I am grateful that they invited us.  They’re not particularly religious people, so I imagine there will be no grace said at the table, which is fine, because I can say many graces of my own today.  So here goes – and a happy Thanksgiving to you.

God of bounty, who calls us to see the scarcity;

may we be full today.

May we be full of your stuff, and not ours –

full of gratitude, of course;

full of mercy for the things that go wrong;

full of sorrow for those who hunger;

full of hospitality to those who are lonely;

May our cups runneth over.

God who loves the widows and orphans, who calls us to look far to the margins,

may we hunger today.

May we hunger for your graces, and not ours –

hunger for some justice;

hunger for some healing;

hunger for kindness, humility, and faith.

Hunger for our suffering kin who are so depleted they cannot even wail.

Our cups do run over, God, because you love us.

Let us fill each other’s cups today.

Amen.

The gathering

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 4 Comments

angel weepingHaving just led my third memorial service in three weeks, and with All Saints still fresh in my mind, and with one of our members in her last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about death and grief and community.  I’ve also had a lot of stiffness in my “angel wing spots” – that place just inside the shoulder blades that get tense and knotty.  I’m thinking it’s accumulated grief, having witnessed a lot of tears and soggy tissues lately.

I’m one of those who often says, “I don’t know what people who don’t have a church do when someone they love dies,” except now I do, because I’ve been a witness to that, too.  The first of the recent memorials was for a woman whose husband described her as “a very lapsed Catholic.”  Church is not his thing, and was not hers, but they needed a place to have a memorial for this woman who was an extraordinary advocate for justice in many ways.  The church, full of faithed and non-faithed people, was packed, like Christmas Eve packed. People wept, and sang, and gave testimony to her life.  I offered a prayer and a blessing.

The second memorial was for a woman who was a person of faith, but who had so many different communities of which she was a part – 12 Step, running, partying, engineers.  Again the people gathered, some have nothing to do with God, some relying on their Higher Power, at least one who follows the path of Buddhism.  God didn’t matter to so many of them, but gathering in community mattered very, very much.

So to my own question of “what do people who don’t have a church do when someone they  love dies?” I now answer: they gather.

And sometimes they gather in a church, because (at least for me) churches still offer the witness of hospitality, opening our doors to those who grieve. We don’t ask for proof of baptism at the door; we don’t preach that those who don’t believe in Jesus will go to hell when they die.  We open our doors. Because they – whatever they believe – need to gather, we do what we can – offer pews and organs and pianos and chairs, and tea and coffee and cookies.  We have projectors and screens for their slide shows, and tables for photographs and flowers. We have deacons who pass out programs and hosts and hostesses who refresh the bowls of nuts.

I think people are surprised that churches do this sort of thing, at least in this neck of the woods.  “You would let us have your service there?  But my loved one wasn’t a member/ didn’t go to church/ maybe didn’t believe in God.”  Yes, we would.  That’s what we do.  We witness to the hospitality of God by offering hospitality to the community.

In my All Saints sermon, I said “I imagine sometimes that the walls of the sanctuary have a patina, invisible layers of our songs and our prayers and the tears shed in this space.”  And here’s the thing: some of those songs and tears have come from people who don’t believe in God, who are shocked to find themselves inside a church, amazed that they are even welcome in a church.  But their tears and songs and silences are part of the patina too. They don’t have to believe in God in order to grieve the death of this person they loved.

There is a holiness in grief, and a privilege in witnessing it.  But I would like a little less of it, please.

Alas.

My Favorite Sunday

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 4 Comments

ray of lightThe celebration of All Saints is, hands down, my favorite Sunday of the year.  Not the Sunday before Christmas, not Easter, not Epiphany or any other, but All Saints.  As the preacher of the day, I always want to capture this elusive feeling/image/sense I have of the day – something glowing, radiant; Ralph Vaughan Williams, gold and white, a packed house with nary a dry eye.  Rarely does it come together that way, but we can have our aspirations.

The church I grew up in didn’t celebrate All Saints; few Protestant churches did in the ’70s and ’80s.  My first experience of the holy day was at seminary, when in the chapel service a list of the dead was read and in the Latin American tradition, after each name was pronounced we all shouted, “Presente!”  They are present.  The saints have left, and haven’t.

This year, it’s a ten-day celebration of saints for me.  It began last Saturday with a memorial service-ish for someone I’d never met, a woman who was not particularly Christian any more, whose friends filled just about every nook and cranny in our sanctuary (which seats around 500.)  Last night, I led our evening worship service, borrowing elements from the Day of the Dead tradition.  People were invited to bring photos of their beloveds who had died, or to write their names on a card, and to take the photos and cards to the communion table and decorate them with flowers and candles and chocolate and other things.  Last night was no glowing, white and gold majestic thing.  It was colorful, vivid, as down-to-earth as you can be while singing accompanied by guitar and accordion.

This coming Saturday I’ll preside over another memorial service, for a young woman who was a member of our congregation whom I knew a little.  She was murdered a few weeks ago, having fallen in with the wrong sort.  Shot in the head after a night at a strip club, she died alone in the middle of the night.  I want to throw up, and scream, and go back in time to save her.  But I can’t.  What I can do is offer a place for her varied group of friends to come and remember her, to testify to the good and to the mess of her life, to build a community so that, at least for a few hours, some light will shine in the darkness that surrounds her death.

And then there’s this Sunday, my favorite, golden and gleaming (maybe).  Good hymns, good liturgy, the roll of the deceased read and the opportunity to name loved ones who are gone.  Communion, too.  I love it, and hope to do it justice but know that really, that’s not up to me but the Spirit who usually does show up when She’s invited, and often shows up when She’s not.

Why do I love it, this day that can be so sad?  I can’t get through “For All the Saints” when we sing that line, “through gates of pearl stream in the countless host.”  Why do I love it? I think because it’s a thin place, All Saints Day.  Earth and heaven breathe on each other like a mother and child snuggling at bedtime.  It’s a thin line between the living and the dying, because all of us who are alive still face the mystery of death, and because those who have died linger among us in their gifts and legacies, and their eerie presence that we still feel at unexpected times.

All Saints Sunday is coming, and I am glad for that.  In the meantime, there is a memorial service to plan and, I just learned, another one after that.  There are committee meetings to prep for, and a poetry class that starts this Sunday.  There’s a newsletter article to write, and one last pumpkin to carve at home.  I might even put up a few cobwebs for Halloween, and I still need to buy candy.

In the meantime, life happens as it happened for all the saints.  We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.  That’s what I’m counting on, when my meantime ends and that thin line is crossed.

Pride and Humility, with maybe a bit of prejudice thrown in

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment
But maybe it's humble pie...

But maybe it’s humble pie…

So I was pretty sure I was about to get my gluteus maximus handed to me on a platter.  Instead, I received a more gracious lesson in humilty than I could ever have imagined.

Someone else handed that part to me on a platter in a different matter, but that’s another story.

A friend of mine just posted “I’ve been learning a lot about humility lately” and I replied “me too.”  I have a new-found respect for the beatitude about the meek, because if they’re anything like the few meek people I knew, I do believe they deserve the inheritance of this beautiful earth.

Maybe like a lot of people, I have a lumpy ego – strong in some areas, wilted in others.  In my role as pastor, and particularly as female pastor, I’ve assumed a strong stance.  Just because I’m a lady minister does not mean that I am a pushover, so I will assert myself in meetings and sermons  and emails and all sorts of places.  And sometimes I really am working from a strong place; sometimes I’m just pretending and praying that no one will pull the curtain and discover that, in fact, I am not Great and Powerful but just pretending to be.

I want to be strong, smart, articulate, assertive, on top of things.  But I learned today that sometimes being those things is off-putting or discouraging to someone else.  There I was, talking to someone whom the world might disregard, overlook, or write off, for reasons of prejudice I won’t go into.  I was pretty sure this person was mad at me and was going to let me have it.  So I had girded my loins and prayed my version of the Sinner’s Prayer: “Dear sweet Jesus, please help me to keep my mouth shut and help me to channel just a little bit of your grace.  Amen.”

Well, Jesus didn’t need to help me keep my mouth shut because my Meek of the Earth person did.  In an elegant, direct, kind way, this person helped me understand that when I put forth my Miss Smartypants self, I can be intimitidating.  The wilted part of my ego finds it hilarious that I could intimidate anyone, but the reality check I had today confirmed it.  At some point during our conversation I had the big a-ha.  Oh, this is what Jesus means by the least of these.  These are the ones we are to care about and to care for.  I have gotten it wrong, wrong, wrong.  It really is so not about me.

Anyway, I’m humbled today, and that comes from a strong place, if you know what I mean.

The Kindness of Strangers

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 6 Comments

kindnessSo I’m at Target, because it’s my day off and one pair of jeans evidently isn’t sufficient for our second grader.  Because I have been very, very good at Target, and bought only two pairs of size 6 pants and one package of trouser socks (as opposed to $150 worth of stuff I don’t need) I treat myself to Starbucks which, quite conveniently, is right there in the Target.

The woman ahead of me in line is chatting up quite a storm and I keep telling myself “this extra minute she’s taking will not throw off your entire day’s schedule.”  I breathe in through my nose and breathe out through my  mouth.  I imagine I am one with the universe, but I know this is a lie, because really, all I want is my skinny latte, thank you very much.  There’s only one thing standing between me and my latte, and that is this chatty woman.

She finishes her order, then turns to me and says, “Would you mind signing a birthday card for a complete stranger?  My best friend is stuck in a hotel room all by herself on her birthday and she’s going through a nasty divorce and I thought this card signed by random people would cheer her up.”  I say yes, and get my comeuppance for my impatience.  The Universe is right more often than I am.  We meet at the pick-up counter, and I have plenty of time to sign the card, because her mocha latte with four pumps of peppermint is taking a long time.  While we wait, she asks another few folks to sign the card, and then leaves.

I’m still waiting for my drink, but I notice she is on her way out the door without her Minty Minty Special, so I go after her and ask if maybe she would like her drink.  She smiles, and makes that face I make at least three times a day – I believe we call that “chagrin” –  and I get my latte and go on my merry way.

That was a kind thing for her to do  – to picture her friend ordering room service in her jammies, all alone on her birthday in some generic hotel room and to want her not to feel sad.  She put herself out there, a little bit, risked some foolishness so she might cheer up her friend.  I’ve always appreciated the kindness of strangers; I haven’t depended on it, but I do appreciate it.

So I’ve been wondering how I can be kind to our congressmen and women right now.  Really, they are strangers to me.  Our congressman attends our Christmas Eve service, but other than a handshake, I don’t know him.  I don’t know any of these people duking it out at the capitol.  I know what I think of them, especially those on the other side of the aisle than mine.  But this little voice – maybe it’s Jesus – keeps tickling my brains saying, “You have to be kind to strangers.  And you have to love your enemies.”  Sigh.  Why does Jesus have to make everything so hard?

So I guess I have to pray for all those people, the red state people and the blue state people.  (Honestly, I can never remember which is which.)  I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to pray for God to change them, but I think I’m on the right track by asking God to help them.  I’ll pray for Pam, alone in a strange city in a Hyatt on her birthday.  I’ll pray for her friend, too, because she pretty much made my day.

Here’s to some kindness all around.

Auld_Lang_Syne

For the rain it raineth every day

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 4 Comments

Heavy DownpourLong ago, while studying the Hebrew scriptures in seminary, I was more than a little bored while we were in the middle of 1 & 2 Chronicles and their fully detailed description of building the temple in Jerusalem.  Feel free to read 2 Chronicles 3-6 if you want to get a sense of this.  Anyway, dear Marv Chaney noted our rolling eyes and yawns, and said something like this:

“Surely these details are abundant, but I tell you, some day when you’re the pastor of a church and you’re building a new sanctuary, you will want to fill me in on all the details of the plans.”  Yeah, right, I thought, little knowing that in my first call, we would remodel the sanctuary; in my second call, we would build an entirely new sanctuary/office/fellowship hall; in my third call, we would remodel the kitchen and fellowship hall; in my present call, we are figuring out what to do with this building which of late has sprung a few leaks.

When I went into ministry, I did not realize I was signing up for building management.  I wasn’t, of course, but….  We have really, really competent lay folk – architects and engineers and interior designers and contractors – who are able to make informed decisions, and building and custodial staff who deal with the nuts and bolts of our physical plant.  But still, hundred-year-old buildings, like hundred-year-old people, require a lot of care.  So while over the past few months we’ve talked about accessibility and deferred maintenance and improvements, and while in the last week we’ve dealt with significant water damage caused by rain during a re-roofing project, I’ve been a bit convicted by something Frederick Buechner once said in an interview with The Christian Century.

“I say the best thing that could happen to your church is for it to burn down and for all your fax and email machines to be burned up, and for the minister to be run over by a truck so that you have nothing left except each other and God.”  (9/18/02)

There are days.  There are those days when I wish we didn’t have a building to care about.  But then I remember the holiness of a church building and of our church building.  WIthin these walls people have seriously mourned, and riotously praised.  Within these walls the Spirit has led people to join the family of God.  We’ve broken bread and shared the prayers of broken hearts.  We have sung, and those songs still linger like incense among the rafters.  The church building is a holy place, not because of the cross or pulpit or stained glass, but because in the building God and humans have run into each other and laughed with amazement at it all.

So I guess I’m both resigned and grateful to have this building to take care of.  And there will always be something to take care of, because as Feste sang in Twelfth Night, “the rain it raineth every day,” or the boiler will be on the fritz, or a toilet will overflow.  But I would appreciate it if God would stop sending the rain our way so that we can mop things up and get on with the work of ministry.

A Perfect Moment

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 6 Comments

asteriskThis morning I was sitting in the sanctuary about half an hour before the service started.  I came down from the office because the choir was rehearsing one of my favorite anthems – John Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth –  and hearing just once in the service wasn’t going to cut if for me.  I sat down in one of the transept pews, next to a dear, long-time member of the church who comes early, I think, so she can hear the choir rehearse.

As the choir was making their way through the song, one of my other pastor colleagues came in with a family whose infant son was to be baptized.  The parents joined the church at Easter, when the dad was baptized, so there was something lovely about he and his wife bringing their baby to be baptized.  The child was as bald as a peeled peach, with a sweet sweet round face.  Just enough drool to make him adorable hung on his chin, and he smiled at me while I made silly faces at him.

My colleague was showing the parents the baptism choreography, and as he took the baby, so tenderly, and kissed his little forehead, the choir was singing, “For the joy of human love/Brother, sister, parent child,” I thought: that’s perfect.  Everyone is up there practicing for the real thing, and the community isn’t gathered yet to witness it, but I was able to witness this moment when song and delight and love came together just right.

That would have been enough for me, that experience of the holy, twenty minutes before the service started.  But the choir finished and need to trot downstairs to put their robes on, and the family need to do one last diaper change before the service.  I had gone to the trouble to write a sermon, so I figured I might as well preach.

Those perfect moments are rare, especially when you’re in the business of church and you have a fair amount of responsibility for all the details that go into that one hour a week.  Rarely do we conduct perfect worship, nor does God want perfection.  I think God would much rather have something flawed and authentic than perfect and over-rehearsed.  But those rare perfect moments are like little asterisks at the end of the sentence of a hard week, a reminder that the crap gets meliorated by a gracious, patient God who isn’t too high and mighty to show up for rehearsals.

It was good worship today – not perfect, but good – and as one parishioner noted, it thundered during the baptism, which was cool of the Holy Spirit.  It’s so good in the fall to have everyone back together, the fullness of worship and hymns and prayers and rambunctious kids in the children’s moment and all that.

But truth be told, when the service started, I had already done my worship for the day.

Hard Work Does Not a Good Suit of Armor Make

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 5 Comments

suit of armorOften I am surprised that at the ripe old age of 49, I am still learning things about myself. As a younger version of myself might have said, “No duh.”

This week’s insight: I work hard so as to avoid criticism. Sometimes I enjoy working hard because I love whatever project I’m doing. Back in my single days, when I had more free time, I painted furniture. I could spend an entire Saturday painting squiggles and checkerboards on chairs and love every minute of it. Sometimes I enjoy working hard because of the intellectual challenge – writing a sermon or some liturgy, or preparing for a class I’ve never taught and have to create from scratch.

But the ugly truth is that much of the time I work hard so that others won’t criticize me. I look at my to-do list and sometimes prioritize based on how much flack I will get from a person or a committee if I don’t do that particular thing. I anticipate all the critiques that could come my way if I don’t do something, or don’t do something well, and I bust my proverbial butt to create something excellent – not because the thing deserves to be excellent, but because I don’t want people to complain if/when it isn’t excellent.

Here are the flaws in this plan:

1. Some people criticize no matter what.

2. Sometimes my best is not what someone else considers good.

3. If I keep this up, I will become cranky, feel put upon, and likely burn out.

I once worked with a pastor who was adamant about not being a people-pleaser, and let me tell you, he wasn’t. There was a big downside to that, because he wore his “I’m not a people pleaser” t-shirt with pride, to every worship service, to every session meeting, to every staff meeting. But there was an upside, too. He was not overwhelmed when he was criticized. He had really decent boundaries around work. And he made decisions and prioritized not to stave off the critics in the church, but because it was the right thing to do.

Of course I imagine more criticism than would actually come my way. I work in a place where people are rather kind, and thoughtful, and gentle with their criticism, which is usually valid. But my imagination has been working overtime lately, with a few big hard decisions that have been made, and with the start of the program year and a long to-do list. With my overactive imagination has come some edginess, and anxiousness, and definite thoughts of being put upon. And I have put them upon myself.

Last week, just before the benediction, I quoted a line from our closing hymn: “My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.” I really don’t believe God is in the criticism business, that God is in the grace business. So I’m working off taking off that suit of armor, and putting on my dance shoes, to work with grace.

“I know nothing, except what everyone knows –

if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”

W. H. Auden

20130913-100332.jpg

My husband and I dancing (sorry the video won’t play) at a concert in a park

The Unknown Owl

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

eastern-screech-owl-georgia_67926_990x742This past summer while on vacation, my husband and I took a walk in the woods with our dog. I’ve walked this particular path hundreds of times – the woods are on property my extended family has owned since the 1940’s.

Anway, it was dusk and we wanted to take the puppy out for his evening constitutional. The sun had mostly set; it had been a clear day and it promised to be a beautiful evening. As we entered the woods we heard an owl, and as we walked deeper into the darkness, we heard the owl (or what we presumed to be the owl) following us.

I love owls, and I give J. K. Rowling a good bit of credit for that. I also love them because I think they are beautiful, and they eat mice and insects and make a pretty sound. But for some reason, this owl spooked me a bit. I don’t find the woods scary, and I wasn’t alone, and I love owls, but something was amiss.

It was the puppy. At the time the dog weighed about six pounds. He’s a little thing and always will be. And this owl was following us, and I didn’t know if it was just being friendly or if the puppy appeared to be a tasty morsel.

Now I know most owls avoid puppies for dinner. Or I think I know that. Just writing that I worried that the owl would eat my dog makes me realize how ridiculous the thought was – in lawsa bit like that scene from the original movie The In-Laws, where Peter Falk as the maybe mentally imbalanced CIA agents tells Alan Arkin as the hyper normal dentist about the time the giant tsetse flies flew away with the babies from the village.

Still, my husband and I turned around, and I carried the puppy, and we left those woods.

What made it amiss was the realization that I was responsible for a vulnerable creature. Our dog was with us, and we needed to protect it from whatever real predators were out there. The problem is that I don’t know if the predator was real or imaginary.

Everyday people have to decide how to protect the vulnerable from predators imaginary or real. We’re doing it right now with Syria; we do it as we think about how to spend taxpayers’ money in aid programs; we do it as we clarify rights for the mentally and physically disabled. We do it with our kids and with our elderly and with those who look so normal and fine who a few of us know are really in anguish.

The threat of the owl seemed so real; the vulnerability of my puppy was so real. And there I was, at the end of dusk, trying to see what to do.