Our ministry of traveling around and sharing the Gospel through juggling and magic has led to a lot of deceptively superficial relationships. We know prison chaplains, nursing home volunteer coordinators, school principals, pastors, etc. who we meet at shows and, if we are invited back, begin to get to know in a unique and seemingly deep way. After all, working together sharing the Gospel with hurting people, even if it is once or twice a year, has a feeling of intimacy. We are, after all, doing a very important job in a creative way. We are working side by side, if only for an hour every once in a while, to bless hurting, lost, confused, sad and angry people. In the brief time it takes us to unload and set up, we always catch up on our families. Sometimes we share meals, pray or discuss theology together. But these are usually people we don't actually know well.
Occasionally something happens to change that. This weekend was one of those times. I have known James Wethersbee for several years now. He is the chaplain at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital. Twice a year I do a show at the hospital, and once a year James comes to the school where I teach. When I go there, I bring my students once to do their LOL show and I go alone once to do my Supreme Court Jesters show. When he comes to the school he alternates between doing a presentation on mental health one year and the civil rights movement the next. I respect what he does and he respects what I do. Sue and I have met his wife, Valerie briefly twice at conferences. But this year, James agreed to come to Baptist Park - a summer camp that I direct - to be our Labor day Retreat speaker, and Val came with him.
I have already had a closer friendship with James than many of our hosts and hostesses, as I often call him to consult on students who are dealing with mental health concerns. He was the key note speaker at Right Here, Right Now, a conference my daughter, Naomi, helped to found. Also, I'll never forget the day my mother-in-law was having open heart surgery at Maine Medical Center. We ran into James unexpectedly in the hallway, as he was there to visit a patient of his. When we told him why we were there, he prayed with us for her surgery right there in the corridor.
But when my wife, Sue, and Valerie spent the weekend together, it was like two identical twins catching up at a family reunion. They both love to paint with watercolors, cook without recipes, experience new adventures, and have husbands who like the spotlight a little too much at times. They are both afraid of spiders and have a theology that is a balance of biblical literalism on one side and common sense on the other. They both went to Catholic schools but didn't get excited about Christ in a real way until adulthood. In both cases, this conversion experience had to do with reading daily devotional magazines sent to them by loved ones. James looked at me over lunch on the final day on the retreat and said, "How did people from different races, cultures, upbringings and regions end up marrying identical twins?"
Of course they're not entirely that similar. Sue is and educator and Val is a psychiatrist. Sue grew up in Maine, Val is from Mobile, Alabama. (On a different note, she impressed me when she said she graduated high school with Hank Aaron's little cousin!) Val as dreadlocks and Sue... not so much. But they had so much fun together the whole weekend.
Meanwhile, James and I got to know each other a bit more, too. Ironically, I think it was, in part, because we weren't all about the intensity of our usual hour of ministry together. We stargazed with our wives after the kids were all in their cabins. We joined the kids at mini golf and volleyball. And, my highlight of the weekend, we played in the camp ping pong championship match. ( I won.)
And,in one of those coincidences that Sue likes to call a 'God wink', we are doing a show next weekend near their home in Camden. Val and Sue have already planned that we will get together while we're in the area.
I look forward to it.