Update #8.2 - What Goes On In Our Minds (In Case You Were Wondering...)

After pouring a few spoonfuls of honey into my o-so-delicious chamomile tea, I found a chair on the bar between two 20-sommat young ladies. It's always a bit odd striking up conversations with women only a few years older than yourself...to them and to any outsider looking on, it must seem like you're hitting on them. I don't like it one bit.

Nonetheless, I knew it needed to be done. So I sipped away at my tea for a few minutes building up the courage to speak to the first one. Just start saying something, Alan - it doesn't have to be perfect. If you wait till something good comes, you'll never do it. "Hey!" I said. Smooth. "Is that one of the new Macs?" She turned and looked at me. "Yeah. I think so."

"Well, how do you like it?" This was still a bit awkward.

"It's nice." "Yeah, mine's treated me well" and I pointed to my own. We talked for about half a minute more, but when she stopped making eye contact all together, I realized the conversation was over. Hmm - you can't win 'em all.

Five minutes passed as I sipped my tea, walked around the coffeeshop to find a newspaper, added more honey, and finally worked up the courage to try lady number two.

"Hi." I said. At this point I had to follow up. When your courage is sapped, sometimes you just have to start saying something and force yourself to keep talking. "Are you from around here?"

"I am," she said, almost happily - as if she was glad to have someone to talk to. This was encouraging.

"Well, I'm on a road trip and was wondering what sort of things there were to do in St. Louis."

"Oh!" she nodded. "Well, let's see....there's the Zoo, which is free, and Forest Park is just down the road from here. How long are you here?" Just today, I told her.

"Is it just you on the road trip?" At this point, I decided to ramp up the spiritual side of the conversation. Once you've chit-chatted a while, you can work up your courage a little more. And maybe she was a Christian already anyways. So I took the plunge.

"Well, it's just me and a friend, and we're doing something of an evangelistic road trip from Birmingham to Chicago - trying to initiate conversations with people about spiritual things along the way and such. The other day, we were in Cincinnati with the homeless all day. And yesterday we were in Chicago. The reason I was asking you about things to do in St. Louis is because we're trying to find something that can be unique to this city." She seemed somewhat intrigued, but didn't reveal whether or not she was a Christian. I took this as a sign to keep talking about what we'd done and seen.

I told her the story of the Louisville Slugger approach ('we said thus and such, and he said thus and such'), the different conversations we've had over chess games, and the like - hoping these stories would draw out where she was coming from. Also, they were an easy means of sharing the gospel with her.

"What denomination are you with?" she asked.

"Well, we're both Presbyterians - but we're more interested in the teaching of the Bible and Christ, and not in our denomination. If it ever departs from Biblical teaching, I'm not just going to blindly follow it. What about you...are you with a denomination or anything?"

She seemed surprised that I asked this. "Well, funny, actually. My mother was a nun. So I grew up Catholic, and I don't suppose you ever really stop being Catholic."

This would have been a good time for me to ask her what she meant by that, but instead I just said, "Hm. Interesting." I paused a moment and then said, "So did you grow up in a Nunnery, or how did that work? I don't think I've ever met the daughter of a nun..."

"You probably haven't," she said. "There's not too many of us."

I was thoroughly confused, but didn't really want to ask her how this daughter-of-a-nun business had come about. Eventually, I thanked her for her tips on where to go, and got up to add some more honey to my tea. By now, it had become very lukewarm and very sweet. I stopped by the table where Shannon and Denny were playing checkers. "She's the daughter of a nun," I told them.

"What??" "I'm gonna see if I can talk to her again...I didn't really know where to go in that conversation." So I went back and thought for a minute before re-engaging her.

"One more question for you." "Sure," she replied, and turned my way. "You said you were a history major. Has your study of history led you away from Catholicism? Because you said you 'never really stop being a Catholic' but sound like you don't really agree with it all."

"I wouldn't say history as much, because I didn't study much from that time period. And I still believe a lot of the central ideas about justice and such, but the church has become so stringent and political." She had an issue with women not being allowed to preach. "I think they should just change with the times. I mean I understand holding your values, but they turn away so many people because they want to be so conservative."

There were all sorts of way I could go now, and I'm still not sure I chose the best route, but I went ahead and told her that a lot of the people we had come into contact with over the last few days had had similar sentiments. Since the emphasis on the personal worked so well with Camille, I figured I'd give it a shot again.

After we talked for a bit, she seemed ready to end the conversation, so I finished with this: "Well, thanks for talking with me - I want to just stress that Christianity isn't about the institution, but about a personal relationship with God, and you seem to grasp that." I'm not sure she really did grasp that, but if she didn't it would at least encourage her to think about it.

"Yeah," she said, "maybe I've given you more information than you asked for, but that's just what I think about the church."

----

Not a milestone conversation by any stretch of the imagination. Really, I was somewhat disappointed, and even more-so now that I look back on how many different ways it could have gone. Still, I am reminded that we don't always get to be harvesters - sometimes we're the seed planters. I shared the gospel with her, and that, I know, has power that is greater than man.

~Alan Halbrooks