Wednesday, October 11, 2006

#1327 - some final musings De Colores!

Yep, dear reader, please allow me a few final remarks about Walk to Emmaus #1327. And then I'll trust that if you've been on a Walk or on Cursillo you know "the rest of the story" (as Paul Harvey would say). And if you haven't been, that my sharing impels you to get busy applying to go on a Walk!

I've mentioned (e.g., see 25 June post) that the talk I gave was "Sanctifying Grace". This is the fifth and final Talk directly concerning God's amazing grace; they are the five done by clergy. It's also the twelfth Talk of the fifteen, and comes on Sunday morning, about the hour churches with two morning worship services are having the first service (the time specific will have significance in the next paragraph). Like all the speakers I dress up in suit and tie (women speakers dress equivalently) and pray with a prayer partner in the Mt. Wesley chapel before being taken across campus to the conference room to do my Talk. My prayer partner continues to pray during the Talk.

So into the room I enter, carrying the hand-held cross that EVERY speaker has carried to & from his/her Talk. And I'm wearing borrowed shoes! I forgot to pack dress shoes, so Chris Rollins, who's doing the fifteenth & final Talk lends me his. They're size 11, a bit large for my 9 1/2 or 10 feet, but that's perfect. Upon arriving at the podium, the first thing I do is step beside it and easily slip my feet out of Chris' shoes. (At the end of my Talk I briefly explain my action and the significance of my many shoe-less moments during this Walk; see 9 Oct. post.) Then I tell my opening personal illustration -- my nervousness during my first entry into a prison to sponsor an inmate for a Kairos Weekend and how the ease of the intro meeting exemplified God's sanctifying grace in my life -- and introduce myself and topic, thus: "My name is Glen Alan Graham; my SERMON this morning is Sanctifying Grace."

The Talk/"sermon" goes smoothly -- why not, it's being prayed over -- except for one little glitch toward the end. This unexpected "bump" is due to my following to the letter MY printed instructions for the Talk, which varied from material Bruce our Lay Director had. But okay, not to worry. It was probably of spiritual benefit to someone or some. It was beneficial to me, because it kept me humble and acquired for me a wallet-size "Order of Reunion - Service Sheet" card. Not long after my Pilgrim Walk I had lost my original copy of this card, and had not acquired a new one while on Men's Walk #1005. So I was very glad to have one again!

One last thing. You may have figured out by now that I'm an emotive guy, who gets moist eyes at touching events, happy or sad. Former singer and songwriter for Southern gospel group Heavenbound, Jeff Gibson, on a live album of the group's said in affirmation of audience tears of joy, "My grandaddy always said that if your head leaks it won't swell!" Mine leaked plenty during the Walk #1327. Almost every time we sang the centering song I would tear up, since it called to memory my own Pilgrim Walk, #327, one thousand Walks previously, which employed that SAME centering song. And when on Sunday at some point we sang "Here I Am, Lord" I teared up again, remembering how in my first Fourth Day Group, Koinonia, at every monthly gathering we'd sing that song no matter what others we sang. Also, the choir at Alamo Heights Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) sang "Here I Am, Lord" as anthem on my first Sunday at the church back in '02. I had tears of joy that day at the memories of my earlier Emmaus experiences in Texas, joined the church and resumed my journey to Emmaus that was temporarily interrupted after moving to Tennessee.

My resumed journey to Emmaus had led to THIS point, Mt. Wesley Methodist camp in Kerrville, where it all began at the end of October A.D. 1993, and to THIS Walk #1327. Ain't God good??? Yep, "All the time!"

You will have noticed frequent use of the Spanish phrase De colores, particularly at the end of each posting about Walk #1327. This was inherited from Cursillo, naturally. It means literally "of colors" or more loosely "colorfully". It's an allusion to the great varieties of experiencing the one grace of our awesome God. Every Talk concludes with the speaker saying "De colores" and the normal speaking-voice response of everybody else,

De colores.

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