Holy the Hardee's

ONE OF C. S. Lewis's colleagues, when he needed to do some serious studying or writing, would board a train and ride from London to Edinburgh and back. He left home for a while in order to return again refreshed. I have the same desire to get away. But I head to Hardee's.

Mostly I tabernacle among strangers at this fast-food mecca, but now and then I see a member of my church. It turns out that three or four of them make this same trip a couple of times a month for breakfast. When we see each other, we keep our greetings brief--they know I am here to study--but occasionally, away from the more rarified air of the sanctuary or office, some genuine pastoral conversation occurs.

Now and then I hear and see more than I want to. Just the other morning I ran into Minnie, one of the more nettlesome seniors in our congregation. Minnie was unhappy with me again. I had failed to mention the hurricane victims in the previous Sunday's pastoral prayer, and so she refused to acknowledge my entrance with so much as a nod. Fuming, I determined right then to make a Hardee's pastoral visit and unload my frustration with her carping and criticism. But when I sat down and started my devotions, the prayer book directed me to Psalm 4:4: "Be angry but sin not; commune with your own hearts on your bed and be silent."

I hate it when that happens.

Augustine taught that friends are those who show us God. Just as surely, both our enemies and difficult acquaintances allow us the opportunity to become more godly, teach us a bit more of the depth of divine patience and compassion.

Later I did go to see Minnie, but instead of ranting I asked her, "Minnie, how can I get out of your doghouse?" She still doesn't like me, but I did what I could.

If, as Merton says, solitude is where we learn how to love, then I will learn some lessons in Hardee's. Here I see and remember for whom and among whom the Word came to dwell, and learn again something of how I must love in turn.

Almost every Sunday night at the Baptist church where my father preached, we sang "Open My Eyes, That I May See." Many mornings at Hardee's that plea gets answered for me. On one particular morning, I was waiting in line to order coffee and saw that there was a new young woman working. She was small, quiet, purposeful as she moved from table to table, cleaning up after messy and thoughtless customers, most of whom never looked her way. She gathered the trash, wiped the spills and never made a sound. I thought to myself, imago dei.

Coffee in hand, I find a corner table out of the sun and unpack a few books, my Bible, tablets, pens and pencils. I spread out, look around, bow my head and offer brief prayers for all of us in Hardee's. This is my cloister, and the breakfast regulars are my brothers and sisters. By the grace of their movement and conversation I am able to get quiet and focused. I open my Bible to the place I stopped yesterday and begin my lectio.

How can you study in a restaurant?" people ask me, which is another way of saying, "Why do you study in a restaurant?"

So I tell them about my tinnitus: the ringing, popping and whirring funnel effects that warp from one side of my head to the other. Tinnitus is to deafness as dark is to blindness; in extreme cases it can drive people crazy. Mine is severe until I remove my hearing aids--which I always do when I first sit down. Then the soft clapping of plastic trays, the rustle of customers, the muffled Muzak become a thick blanket that cloaks the noise, a shawl for my morning prayers. The shuffle makes me deaf to my deafness: it lets me "hear."

I also tell inquirers that I come to Hardee's to see the world--one little corner of it anyway. Hardee's is my version of the newspaper that Karl Barth recommended we hold in one hand while holding a Bible in the other. Here, at the intersection of Word and world, I set up shop and try to fashion a ministry.

One day a noise broke through the muffled chatter. Bobbie, familiar to many of us locals as a vagrant, was upset about something--he sounded angry. He had come in for free food and a place to eat it, some fast-food koinonia. He got the first but was denied the second. Ordered to leave, he begin shouting: "I'm a person, too! You can't treat me like this!" There was no response. Everyone else had already looked away before he offered yet another embarrassed apology. Then he lurched through the door and disappeared.

How had Bobble ended up dirty, hungry and half-crazy? What had happened to him? Maybe he'd done something. People break in so many ways. It could have been me there at the counter; I have known what it is to be alone and frightened, begging for attention, acknowledgment and understanding. I beg for it still, God knows.

I go to Hardee's not for the biscuits and conversation, but to gather the living word that will be my manna, my daily bread. Morning after morning I strike the rock and pray that water will pour forth into the dry streambed of my life--yes, right here in Hardee's, I pray that God will give me something to say or, as with Minnie, the courage not to say anything. One way or another Hardee's is a stride in the race set before me or, as Lewis's friend might say, another trip to Edinburgh.