There’s one sure sign seasons are changing

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Despite the fact the calendar doesn’t say it yet, it’s a pretty safe bet we’re at summer. The signs are there — the school year is almost over; we’ve had some thunderstorms and rain and muggy temps all of which mess up my hair; and baseball is off and running, even though school ball and little folks’ games are winding down.

And while all those are still pretty good indicators of the changing of the season from spring to summer, there’s one other happening that’s a fail-safe indicator that summer is almost here.

Church homecomings.

They’re those wonderful events when folks who used to be members of a particular congregation but moved away remember to come back to the ol’ home church for a worship service and big meal that strains the abilities of the tables to hold up under large amounts of fried chicken, deviled eggs, tomato sandwiches, ham biscuits and enough sweets and tea to run your sugar up pretty high.

Some folks hug one another and exchange greetings. That all will be a bit different this year as not everyone has given up wearing masks and doing that new dance we call “social distancing.” I remember years ago when that phrase meant you didn’t stand too close to your boyhood friend everyone called Stinky for a well-deserved reason. Other folks wander around trying to put a name on a face that looks pretty familiar but somehow not the same as you remember. Families place flowers on the tombstones of loved ones. There are smiles and tears, sadness and joy and more than a few stretched tummies.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good homecoming and through the years I’ve taken in my share of them. Never been to a bad one yet.

I’ve known more folks at some than at others but there has always been a familiar face or two, even at the ones my mama dragged me to when she determined that at age 10 that I wasn’t old enough to stay at home by myself and that it didn’t matter I didn’t know her grandma’s eight older sisters.

While homecoming services are, at their heart, a special form of Sunday morning worship of God, there are some other special things about them. I’ve thought about that a lot through the years, especially as I ponder the situation with a chicken leg in one hand and a ham biscuit in the other. And I think I have finally hit upon what, at least for me, makes them memorable occasions and ones I look forward to.

It’s the tradition and how it gives me roots. Human lives are like plants and trees. We grow best when we grow deep, sending down roots that draw nutrients from the deep soil of human existence and fellowship. The food is just the setting for how we do one part of that growing.

The place that now lets me come every Sunday morning and other days for that matter is a place I’ve spent the biggest part of my vocational pastoral ministry. There have been a lot of folks who used to be there who aren’t here now.

I remember other events, the people who were a part of my youth and young adult days who now, at least some of them, are the people remembered in memorial tributes. The fact that some of them are gone just doesn’t sound or feel or seem right.

I remember in some of those days how the food was spread on tables under giant oak trees and tea and homemade lemonade with pieces of the lemon floating in it were served from a barrel or big tub. I remember how we sat our plates on giant fenders of the 1940s and ‘50s cars that lined the parking area. I remember how my dad could hold his plate in one hand and his tea in the other and still get the job done. I wish I had paid more attention to how he did that. I can’t; got to have a table or flat surface somewhere.

There is, however, I think a key to what all this remembering does and why it exists. It’s not to turn us into fossils and keep us in the past but it’s a time to add to our foundation to move through the present and into the future.

And that’s as good as a chicken leg or a piece of my Aunt Rachel’s lemon pie. I hope you get to go to one or two homecomings this season, even if you do have to stand a little farther apart than you might like, and while you’re there share the love ... and the chicken.

Bob Wachs is a native of Chatham County and retired long-time managing editor of the Chatham News/Chatham Record, having written a weekly column for more than 30 years. During most of his time with the newspapers, he was also a bi-vocational pastor and today serves Bear Creek Baptist Church for the second time as pastor.