As usual I had a tune in my head. I was humming it out loud. It’s a habit I can’t break. It’s a habit I don’t want to break. I like having a song running through my brain, and I accept that sometimes it leaks out into an audible hum. It happened at a plant store in Bloomington.
Deep Roots Garden Center is a good place to buy native plants we were told, so we four gardeners headed south to check it out. Becky and Anne browsed the stock for candidates for their gardens while Steve and I did the heavy lifting. Eventually I carried Becky’s choice into the small office to pay.
As I was getting out my payment, the melody to one of the two Doxologies we sometimes sing at church was in my head. “Praise God from whom all blessing flow,” I hummed. “Praise God all creatures here below.” As I came to the next part the guy behind the counter joined in: “Alleluia! Alleluia!” he sang along with my humming. Then we stopped. “I love that song,” I said and we both smiled.That was it.
Well, in fact that wasn’t the end of it at all. I continued to ponder this chance encounter long after we drove away. I thought of the fish symbol, the one made of two arcs that to some represents Christianity. I thought about the early history of the church when small Christian groups were being persecuted by Roman authorities, and how that symbol was used as a secret sign of recognition, of understanding and connection. The Deep Roots Doxology was like that. As we smiled, I felt a connection with the person who was essentially a stranger or at least an unknown quantity. We had something in common. He was less of a stranger.
Something similar happened when Lory, a new church member, joined the choir I sing with. We were all happy to have a new member and welcomed her warmly. Then we prepared to work on an upcoming piece. As we were getting ready to start, someone noticed one of the tenors, Dave, had not yet shown up. “Where’s Dave?” someone asked.
I couldn’t resist: “Dave’s not here, Man,” I said to no one in particular. Everyone else ignored me mostly because I often blurt out “humorous”—to me, at least—things during choir. But Lory, who was sitting in front of me, turned around and smiled. “Cheech and Chong,” she said, recognizing that she, too, knew that old comedy bit from the early 1970s. And suddenly we had a connection. We were not quite strangers.
And because of the Deep Roots Doxology, I was reminded of a conversation when Becky and I first met. This was maybe our second date. We were walking on the road talking and laughing. We were still strangers learning about each other, and our conversation roamed far afield. Maybe we walked by an interesting-looking plant or maybe we were discussing dental hygiene—Who knows?—but for some reason that I now forget I jokingly mentioned a dental floss bush.
I was referencing a song, “Montana,” by one of my musical heroes, Frank Zappa. I fully expected her to be puzzled by the allusion. To my surprise she started singing, “Moving to Montana soon/Gonna be a dental floss tycoon” which are some of the lyrics to the chorus. Wow! Was I impressed. Turns out, one of her brothers had owned “Overnight Sensation” when she was growing up and she listened to Zappa’s music often. We now had a somewhat oddball music connection.
One never can never tell what will result from a chance communication. You have to keep your senses tuned. You never know, you might wind up with a spouse.
