Roger Bond showed me what prayerfulness looked like in person

18.

As I began to follow Jesus with a more deliberate earnestness in my late teens, God brought into my life a person who had the spiritual characteristic of prayerfulness.

 

His name was Roger Bond. Father Roger Bond, as a matter of fact. There are a myriad of reasons why we should have never met one another, and, beyond that, why we might never have become friends; and he, such a warm and glowing example for me as to what prayerfulness in a person actually looked like. Sometimes the people we meet are just people we meet. Other times there is a divine spark in what initially appears to be a happenstance.

 

It was March, 1976. Roger was an Episcopalian priest in a whisper of a town on the eastern edge of Wyoming, from where you could throw a cinderblock into neighboring Nebraska. I was a frenetic college boy, 19, in my second year at Laramie, home of the state’s lone university. Roger was 48 when we met, although he looked a tad older to me, due to his full head of white hair and some mild trembling, especially in his left hand, brought on by Parkinson’s disease.

 

We met in the parish hall of his church in Lusk, St. George’s. I was singing tenor with a group of university students who were touring – this particular year – the southeast quarter of the state. We were from the school’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter.

 

Of all the churches that provided us meals, St. George’s was hosting a spaghetti dinner for us on the evening after we had sung at the Lusk Senior Citizens Center. Of all the people I might have stood next to in line for dinner, I was behind Roger. He was already engaged in lively conversation with the guys in front of him; laughing and telling stories.

 

Eventually, he turned to me. I knew him only as the priest of this church and, at the time, I was suspicious of liturgical churches and their “weird” ways. (Sometimes I would like to go back in time and punch myself in the face.)

 

“God bless you, son,” he said to me, taking my hand and pulling me slightly closer. “What a blessing to have you kids here.”

 

“Thank you for making dinner for us,” I said, a little stiffly.

 

“Oh,” he said, “this is just selfishness on my part. If I bless you, then I get blessed. So I did it for me!” He laughed.

 

We kept talking. I should say, Roger kept talking while I listened. All evening I stayed within earshot to hear him talking and watch him being a person like none other I had ever met. Midway through the meal I talked to Dale, our tour organizer, and begged him to put me on the list of people who were to stay at Roger’s house that night. I think there were seven or eight of us strewn in his small house – on couches, on the floor, in an extra room. He had no space, but he welcomed everyone who could squeeze in as though we were a band of visiting princes.

 

Roger spoke with great love and joy in his voice about his “reflections,” when he would sit in the quiet of his house and considered he and Christ as guests in one another’s lives. He mentioned his “meditations,” in terms of the reading of Scripture or of some great Christian author – a time to comb out thoughts and weave them into his own experience.

 

The next morning he was up early making eggs and sausage and toast.

 

“What are you doing?” I asked, just to make conversation.

 

“I am praying,” he smiled. “Lord, deliver me from cooking.” Then he laughed.

 

Parting company with Roger that morning was very frustrating for me. After returning from the tour, I organized a second “tour,” which was just a group to take to St. George’s to sing on a Saturday night and attend church on Sunday morning on one of the later weekends in April.

 

Meanwhile, Roger and I wrote often, and I spent at least three weekends back in Lusk, usually leaving on Friday and returning Sunday evening. The 170-mile trips (each way) took me through a rarely-traveled stretch of highway – State Highway 34 – which follows a ravine etched into the landscape by North Sybille Creek. It is a gentle indentation leaving a beautiful shock of life along its banks. Roger’s mark on my inner landscape is similar to that of North Sybille Creek’s on this little-seen Wyoming territory.

 

Roger and I spent many hours talking quietly at his favorite truck-stop restaurant, or grocery shopping. For me, the important thing was to be in his company. I didn’t care what we did.

 

The 1976 Book of Common Prayer had just come out, and Roger was having a terrible time understanding the new design of the book he was supposed to use for masses. The 1928 version had stood everyone in good stead for almost 60 years. The alterations, to Roger, were maddening … especially on Saturday night.

 

“Where in the hell is tomorrow’s collect?” he shouted to himself while pouring over the new book. In his anger his lips got wet and his Parkinson’s shakes were unmistakably more pronounced.

 

“C’mon Father,” I said. “It has to be in there somewhere. What’s a ‘collect’ anyway?”

 

He didn’t want to, but he smiled.

 

“This isn’t funny,” he said.

 

“Yes it is,” I replied.

 

I once showed him a notebook I kept with Bible study notes and my own inexperienced comments on the pages.

 

“I’m not a Biblicist like you,” he said. “I wish I knew the Bible better.”

 

“We all do,” I said. “If you are not a Biblicist, what are you?”

 

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” he said.

 

“So am I, Father Bond,” I said. “You are a mystery.”

 

I knew Roger for 10 years. He died in that house in 1986. His ministry was a lonely one, but he was faithful and prayerful. His inner life had a thrum to it with such warmth that, if one listened, one could hear it and be changed by it.

 

God brought me peace in the form of a person twice: Once in Jesus, and once in Roger.

 

He used to sign his letters, “Pax, Father Bond,” in a hand that looked like an electrocardiogram … then a small cross next to his name.

 

Pax indeed.

It is hard -- and a little unwise -- to chart progress in the spiritual life

17. With all this talk about progressing or advancing along your spiritual journey, you will sometimes want to measure how you are doing so far. When I was a runner in my younger days I kept track of every mile I ran, my average pace per mile, my diet and what pair of shoes I wore.

When centering on your spiritual life, it is much more difficult to measure progress. For example, are we going to measure time prayed, or depth of thinking, or amounts of reading, or number of meetings and Masses we attend? I suggest you avoid keeping track.

At the end of the day, all we know is that we want to grow spiritually. It is really a matter of faith on our part to believe that, on any given day, this growth has taken place as a gracious unseen, unfelt act of God upon us.

You may have done a great deal on this day to cooperate with God’s work on you. On the other hand, maybe you did nothing.

If you dare to try to keep score somehow, you will no doubt find yourself being very proud of your accomplishments on some days. You will likely grade yourself better than you should. This is the first sign that you are thinking of yourself as being more spiritually adept than others around you.

We come to God always spiritually impoverished (Blessed are the poor in spirit). The wealth that we enjoy is his not ours – it is graciously Him not selfishly us.