Head Full of Sundays

Harlan wasn’t the sort of person who jumped right up in a rush to go home after Sunday church service was over. He wasn’t in a hurry to get on to the next thing. Instead, he liked to sit quietly in his favorite seat – the far left-hand corner of the very back pew – and watch the chapel slowly transition from a bustling, energetic place where people came to yell, sing, and shout to the way it was the rest of the time. He liked the way things became quiet, empty, peaceful, and just a little bit lonely.

That’s when Harlan felt the closest to God – when he was all alone in that warm, wooden space with his own thoughts and the mellow, waxy scent of the candles burning near the altar. It gave God room to be present and Harlan the peace he needed to hear anything He might have to say that day.

This Sunday found Harlan sitting even longer than he usually did, but he had more on his mind than he did on an average Sunday. Although it seemed like only yesterday he was a young man just getting started in life, the passage of the years had left him old and grizzled. His coffee-brown skin was papery and wrinkled, and although he still had his thick head of wooly hair, it was snow white now instead of the jet black it used to be.

At his age, Harlan had an entire head full of Sundays gone by. In recent years, he’d spent the Lord’s day dutifully seated at church with the congregation or studying the Bible at home, but that hadn’t always been the case. However, Harlan had always felt God’s presence in his life, even if he hadn’t always understood that’s what it was. For reasons he didn’t entirely understand, he found himself remembering some of them today.

*

There was the Sunday on the hill he’d spent with his brother Gene when they were little boys. Their parents hadn’t had much save for their little house with the tin roof by the bayou, but Gene and Harlan never felt the pinch of how poor they really were. Not really, anyway. Their parents were loving, kind souls who’d made sure their boys never really felt the family hardships.

On sunny days when there was no school, their mother would pack them a ploughman’s lunch of bread and cheese to share and then send them off to play in the fresh air while she got the housework done. That particular spring, their favorite spot to hang out had been the grassy top of a steep hill, maybe a mile from where they lived.

It was high enough that you could see the rest of the town from up above, and the grass was thick and soft. Gene and Harlan loved sharing their lunch while looking down on the town below and making up stories about everything they imagined was going on. Sometimes they’d lie on their backs and look up at the sky instead, searching for pictures in the clouds overhead.

One particularly warm Sunday, Harlan and Gene had lain on their backs looking at the clouds for so long that they must have fallen asleep. Harlan could have sworn he could see through the clouds at one point, all the way to the heavens. He could see the angels gathered in shining groups, some discussing the business of their stations and others on their way to some other destination where they were needed.

The air was balmy and still that day, but when the wind did pick up, Harlan could hear strains of the most wonderful music. Something about it not only lifted his spirits but communicated with something deep inside of him. There in that moment, he knew God was present with him in every cell of the grass under his feet and molecule of air in his lungs as He always was.

Harlan’s soul was happy and full that day. So happy he didn’t want to leave. He begged Gene to agree that they could stay here on the hill all day instead of walking down to the creek to fish until it was time to go home for dinner. That was a good day – one of the best days of Harlan’s long life.

*

The worst day of Harlan’s life was also a Sunday. Harlan and Gene had promised their mother they’d pick up a few things at the market while she and their father went out of town to visit with relatives after church. She’d told them they could spend the day at the hill as a reward, and Harlan had been looking forward to it.

But Gene had been complaining of a headache most of the morning, and he hadn’t felt any better by the time they were getting ready to leave. Harlan volunteered to go to the market himself while Gene rested at home. Maybe by then, he’d be feeling more like himself, and then they could go to the hill or perhaps for a short walk by the creek.

After he’d finished the shopping, Harlan took the long way home from the general store in town so he could look for frogs by the pond. (He’d brought an empty pickle jar with holes punched in the top just in case.) It had rained the night before, so the conditions were perfect for finding lots and lots of them, especially the bright green ones with shiny eyes that Harlan liked best.

Before Harlan had even reached the frog pond, he could hear numerous frogs croaking and ribbiting in chorus, so he knew it was his lucky day. He caught several, adding each one carefully to the empty pickle jar, and screwing the lid on carefully before adding it to the knapsack full of groceries and supplies he was carrying. Then he hurried home to show Gene, all ready to tease him over all the wet, muddy fun he’d missed.

But when Harlan got home, the house seemed strangely quiet, and there was an odd stillness in the air. The air seemed stale and stagnant, with a strange acrid smell in the air that Harlan could not identify. He called for Gene, and when there was no answer, he opened the door to the bedroom the two boys shared.

There was Gene, lying peacefully on his side, the way he always did when he slept. Only he was too still. And when Harlan tried to wake him, he knew why. Gene’s body was stiff, waxy, and cold. His soul had gone to be with God after a freak aneurysm cut his young life short that morning, shortly after Harlan had left for town.

Harlan, young as he was, didn’t know how to process what had happened. So he simply backed out of the room, closed the door, and sat on the front porch waiting for his parents to come home while he cried quietly. He could feel God sitting beside him, waiting along with him and assuring him that Gene’s soul had safely made it to heaven, proving to him that it was true what the preacher man said. God was with you even when things were blackest.

*

When Harlan was arrested as a young man for a robbery he hadn’t committed, it was also a Sunday. It didn’t matter that Harlan had been nowhere near the scene of the crime when it happened. The white shopkeeper identified him as the person who’d done it, and that was all the authorities needed to hear to throw the book at a young black man, especially one from the poorer side of the tracks where Harlan and his family lived.

He was convicted of first-degree robbery on another Sunday and sent to state prison for the next nine years of his life. He worked as part of a chain gang, moving as one with other prisoners as they sang spirituals and folk songs. Despite the hopelessness and greyness of the situation, Harlan could still feel God’s presence in the cadence of the singing and the hypnotic quality of repetitive work performed in the hot Southern sun. he could feel Him in the wind as it rippled through the tree tops across the road.

It seemed only fitting that when Harlan was finally released from prison, a harder version of the innocent young man he used to be, it was yet another Sunday. He’d even started the day in the prison chapel with a morning prayer and some quiet time contemplating the meaning of life. He didn’t think he’d ever reach a day when he wasn’t thoroughly confused by the fact that you could be sent to prison and robbed of nine years of your life for something you never did, even when you were careful with your Sundays and diligent about living life the right way to the best of your ability.

*

Harlan would go on to have many Sundays – some bright and beautiful, but many filled with questions about all the difficult experiences that punctuated even the most beautiful periods of life. No one who knew Harlan as the old man he was today could have guessed at his troubles. He was kindly, generous, and pious – an asset to the town where he lived – and he would continue to be so.

But sometimes he wished someone knew him the way Gene had – the way he’d always known himself in the days of his soul being happy on the hill. Maybe someday somebody would. In the meantime, there was always God.