Anywhere but here

ACT ONE – MIRROR, MIRROR

I don’t want to be here today. This is the first time in my 50 years of pulpit ministry that I can say that. I can, however, say it today and I can say that when I do, it is an epic understatement.

Sonny pauses. He looks himself in the eyes. Once known for his piercing gaze – a gaze that could penetrate marrow and melt the icy heart – he finds the eyes looking back at him cloudy and colorless. He studies the row of forehead furrows, plowed into his proud brow by a harvester whose name is Time and whose plow is steady, sharp-edged, and relentless. His cheekbones and eye sockets are skeletal, his cheeks sunken, and his complexion sallow.

His jaw, still strong and set like flint to the task before him, is the one facial feature that seems to say, “Do not dismiss me. I am not yet done.”

His ears have outgrown his head. They are more prominent than he is prepared to admit and if he shakes his head, the dangling lobes flap. At least his neck is long. It amply separates his hoary head from his narrow shoulders.

His hair is silver. Silver! Not gray, thank God. Not that dingy, drab color of wet cement, that sad shade of dullness that seems to admit, “I have nothing left of value to contribute.”

He has more forehead than ever – enough that he has joked his forehead is like the front end of a Ford Fairlane. He combs his hair straight back, which makes the forehead all the more pronounced. He wears his hair long enough to drape over his collar an inch or so, giving him that professorial look.

The frame of his glasses is silver, too.

If his eyes drift upward, which they do, he sees at least three more inches of mirror above his head now that he is 85 than there was the first time he stood before this mirror in this room to study himself. That was June 7, 1980. He was 44 then and about to ascend the sanctuary platform from the hidden side entry for the first time as pastor of the Riverstone Baptist Church. He was 6’3, tall, dark, handsome, and eloquent – a gifted communicator with a clear and distinct baritone voice, at once elegant and fierce.

“He’s a force of Nature,” boasted a deacon to his friends over a Sunday lunch at the Highland Park Cafeteria.

“No,” corrected the deacon’s matriarchal wife. “He is a force of Nature’s God.”

When this conversation was reported to Sonny, he shuddered. That was too much to live up to, wasn’t it?

Remembering it now, he sighs. That was a long time ago. And only yesterday. Or so it seems.

Sonny prefers Brooks Brothers suits. Every article of clothing from his white shirt to his black dress socks he hand-picked from the historic Dallas location of America’s oldest clothing store. He wears the Regent fit two-button pinstripe 1818 suit. It is black. His silver tie boasts a subtle geometric design. His white dress shirt with the pinpoint collar is crisp and wrinkle-free. His necktie is tied into a perfect triangular half-Windsor. He is as dapper as ever. This, he thinks, shaves a decade at least off of his overall look.

Dr. David “Sonny” Diamond returns his gaze to the mirror, looking himself once more in the eye, and remembers the task before him. This is so unlike that first sermon on that June Sunday in 1980. Nor is it anything like his most recent sermon, delivered just three weeks and a day ago. It is, in fact, unlike any of the more than 7,000 sermons he has preached from his perch behind the pulpit of the 1,500-seat Sanctuary.

He repeats, “I do not want to be here today.”

This time, his voice is more lively, stronger. The cadence is deliberate, the delivery forceful. He glances at the notes in his hand.

“This is the first time in my 50 years of pulpit ministry…”

ACT TWO – PRECIOUS MEMORIES

But he trails off, looks into those alive-again eyes in the mirror, and quips, “Speaking of a Ford Fairlane…”

Sonny was 21 in 1961 and the proud owner of a shiny 1955 Ford Fairlane. The contoured steel-and-chrome beauty featured prominently rounded and lidded headlights, a long, swooping hood with its iconic chrome ornament, low rear fins, and whitewall tires. Its hood, trunk and the upper part of the side panels were gleaming white. The accent color was a glistening candy-apple red. The white leather interior set it off. Though it was five years old already, the car still shined like a new dime. No matter the time of year, it always looked like Santa just stepped out of it.

A junior at Dallas Theological Seminary that year, Sonny took a summer internship at the Glory Heights Baptist Church in the Park Cities area of north Dallas. The homogenous white congregation of Texas bluebloods needed God about as badly as any group he could imagine encountering. Their faith seemed firmly planted in their pocketbooks, pedigrees, and good fortune.

The pastor, a godly man who was friendly, bald, and rotund, told him, “Salvation is rare among the rich, son. That camel through the eye of a needle analogy is right on. Do not mind their money. Attend to their souls.”

It was 6 PM, Friday, August 4, 1961. The sun had not relented its oppressive grip on the western sky. The sidewalks sizzled under its glare. Sonny found himself alone with Sweet Sally Mae, the name he gave his Fairlane in honor of his favorite and most voluptuous aunt. He was at the Keller drive-in, the only burger joint in Dallas where carhops would bring burgers and beer to your car. Of course, he did not drink beer because he was a Baptist minister in training (and only because of that). He ordered a burger and fries and chocolate malt instead. And, of course, he wanted onions on his burger. He had no one to kiss and no face to breathe into anyway.

She skated into his life on this crystal-clear August afternoon as if emerging onto the stage out of a dramatic fog. She wore a hot pink satin shirt, black short-shorts, pink socks, and white skates…and a traffic-stopping smile. Her shoulder-length, chestnut hair, which she wore in loose curls, trailed her in the wind as she flawlessly zipped between and around cars to him. She was poetry and purpose, motion and stillness…perfection.

She stopped on a dime.

“Good evening, sir. You ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate malt?”

She may as well have been Heaven’s angel band belting out Handel’s Messiah. Sonny was smitten, blown away. But you wouldn’t know it by the ease of his smile or the smoothness of his retort.

“Actually, I wanted a burger, fries, and a name to go with those evergreen eyes.”

Her name, it turns out, was Sunille Susan Abernathy. Everyone called her Sunny Sue. Her father called her “Sunny Sue How’d’ya do.”

In just nine months, they would marry, and forever be known as Sonny and Sunny Sue. Together, they built a house, a home, a life, and a family.

First came Charlie and then Connie Sue. After that the dam broke and it was a kid a year for the next three years – Asther, Enoch, and Aubrey.

His tie is straight but he straightens it all the same.

“Well, it wasn’t forever, Sunny Sue. I guess we both knew it wouldn’t be. I just don’t know how to say goodbye.”

He watched the tear slip from the corner of his left eye. He made no attempt to wipe it away. The droplet clung for a second or two to his cheekbone before gliding to his chin and diving to the floor.

“I look at me and all I see is all you left behind.”

­ACT THREE – SWEET SORROW

A somber-faced young man with a long neck and bobbing Adam’s apple wears a simple black suit. It is not quite a fit off the rack and no alterations were made after its purchase. The pants legs bunch into layers of too-much-fabric -and-not-enough-leg. The black shoes shine with a new coat of polish but old scuffs on the toes. The white shirt is too loose at the throat and the simple black tie sags because of it. His coat is buttoned up, and at least one more of him could fit inside its confines. He has been waiting quietly outside the preacher’s chambers but now he raps lightly at the door.

“Dr. Diamond, it is time, sir. Are you ready?”

­­Sonny emerges.

“No. I am not ready,” he sighs. “Let’s go anyway.”

The journey is but 20 feet down the hidden hallway, up the steps, and through the pastor’s entry onto the stage. It feels much longer and his steps are heavy on the tile flooring.

Every seat is occupied and folks without a seat line the outer aisles and pack themselves three deep in the back of the sanctuary.

And there is silence.

Nearly 2,000 pairs of eyes watch the man of God approach the podium. His stride is long, his head is high, his shoulders, though carrying the weight of a lifetime on them, are thrown back to compensate for the natural droop that comes with time. In the crook of his right arm, he carries the black Scofield bible from which he has preached for a half-century. His fingers have worn imprints in the spine. The leather is soft and yielding in its old age. The pages have been read and re-read hundreds of times. Many of them bear hand-written notes in the margins.

Between the preacher and the mourners, surrounded by dozens of floral arrangements and accompanied by a portrait of Sonny and Sunny Sue, lies the body of his beloved. She is lifeless and still lovely in a luminous white casket made of American steel, with soft rounded corners, trimmed with rose-colored steel handles and imprints of roses, and sporting a light-pink crepe fabric lining. She, a peaceful angel lying in state, still wears those loose curls of her youth, only they are silver – the same shine of silver as Sonny’s. Her lips have the slightest hint of a smile on them. They also glisten with the subtle pink of lipstick, the color she favored.

Silence drapes over the audience, a reverent hush as if even the hosts of Heaven hold their collective breath....until Sonny breaks the silence.

I don’t want to be here today. This is the first time in my 50 years of pulpit ministry that I can say that. I can, however, say it today and I can say that when I do, it is an epic understatement.

Sunny Sue, I wish I was anywhere but here, doing anything but this…with you. Changing the worn-out, may-pop driver side tire on the side of Highway 67 in a blinding rain while you sing Amazing Grace to our frightened and sleepy children. Driving a Yellow cab at midnight, hustling to make ends meet while you made sure I had a hot meal and a clean shirt for Theology class the next morning. Sitting in San Francisco Airport for six hours, waiting on a replacement plane because the one we were supposed to fly to Hawaii in was broken. That was our 25^th anniversary and your patience that day rivaled Job himself and brought me such comfort. Weeping over our precious Aubrey while they rushed her by ambulance to the hospital on her fourth birthday. Playing Scrabble alone at the kitchen table on a quiet Friday night. Anywhere but here…anything but this…as long as it is with you.

I will remember and relive the day you roller-skated into my world, my sweet Sunny Sue…I will remember it and relive it every day until I see you again.

He falls silent a long moment and then recites the tender lovers’ verse from the Song of Solomon…

“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine…”

More silence.

Then, recapturing the once-glorious quality of his baritone voice, he sings…

There's a land that is fairer than day

And by faith, we can see it afar

For the Father waits over the way

To prepare us a dwelling place there

Two thousand voices join him on the chorus…

In the sweet by and by

We shall meet on that beautiful shore

In the sweet by and by

We shall meet on that beautiful shore

The song of the mourners fills the spacious room with splendor. It spills into the foyer and down the hallways until every room is resplendent with the expectation of reunion.

ACT FOUR - SUNRISE

Later that evening, insisting on driving himself home after the burial and then the potluck dinner at Charlie’s lovely Highland Park home, the octogenarian sings to the rhythm of the falling rain and the swishing of the windshield wipers the song he so often sang to his lover, wife, and best friend, Sunny Sue...

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are gray

You’ll never know dear how much I love you

Please don’t take my sunshine away.

The still-shiny, pristine candy-apple red and white 1955 Ford Fairlane, Sweet Sally Mae, carries Sonny and a million molten memories safely home.

He sleeps now on his worn, leather recliner, clutching to his aching bosom the photo of the two of them on the Texas State Fair Ferris wheel in the Fall of ’61, while he is serenaded by the night song of the Mockingbird outside his window.

He dreams the final words of his funeral address.

"Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning." However hard the day, it will come to a close. The sun will set on the day's troubles and sorrows. That is what it does, the sun. It sets.

The sun also rises on another day.