The Priest and the Beekeeper

I'm still learning to see people. Really see them. Maybe you are too.

Some years ago, my friend E- and I were driving back from a monthly clergy lunch in Athens, Alabama, to our homes in Huntsville. E- had retired years earlier from Huntsville’s mother church and would hitch a ride with one priest or another to wherever we had decided to get together.

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

He seemed to know everybody in northern Alabama, and my colleagues and I admired and adored him as our wise and nurturing elder. When I picked E- up at his house to head over to lunch, he had asked me if I minded making a stop on the way back.

He knew a beekeeper and wanted to pick up some honey. On the return trip we pulled off the main road and wound a short way up a dirt track until we arrived at a ramshackle trailer sitting alone on a scrubby, red-clay lot.

The door of the trailer swung open and a tall, lanky man sprang down the steps and strode energetically toward us. His long, wind-tossed hair brushed his shoulders. His wiry beard reached to his chest. His broad smile…