Talking with Sonny

Back in October, I asked WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard to meet me in the waiting room side of the Asheville airport. “By the baby grand,” I suggested.

She texted a quick response—something about the piano and reconstructing a scene from Casablanca—but I declined, noting what I perceived could be a tough audience behind the masks and piles of luggage situated around me. Instead, I told Mary I had a surprise for her. One about 5 foot 4, outlined in suede and anchored by a pair of floral sneakers. Andrée Seu Peterson. The woman herself.

Folks in their 50s should probably be past fawning, but too bad, Mary and I blew the curve. While she gushed about a Manila folder filled with two decades’ worth of clipped columns, I mentioned unsigned hardbacks I’d hauled across the friendly skies. Andrée smiled politely. She may have even blushed.

“The coverage you did at the Gosnell trial …”

“Oh, and that one about what the woman was thinking as she drove—‘Seventeen Minutes’ or something or other …”

Hey, it’s not every day the postage-stamp-sized magazine image that has for years discipled you with the steadiness of a dripping Keurig goes full-throttle 4D. And (get this) puts your number in her phone contacts.

But before I had time to absorb what was happening, a silver-haired guy named Sonny had us belted into the backseat of his Lyft. He laughed and sang along as we recorded a happy anniversary video for Mary’s Joe, back home in Missouri pining for his bride of 31 years. Sonny, it turned out, was once a musician.

What kind of musician? Where? Did you ever record anything?

Mary and Andrée took a tag team approach to the discussion, asking and nodding and um-humming with ease. The same gentle winnowing that left Sonny wide open left me as quiet as the Proverbs fool hoping for a wise countenance. Wow, what a seat I had!

Somehow Andrée got Sonny talking about a young niece who had years ago died quite suddenly. Somehow Mary learned he wrote a song about that niece’s death. Somehow we ended up parked along Hendersonville Road where we listened to an instantaneously produced recording of said song.

Returning to traffic, Sonny promised to get us to our hotel in a jiffy. My fellow Lyftees took note and decided the moment had come to pivot the conversation. That’s when we learned our Lyftor was “spiritual, though not religious.”

“What does that mean?” Mary probed. She’s a good prober.

Sonny stalled. Well, you know … Well, you see …

Moments later we landed outside the lobby, and Sonny landed on an answer. He can be spiritual, he said, without the help of a local church. “I don’t go to an organized church.”

Like that would fly with these two.

I busied myself with grabbing backpacks from the hatch, but I had my antennae up. I should have been taking notes. In addition to his $27.59 fare, Sonny was going to get some advice from Andrée, and guess what? He didn’t even have to turn to page 70 for it. She slung her words out there in the crisp Asheville air as easily as she slung her carry-on over her shoulder.

“Often it’s through the mundane aspects of organized church that you find Christ, Sonny.” She stopped to look our Lyft driver square in the eye. “Think about that, will you?”

Sonny nodded and drove away.

The next day, Mary told an audience about WORLD podcast Legal Docket’s mission—demystifying the Supreme Court—but she was uncomfortable doing it. The business suit she planned to wear was back in Missouri. In the dryer.

Andrée had her time behind the mic, too. She wowed the crowd with words she scribbled on paper scraped together from drawers at the Holiday Inn.

Ah, regular people after all. Still, I thought it might be good to give account of our 11-mile joy ride.

How else would you know to pray for Sonny?