Kim Henderson - Eleven miles of joy

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 1st! Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Anyone paying attention knows that if you hang around a reporter, what you say and do just might wind up in a story. Including me!

Here’s WORLD commentator Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: Back in October, I asked Mary Reichard to meet me in 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. 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.

Women 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 Andrée’s columns, I mentioned her unsigned hardbacks I’d hauled across the friendly skies. Andrée just smiled politely. She may have even blushed.

Hey, it’s not every day you get to meet a magazine icon. Especially one who has for 20 years discipled you with the steadiness of a dripping Keurig.

But before I had time to absorb what was happening, a guy named Sonny had us belted into the backseat of his Lyft. It turns out Sonny was once a musician.

Mary and Andrée took a tag team approach, asking him questions. The same gentle winnowing that left our driver wide open left me quiet—quiet as the Proverbs fool shooting for a wise countenance. Wow, what a seat I had. Somehow Andrée got Sonny talking about a young niece. Somehow Mary learned he wrote a song about that niece’s death. Somehow we ended up listening to an instantaneously produced recording of that song.

Finally, my fellow riders decided the moment had come to pivot the conversation. That’s when we learned Sonny was, in his words, “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 arrived outside the hotel lobby, and Sonny landed on an answer. He can be spiritual, he said, without the help of a local church.

Like that would fly with these two.

In addition to his $27.59 fare, Sonny got some advice from Andrée. She slung her words out there in the crisp Asheville air as easily as she slung her carryon over her shoulder.

“Sonny, often it’s through the mundane aspects of organized church that you find Christ. Think about that, will you?”

Sonny nodded and drove away.

The next day, Mary told an audience about Legal Docket’s mission—demystifying the 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, especially after the hard road WORLD has traveled lately.

And besides all that, how else would you know to pray for Sonny?

I’m Kim Henderson.

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