Pure Act

Joanna, Jordan, and I sat with our hands cupping our roast beef sandwiches to keep them hot while we waited on Pat, who wanted the salad bar. We waited a few minutes for him, then decided to go ahead and start eating when we observed him getting into a conversation with an elderly couple.

Our sandwiches half eaten, Pat joined us and explained that the couple had stopped him as he walked past. "They just wanted to talk," said my husband, who has never learned the fine art of avoiding people or extricating himself from conversations.

The three of us finished our sandwiches, licked the butter, salt, and mayonnaise from our fingers and nursed our waters while Pat finished Trip One to the Endless Salad Bar. Pat left to get more. Jordan and I looked at our watches, rolled our eyes, talked about how Pat takes forever to eat, how we were ready to get on home.

On his way back from the salad bar, the lonely couple caught Pat again. I stole glances at them this time, noting that the woman didn't look so bad, but the man looked atrocious. His gray hair was long and stringy; his jacket dirty.

Between small talk with the kids and looking back to see what Pat was doing, I looked across at a fine-looking elderly man sitting alone. A man with a starched white shirt and expensive sportscoat. Fingernails trimmed and clean and a head of gloriously white, thick, and wavy hair. Now that's the person to get into a conversation with.

"What's Dad doing?" the kids asked, getting irritated.

I turned to look and saw Pat reach over and take something out of the old man's hair.

"Grooming the customers," I said, happy with my little quip and the laughter we then all three enjoyed.

Pat finally joined us and we asked what in the world he was doing messing with that man's hair.

He responded simply, "He had a pat of butter in his hair."

"How did he do that?" "Why didn't his wife get it out?" "Did he ask you to do that?"

"He was buttering a cracker, I guess. No, the wife's short and he's tall and it was towards the back of his head. No, he didn't ask me to. I just saw it and grabbed a napkin to get it out."

The next day I read this in Proverbs, "He who oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker, but he who is gracious to the needy honors Him." My husband responds to needy people. He doesn’t stop to think about it. He doesn’t have to deliberate, wrestle, then steel himself to do it. He just does it without fanfare.

Then today I read an essay in IMAGE Journal by Michael McGregor who writes that Robert Lax felt that people of God should have the goal to be like God, who is, according to Thomas Aquinas, “pure act, pure living, pure I Am.”

I thought again of my husband taking a paper napkin and reaching down to get a glob of butter out of an old man’s greasy hair. Pure act.