Over the MLK, Jr. holiday weekend, I traveled to Rochester, NY with two of the boys for a visit with a friend from high school who has spent some time in India as an independent missionary but who is presently stateside for another year finishing up a MSSE degree.

Michelle and I had been out of touch for roughly fifteen years. She is a year younger than I but graduated high school a year ahead. We both ran track** and cross-country for our undergraduate schools and saw each other annually at her school's invitational. Michelle dropped out of college with a year to go and moved to Oklahoma, getting a head start on Christian ministry work.

I was looking up old acquaintances by various means online: searching names in Amazon's Wish Lists and alumni notes at high schools and colleges. I thought of Michelle and knew her mother was a faculty member at Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, so I found her mom's email address at RIT's website and sent her a message asking about Michelle. She forwarded my message to Michelle and we were back in touch. As I check RIT's faculty directory now, I see that such success would be impossible today because the directory is password protected.

During our brief visit, the boys enjoyed swimming at the hotel pool and eating in the hotel restaurant. Her mother's apartment was having some repair work done, so we spent only one afternoon there. Michelle was preparing for a presentation at her church because she is raising money for her husband's school and orphanage in India. Their home's blog is here

I had jotted down some church services information before making the trip to see whether I could squeeze two services in, hers and mine. The preferred service at Asbury First UMC would be the 11 o'clock service. masstimes.org listed a half-dozen churches offering services around that time. I accidentally left my notes at home but probably could have asked at the hotel. It was just as well. Michelle used the time before the service and after to make contact with people associated with her missionary ministry.

I am accustomed to being insulted or offended at some point during a sermon at a Protestant worship service but the head pastor at Asbury First made a concerted effort to put down or find fault with every other branch of Christendom, east and west. Beginning with Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, he progressed through the upcoming year in the life of the church, taking the good from the Calvinists (Ash Wednesday), Jesuits (Spiritual Exercises, Lent), Lutherans (Good Friday), Baptists (Easter), Pentecostals (Pentecost), Orthodox (Trinity Sunday), Anglicans (All Saints' Day), Catholics (Advent), Methodists (Christmas - Wesley's carols) on their appropriate days and rejecting the bad. But we Catholics got a "double portion" (Rev. 18:6), as befitting the whore of Babylon, because he railed against the Jesuits (and St. Ignatius Loyola in particular) as well as at Catholicism in general. My friend was quite embarrassed and apologized a few times during the sermon whenever I threw her a mournful glance. I am glad that my children are not old enough to understand. My friend claimed that the pastor was pandering to "conservative elements" in his congregation. Ideally, pastors ought to operate independent of such sentiment but I understand that no one is perfect. I can appreciate that the "open doors, open minds, open hearts" campaign of the UMC may be moving too quickly for some. But the very last place I expected to encounter sectarianism, especially in relation to other Protestant denominations, was in a United Methodist Church. I'll see whether his sermon becomes available online or on tape cassette because it's a keeper.

** I linked to the article about the breaking of the 1000-meter record because I aspired to that during my senior year but missed by a second or two. I ran the race alone with no one to challenge me. The time to beat in those days was 3:05 set by, I think, All-American Lynda Glinski. I remember the sports writer for the student newspaper interviewing me before the race; I was so sure that I would get it. All my pre-race bravado was printed along with the result. I qualified for the ECAC Championships at Annapolis anyway, placed third in the 1000 there - the weekend my father died - and earned Student-Athlete recognition for having a gpa above 3.6. About the same time, a sprint medley relay team that I anchored set a school record at a Univ. of Rochester invitational but the record was broken within a few years. And I had a wicked split in that race! So, there was some satisfying success. I am surprised to see a record from my era - Margaret's in the indoor 1500 still standing.