I volunteered to deliver Christmas gifts donated by church members. At choir rehearsal, I saw a number of bags in the pews.

The next day the coordinator called me with the name and number of my partner. I reached out to my partner and we decided to get together the following day to deliver. Meanwhile, she put it to me to retrieve our few bags from the church. And we would need to contact the recipients to arrange a delivery time.

Do you have a key?

I don't have a key. I called the church office. No answer. I sent email to the church secretary asking to be let in the church. No reply. I looked at a recent church bulletin, from a few weeks ago, and saw a boy scout meeting on the calendar.

I drove by the church in the early evening and saw cars in the parking lot and lights on. I entered purposefully and, with the direction of the coordinator via cell phone, I located the assigned bags on a back church bench. I called my partner to share some of the recipients' numbers with her so we could divvy up notifying them. Except she already had the list!

She offered to meet at eleven o'clock the next morning but then changed it to noon. She needed to food shop first because her sister is coming right before Christmas. I indicated that I would have to pick up my kids from school and would she mind riding back with them in the car. She didn't understand so I explained it again. She said that would be alright. In any event, she was a bit late to our noon rendezvous and spent a good deal of our travel time to Route 36 texting her adult daughter.

But we had time for small talk, too. She could not get her head around private school. I told her facts from my daily life, like having to drive my kids to their bus stops or even all the way to school because they don't qualify for a bus. "Hmmm, the bus always stopped right at our house, in the morning and again after school." When I mentioned that my oldest son now drives himself to school, she exclaimed, "The 8th grader drives?!" Oh, I have two in high school. "I thought you only had two kids!"

There were so many misunderstandings. The superficial nature of small talk does not command the participants' full attention. Each is only half-listening and the conversation necessarily runs to explanation.

To expedite our delivery activity, I had already entered the addresses in my Waze phone app as well as created and printed a map. I gave her the map to look at. She recommended we start at the farthest point and move back towards home base. That would have been fine but I wanted to end up near my kids' school. So we ran it the other way, hitting the closest house first. Route 36 is a divided highway, so there was some backtracking involved. I said I was glad we were delivering during the day so we could find our way. She said there was no way she'd consider delivering at night anyway.

We delivered to all the homes in forty minutes. As she saw that things were going quickly, she took more time visiting with each person. She made a point of mentioning the church name and town, neither of which was likely familiar to anyone. The last location had first holy communion pictures on the wall and rosaries mounted on display. Leaving, I said to her, "Well, there was a Christian home." She wished them happy holidays.

We stopped at the donut shop near the kids' school so my partner could eat something. She mentioned having heard of a Catholic school in Red Bank. Had I looked into that school for my kids? As we drove past the kids' school, she asked whether theirs is a strictly Catholic school and I said, rather vehemently, that it's not a Catholic school. She recognized the county road that the donut shop was on and asked, "Which way is Red Bank from here and which way is Eatontown?" I answered her¹. She mentioned Sam's Club and was I a member? "Not everything is in bulk there, you know. Where on earth do you food shop?" I pointed out the store across the street from the donut shop and said, "I was there this morning, buying groceries. You must wonder how I live!"

We pulled into the parking lot and students were walking from their final classes. She remarked on their uniforms. She was still probably thinking it's a Catholic school. When the kids were ready, they came to the car and I introduced her. They had seen the bags of gifts in the car that morning and asked me about them. She announced to them, "Hi kids, your mother and I attend the same church!!" I thought that was a rather awkward thing to say. I mean, if it were true, then my kids would already know it.

On the way home, she asked me whether I would be joining any church committees. And I told her that I'm not actually a church member. She mentioned a thriving church in the next town and recommended that I check it out. I had actually been wondering where everyone was on Sunday mornings lately; I think they're there.

---

¹ Relating this to Jeff later, he said, "Ah, yes, towns she's heard of."

Exiting L'Enfant Plaza station, I spied a young family who looked the part: quiet and clean-cut, sporting message wear. They stood together in the alcove of a building on 4th, not exactly moping but in a kind of holding pattern, as if trying to decide their next move. Or simply waiting. They were, in fact, a hint: we would soon be in their same situation. But I didn't know that yet. It was almost noon, the day after Thanksgiving.

The line into the museum was not long but neither was it moving. An employee bore the ire of a man who had just been told in a polite British accent to come back around 1 or 4. Preferably 4. That is, unless he had a ticket. The employee then turned to us with the same message. We heeded him and set off to the Mall a few short blocks away. My kids secretly hoped not to return.

We passed the next three and a half hours walking from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and back. We took our sweet time. And then we returned to the museum. The entry line had queued up now on the building's far side that abuts the train tracks. I was as ready as the kids to bail. An energetic man repeated the earlier promise of gaining admittance at 4 o'clock. He appeared energetic, not because he had any affiliation with the museum but because he was underdressed for the late November chill. He distributed slips of Scripture.

My kids promptly settled on the sidewalk to wait. The young mother of the family ahead of us, with the same number / ratio of kids, said she felt she was seeing her future. The queue built behind us, pickup conversations started. I passed the time completing them under my breath:

Well, uh, yes, we're Catholics, but, uh, just ... [culturally, you know, going to Mass on Christmas and Easter].

I wish this place had been around ... [when the kids were younger].

I even imagined the other one returning to his men's Bible study the following week and reporting how he nearly converted a Catholic to Christianity while waiting on line at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.!

As we made our way in, we saw huge panels gracing each side of the entrance. The lettering looked backwards and I thought it was perhaps German. But it is Latin, the opening of Genesis.

Those of us with pocketbooks that needed screening went to one side and placed our articles in a chamber of a huge hexagon with green and red lights. We passed through a metal detector, then reached into the other side of the chamber for our things. The chamber on the very top of the hexagon was largely out of reach for most women. So I used it, then rejoined my group. An employee politely directed us to start on the sixth floor but, with limited time, we went to what interested us most. The History of the Bible on the fourth floor.

We noted immediately how high-tech everything was. My kids, who pretended to have no interest, were soon trying this activity and touching that interactive screen.

The irony of those world languages still longing for their own Bible translation with those volumes of extinct or dead languages.

My oldest son was engrossed in a video shot in Capernaum. Whatever the teen equivalent of Been there, done that is. The other kids worked together to complete the canons of various Christian sects. My daughter pretended to be a biblical scribe, and I made sure she understood that, as often as not, the sacred texts were read aloud to a group of scribes who wrote them out accordingly. What a luxury if each scribe had his own exemplar! I stressed this with her, all too aware that Protestants think a simple demonstration of the game of Telephone debunks oral transmission.

I complained about the dim lighting but perhaps the fragile collections require it. Or the high-tech needs it!

My son excitedly brought me to look at the "She" Bible which translates Ruth 3:15 as "she returned to the city" instead of speaking of Boaz. As I dug out my phone's Bible app to verify the passage, I muttered about a similar thing in Genesis 3:15 of the Vulgate and what a coincidence. But my ESV Bible app was no help - it uses "she."

Running short of time, we went down a floor and waited a bit in the New Testament theater to watch a twelve minute video of the whole New Testament. So, where the actual exhibits might reflect some scholarly impartiality, I found the videos to be more imbued with evangelical presuppositions. Take, for example, a post-resurrection, upper room scene: the young St. John is depicted as joting down notes of the proceedings!

On our way out, we ducked into a small exhibit hall off the lobby of loans from the Vatican. Everything was a facsimile. They are supposed to swap things out over time.

The Museum of the Bible was a worthwhile visit. Now that I have some idea about it, I can think about a return. Next month I've reserved a seat on a bus to Washington for the March for Life. But I'd rather spend the day at the Basilica or even at this museum again.

Museum - Google Earth

"‘I had to be there’: The Museum of the Bible opens in the nation’s capital" - Washington Post, November 18, 2017