Chipotle Encounter

One Sunday we had gone to church,
And gone to the hardware store,
And gone grocery shopping,
And faced with an hour drive home,
And some time before I could get food on the table,
The rumble of six hungry stomachs pointed us to Chipotle.
It was mid-afternoon and we’d had nothing since breakfast.

And the line stretched halfway back across the restaurant.

But the very last person in line was someone we knew
Vaguely, a face from church that we had greeted his first time
And then mostly forgotten.
He had stopped by Chipotle earlier, seen the line, left,
And returned, only to find that the line was longer.
But he was hungry, so he stayed. And then we came.

And we ended up talking the half hour we waited in line,
And kept talking a half hour, an hour, an hour and a half.
The boys had long since finished eating and eventually
Went out to the car to amuse themselves with books and CDs.
But they let us have our time to meet this new friend.

We would have become friends eventually, I think.
We have enough over-lapping circles of affection,
We would have met and meshed.

But I like the serendipity of this Chipotle encounter,
A springboard to communion.