Editorial June 2, 2003 Issue

Walk with me, sister and brother!

Mary Trammell

We did ten plays that summer at the Tanglewood Barn Theater in North Carolina, from Ramshackle Inn to Anastasia. For the four of us who were apprentice actors, it was a wild ride of building sets, running light boards, assembling costumes, learning lines, rehearsals. And we loved it. But as the youngest member of the company, I had to adjust to a new world of minimal sleep, maximal stress, and "anything goes." A world where it was totally uncool to talk about spiritual things.

And that's what I missed—the spiritual fellowship I'd always had at home and at church. Week after week that summer, I watched longingly as the family who owned the remote farmhouse where we stayed, piled their kids—all dressed in their Sunday best—into a truck and headed off to church. I never thought of asking if I could go along. I didn't know if they'd want me, an outsider, at their church.

But the day came when I felt so alone, so famished for spiritual company, that I did ask if I could come. And far from saying, "No," they acted as if I'd given them a gift! They introduced me to the whole congregation at their little country church.

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