A Season for Companionability

Virginia Hughes

Companionability was built into life with siblings close at hand and most of our gatherings involved food and the company of others at church. Companionability is a favorite word because it is warm and friendly, coming from the Latin roots meaning, “with bread,” and conveying the idea of sitting together to share bread. Jesus is our perfect model of companionability. How he masterfully called individuals to follow, learn, travel, serve, suffer and carry the gospel message together. The time must have flown following the resurrection when he was telling his disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel. They didn’t want him to leave again. Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age.” No one was ready for that painful goodbye. Everything was changing again. He would be gone. It was too soon even though Jesus promised they would be together again.

Things are on the move in autumn. Summer’s colors fade from the garden as the last of the cucumbers and tomatoes are picked, spent vines chopped into compost, dried flower stalks trimmed, and annuals nipped by frost are pulled. A gardener takes momentary satisfaction in the plants that grew well, the surprises that emerged such as last year’s Cleome seeds growing through mulch and rivaling the Lady of Shalott rose in height and beauty. Garden disappointments are expected too and are our best teacher. The brilliant blue Bachelor Button seeds that captivated in the catalog didn’t quite turn out. It was my fault for sowing the seeds way too close to the white Cosmos and being gone for a few weeks. While the Cosmos grew into an ocean of white, the Bachelor Button seeds grew in the shadow of the Cosmos Ocean looking like tiny blue fish on wire stems. They could be moved, but it would cause damage since the roots were now entwined.

I scan the garden as bright amber, russet and burgundy showers of leaves float down in colorful glory. These beautiful changes ease us into the next season. The cold, more difficult one. The one we may not be looking forward to. Yes, winter is inevitable, and change being inevitable does not make it easy nor does it make it welcome. I moved a lot growing up. Change was to be expected. Yet when it came time for my college bound sisters to leave, I was not ready for that change.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzip—the zipper pull raced on tiny tracks up the side, across the front and down the other side of the suitcase, closing tightly. Snap, snap, the metal buckles of another suitcase clicked shut. Watching my two sisters packing their luggage, I asked why they were leaving. I thought they loved me and would stay until I no longer needed them which wasn’t a day in sight.

We are grown and want to leave, and you will do this someday, too. I do not want to leave someday. I want to go with you right now. I stretched my eleven-year-old frame across their suitcases. My suitcase could also be packed, and we would march into this new freedom, and reside together in their Grown-Up Land. I lamented deeply, even though they reminded me it was just across town.

They were my anchor. They also had the better clothes to borrow, phone conversations to listen to, and mysterious, hushed whispers that strained my longing ears to learn the secrets of their world. Who would sign my permission slips now? The difficult ones asking for extra money for field trips, and the mortifying ones explaining human development films, an annual event that incensed my parents. My sisters had subtly intervened for me for a few years in upper elementary school and then lost sleep over it fearing we would be discovered and all land in jail. From this point on, I would have to hand a permission slip directly to my parents, face the music and deal with it. That was part of growing up too. My sisters were aghast that they had ever done such a terrible thing as forge a parent’s signature. They had repented their forging sins, and I could now pray for courage and toughen up.

My sisters were going to stand on their own. They had an apartment and real jobs. They wanted to be college students, not second mothers to us upon which our lives depended. I listened enough to know there was shared joy in getting beyond Dad’s daily scrutiny too. They cheerfully passed the mantle of their combined household duties onto me. I was going to need to help a lot more in the kitchen, with laundry, cleaning bathrooms and on it went. I did not want the mantle they were passing down.

Their exit made me the last man standing as the middle eldest daughter. I insisted that I had not grown. I had not changed. They set me straight with the fact that if they had grown, then so had I, silly. That is how it works. They ordered me to get off the suitcases and stop being a big baby.

They assured me with hugs as they pulled away that I would get used to it, I could do this, and furthermore, I should be glad to help, not be such a pain, considering all they had done for me. Besides, I could visit over a weekend. Not every weekend, but occasionally. We would cook and eat together again.

I think of Jesus and how companionable he was with his disciples. Jesus fed multitudes with bread, called himself the bread of life, and broke bread as a sign that his body was broken for us. His blood was shed for us. Imagine how the disciples must have lost their appetites after the betrayal and murder of Jesus. All that violence. The guilt and fear weighing on Jesus’s followers, everything had its flavor—until Resurrection Sunday.

What had he promised as they counted those longest of days? What did you write down, Matthew? John, did he say he was coming back? Let us piece what has been written and count the days. There was an armed guard by the tomb, that’s terrible. Oh, how was this going to work?

Finally, the day arrived. And the women were up so early they received the news first, “He is risen just as he said!” He appeared to them. He met the disciples on the beach by the cooking fire, feeding them. They were restored and together again. Jesus asking Peter to feed his sheep, feed his sheep, feed his sheep. Surely, he cannot be speaking about leaving so soon. Jesus is saying he will be with them always. Then he sent the Holy Spirit who gave them the power to go into all the world. To change the world.

This is the power we have in our daily lives. We aren’t merely affected by weird, unexpected, and inevitable changes all around us. We wear the mantle; we carry the gospel news. This is our winning season, a time to be a friend who will sit and share the bread of life and offer companionability.