Pastor Bob and the Mermaid

Pastor Bob graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois in 1969. He majored in Bible but enjoyed archeology and literature. He liked a good story, both the reading and the telling.

It was no surprise, then, that he went to the North American Baptist Seminary where he was prepared for the ministry. He did manage to fit in a trip to Israel before graduation. That was in 1971. There he spoke with Jews and Arabs, and Orthodox and Coptic Christians. He took a swim in the Dead Sea and ate a picnic lunch next to the River Jordan.

Earlier at Wheaton College, Pastor Bob was one of four students in his class who never missed Chapel over the course of four years. He often spoke with Chaplin Welsh while the student body pastor was still alive. Though Pastor Bob was tall, lanky, and already had a receding hairline, he and Chaplin Welsh were of the same mind—they liked to offer reassurance, kind words, and to share a favorite verse from the Bible.

His freshman year, in spite of mandatory enrollment in ROTC for all new students with its early hour training, Bob liked to get up even earlier and pray in the little chapel on the second floor of the student center. No one else was ever there at that hour.

Once he entered and sat in the pew, it was like there was no Student Center outside the door and no Wheaton College. He might as well have been floating in one of those balloons through the air—he had no cares; no worries; the experience was perfect tranquility.

That student center has since been torn down as was Ferris House where Bob roomed as a freshman. The house gave way to the Billy Graham Center. Graham had been caught with a slush fund which he immediately dedicated to a center on campus to celebrate himself and his evangelical ministry.

Some of the students Bob ate lunch with in the college cafeteria were politically minded. One persuaded the head of NAACP to speak on campus. Three others went off one night to help out students guarding the door of the administration building at the University of Chicago after students took it over.

But Bob was not political. He did not care about SDS or the Viet Nam war. He did not care about the Poor People’s March on Washington or the student fast on campus organized in its support. He did not care about gossip either, that some of Billy Graham’s early associates were organizing orgies in their hotels while on the road for their ministry.

While others were busy displaying and then racing off with the “bench,” a trophy and symbol of class competition and superiority, on that evening Bob was sitting in an abandoned graveyard not far from campus reading Solomon’s book of Ecclesiastes. Bob was not morbid or depressed. He just knew when he had his hands on a good story--that you want to read it in the right context and with appropriate ambience.

Other than that, there is not much to explain what later in his life came his way. Oh, Bob was one of a few who on occasion could feel unusual things. As you turn off the main highway, there is a point a little over a quarter mile from campus where he could sense the atmosphere changing.

On one side of that point was that secular, worldly feeling—the physical world is all there is; it is all that matters; and you are lucky if you have a place where you fit in. And on the other side was the atmosphere which said--this is where you can dedicate your life to the Lord; here you will always belong and feel inspired and uplifted by God’s grace.

Bob could feel this line of demarcation. He never missed noticing it when he drove on to campus. But he never gave it a second thought.

All the same, it is not surprising that Bob found a church near Wheaton College where they him asked to be their minister. It was a small, stone church seating no more than one hundred and fifty people. It had a small choir which Bob would sometimes direct when there were no funds for a choir director.

But there was always some volunteer ready to play the piano. Bob had a quiet charisma and there were a few people who never missed church on Sunday, oh, maybe once in four or five years.

And there was one other small thing, hardly worth mentioning. Maybe two, at most three times a year, Bob would dream. And in his dream he would see someone coming forward to join the church or to be saved.

Usually Bob gave his sermons with the tone of voice of a grandfather sitting around a fire in winter recalling his experiences as a railroad conductor or a Great Lake’s ship captain. There were events that had genuine drama, but mostly the story line was routine.

Bob liked to retell the stories in the Bible. He sometimes failed to remember which story he had already told. And no one bothered to point it out to him. Sometimes the congregation themselves did not remember.

But on these special days Bob spoke with a different voice. It was only for one or two minutes, usually toward the end of the sermon. But then it was as if the spirit was upon him. He was not using different words or speaking louder or softer. Instead, it was like he was glowing.

And then at the end of the sermon the congregation sang, “Just as I Am.” And as they sang Bob would give the call to come forward and be saved. And as he saw it in the dream the very same individuals would come forward—the blond girl in the red dress or the young man with hazel eyes in a brown suit and grey tie.

These things happen. Bob did not think anything about them. It was like that line of demarcation between secular and sacred—it just something that is there and that there is no point in talking about, even to your self. Either you see and feel it or you do not.

In 1994, Bob had served as pastor of the church for twenty years. And for the last five years, he had not had a vacation. There were no funds from the church for such things and on his salary it was not a real possibility.

But that year, one of the members of the church board, Howard Davis’s mother died. Howard had not been very attentive to her needs in the last few years. He had seen that she was put in a good nursing home. But he rarely visited her.

And then he found out that she left him six hundred thousand dollars in her will. It turned out that the thousand shares of Rockwell she had bought for five thousand dollars back in the sixties had numerous stock splits and also split off into other companies like Boeing Airlines.

Howard felt guilty. He could not sleep. It bothered him. So Howard wanted to make things right, not quite like Billy Graham naming a center after himself. Rather, Howard wanted to do something good with the money.

It was Pastor Bob who had spoke at his mother’s funeral. And Bob had also calmed him and eased his guilt, speaking with that Chaplin Welsh voice that reassured, offering just the right verse.

Howard decided to pay for the pastor and his wife’s vacation. He booked for them a cottage at Kawela Bay, the most isolated and perhaps beautiful beach on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. And this is where our story finally begins.

It was Saturday morning, the last day of their stay in the cottage on the bay. As he had done each morning, Bob had gotten up before dawn to walk the beach, his feet among the waves, the first purple light staining the horizon, while the birds were only just now beginning to sing their songs.

Bob sits down on the sand, five feet from where the water in dancing spray reaches out with glistening finger tips feeling every grain of sand, fingers as sensitive and quick as a concert pianist playing a great concerto, yet one never heard by human ears.

And then she appeared next to him, sitting on the sand. At first he saw a woman half human and half fish. He could see right through her so he thought he was imagining this. He blinked, and then he saw her bending and wrapping her arms around her knees. At this point she looked real enough, certainly for you or me.

Bob speaks these words in that tone of voice and frame mind that understands you either see these things or you do not. There is nothing really to argue about.

“I should not be talking to you. You are not in the Bible so you are either not real or else you are evil.”

The girl says to him in reply, “You do not know how to read your Bible if you can not find me in it.”

Bob replied, “Well then, tell me where, what verse and chapter?”

The girls says, “In the beginning, verse and chapter were never there. You have come from a tradition where men study and memorize the written word. But what you see in front of you is the living word.”

Bob: “If it is not in the Bible, I have no need to believe.”
The mermaid: “It is written—‘he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the Throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the city.’

“Those words are written and you can read them aloud and think on them. But I am this river. It flows through my soul. We have the same taste; we are the same divine grace. In me, sight and sound are alive. And like that river I exist to nourish those who shall bring healing to the nations.

“And these words also, ‘Out of his belly shall flow streams of living water.’ This is impossible to miss--the written word speaks of something living that shall come to be.

“In me you see these words fulfilled—the essence of my being is an innocence in which every moment is new and has the power to renew.”

The mermaid stopped speaking sitting silently next to Bob. And then Bob did what only a handful of Christian ministers or priests have done in two thousand years. He gazed at what was in front of him without thoughts intervening.

They sat like that for an hour, no words spoken, no actions taken. Only quite presence silently sharing heart to heart.

It took Pastor Bob nearly six months to come to terms with what he had experienced. It is not the kind of thing you talk about with other people. Either you see and feel it or you do not.

But one Sunday Pastor Bob started his sermon in a most unusual way. He offered a meditation there in that little Baptist church just outside of Wheaton, Illinois. The meditation is short and rather simple. But again, it is a first—this is the first time in the entire history of Christianity that any pastor, priest, brother, lay member, or other has spoken words like these.

But you can decide for your self from this meditation if Pastor Bob had seen a real mermaid or not:

Before I begin the sermon, I want you to take a moment and imagine a mountain pool. There is a small waterfall, a gentle spray of drops falling, moisture in the air, sparkling light dancing in the falling drops, the sound of splashing in the pool, small ripples running across the surface, and the water flowing over some rocks as it continues down the hill.

Imagine you are the water falling, dropping through the air, splashing, circling in the pool, and then flowing on. Take a few moments to explore those sensations—the falling drops and the cool, splashing water, the sounds and moisture in the air. And note the feeling of purity, release, relaxation, and peace that they awaken. There, now then, let us proceed to today’s sermon.

Then Pastor Bob went on, “Our scripture for today—‘He showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the Throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the city ….”