Bonding Bill

When I was 18 years old I traveled to Galveston, Texas to spend the summer working on a project sponsored by the nation’s largest college ministry. At the time I had just finished my freshman year at the University of Iowa. During that year I moved into a fraternity, completed a bunch of college courses that meant nothing to me, got involved with student government, and joined an evangelical campus organization. It was a heady time for me, being independent and carefree, being directed both by fixed schedules and sudden impulses. It was also a time when I became more dogmatic than ever about what I believed even as I was exposed to a broader spectrum of ideas.

My newfound ideological inflexibility surfaced most prominently in the area of theology. Back home in the Methodist church my pastor and his wife were ardent adherents of charismatic doctrines that didn’t sit well with me. I’d been chafing at their teachings for some time and determined I’d set them straight once and for all after school was out and before I drove to Galveston. I reasoned my arguments against their positions would easily dominate our discussion since having spent just nine months in college I was clearly more of an intellectual than they were, and presumably more devout.

Once I got home I realized the pastor and his wife really weren’t interested in debating me at all. They simply wanted to spend some time together before I left on my trip, and to pray for me. So, my future wife and I met them at the parsonage. We had dinner and then adjourned to their basement to chat. I was quite ready for engagement but instead they asked if I’d like to listen to a sermon titled Thy Kingdom Come by well-known Pentecostal preacher Ern Baxter. My reaction was of course but inside I was thinking oh god!

Admittedly, his sermon was amazing and I was moved by it. At this point the world began to change. The conversation pivoted to the consideration of those very doctrines I had been prepared to debate, but now I was less attracted to an argument and far more interested in a thoughtful dialogue. Together we examined pertinent Bible passages for an hour or more until I realized my bigheaded defenses had crumbled in the face of truths that had been in view all along. When I finally affirmed their interpretation, I knew I was ready to receive a richer experience with Christ. As they prayed for me a different, more penetrating Spirit of God came over me, opening an intimacy with God I had not known before. Our prayer time ended well after midnight, and I went home transformed, addressing my heavenly Father as Abba for the first time in my life. A few days later I was in Texas.

The Galveston project was one of multiple summer outreaches scattered across the country sponsored by a leading evangelical organization. Nearly fifty college students converged on this Gulf coast island community for the purpose of bringing the Gospel to anyone who would listen whether on the beach or not. The men were housed in the annex of an old Lutheran church while the women lived in two rental houses several blocks away. All of us had to get jobs to support ourselves during the week, but in the evening we fellowshipped or did Bible study, and every Friday night we all ate together. Usually we hit the beach on the weekends.

On the second day into the project I walked out of the annex to my car to go apply for a job as a groundskeeper with the Galveston school district. Bill ran out and asked if he could tag along. We interviewed together and were hired on the spot, and soon were part of a crew of eight black guys and one other white guy.

In a life of a million little things I can count a handful of incidents that at the time looked coincidental but later proved to be providential. This would be the case with Bill running after me that morning in May. I knew almost nothing about him except that he was from Pittsburg and was enrolled at the University of Maryland on a wrestling scholarship. He was short, muscular, and outgoing.

I’ve often wondered what that summer would have been like if he hadn’t come along. We certainly wouldn’t have worked together every day for three months. We might not have forged a friendship any deeper than our first names. And when I left Galveston to go home he would not have been on my mind or remained in my soul for two years. Yet, for reasons not apparent that morning, he did run after me and we did eventually bond in a way I had never explored with another man.

Obviously, Bill and I shared the same faith and mission. That’s why we were together in Galveston in the first place. Christ was our common ground and evangelism was our mutual goal. Day by day we witnessed unassumingly to our workmates. We did our best to merge with a culture that was foreign to us, but in that overture, there was an opening to display something of the Son of Man they could appreciate.

I noticed early on in my growing friendship with Bill that he was a man full of passion for God. He had a hunger and thirst for spiritual life I had not seen in many others. He was, after all, a wrestler, and it was obvious he wrestled with God. When he prayed he knelt at his bedside oblivious to the comings and goings of the two dozen guys who shared the dormitory with him.

Day by day our friendship matured. It wasn’t long before it was clear to me I had found a friend who was as close to being a soulmate as I had ever known. Here was a guy who was just like me in so many ways. Perhaps most gratifying was that he saw something in me that he really liked – my sense of humor, my personality, my dedication – and he was unembarrassed to admit it openly. He’d find me out in group activities. He’d ask me questions and seek advice. He’d hug me for little or no reason. Eventually we had nicknames for each other. I was Romulus and he was Remus, and inside each of us we were building something more beautiful and enduring than Rome itself.

One evening Bill drew me alone for a serious conversation. He wanted to know the truth about my hidden life in Christ, and he pleaded with me to be completely honest. He saw a concentration of spiritual energy in me that he did not recognize in the other men. He wanted to understand the source of that desire and purpose and to experience it for himself. I assured him that whatever I had was available to him, too. I related what I had experienced in my pastor’s basement only days before coming to Galveston. He soaked it all up because that was his nature. He wanted all of God and was willing to do anything to get it.

Several days later Bill drew me aside again. He was eager to tell me he had gone to the beach around midnight to pray. He was all alone with the light from a full moon and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. He asked God to come upon him with a fresh dimension of his Spirit. God answered him much in the same way he had answered me and sealed it with the same word Abba, which means Daddy in Aramaic, the language Jesus would have spoken in Judea. In front of me was a man full of joy and a brother knitted tighter to me than ever before.

We were now partners in crime insofar as we both subscribed to tenets of faith that were not endorsed by the organization in which we were working. We needed to keep quiet about our awakenings otherwise we could be reprimanded or expelled from the program. Unfortunately for me the need to be discrete had evaded me and I was already on the leader’s radar. I was taken behind the shed and told unequivocally that I could either tow the theological line the organization expected or I could pack up and return to Iowa. I decided to conform. The project leadership didn’t know about Bill’s encounter with God on the beach and he had no intention of telling them. Our common spiritual stirrings had drawn us closer, and the added scrutiny on me made our brotherhood more clandestine and more cherished.

When the summer project ended I returned to Iowa largely unaware of what I had left behind. I moved back to college, renewed the academic grind, remained in the same campus ministry, and got even more involved with student government. Yet not many weeks passed before my thoughts turned to Bill and the deep friendship we had forged. These thoughts were not simply warm, casual memories of a nice time. They were thoughts of longing and loss, of a yearning of the soul that cannot be articulated entirely. I ached inside because I missed him so much. My soul was in a state of silent mourning that continued for two years.

I never saw Bill again. Our separate lives moved on. We both married and had four children. Maybe for a time he thought of me as much as I thought of him. I’ll never know the impact my life had on him. I can only testify to what he meant to me. He was a friend who was like a brother in the same way David and Jonathan were brothers. When Jonathon died David wrote I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother. You were such a friend to me. Your love for me was more wonderful than the love of women. (2 Sam 1) David confessed that his admiration and affection for Jonathan was of a greater intensity than the force of passion he had known with any woman.

For those men who have never experienced the strength of this kind of brotherhood it could seem awkward admitting such a relationship is even desirable, especially if they agree with the unorthodox suggestion that David and Jonathan were lovers. I feel sorry for the man who is afraid to be unguarded with another man, who believes the cost of vulnerability is too big to be valuable. That is the man who remains confined in a closet of his own making, one defined by outdated conventions and irrational inhibitions. Such a man can never imagine he was made for deep male companionship or even acknowledge he has a need to be known openly by another man. So, he will continue to live barricaded against the kind of bond I had with Bill for fear someone might label him unfit to be called a man.

Years ago, my pastor asked me to bring the morning devotion at a men’s retreat. In front of forty men the first words out of my mouth were Have you ever been in love with another man? The shockwave of that question rippled across the room like a silent tsunami. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the pastor was instantly gripped with the anxiety that comes from uncertainty. I let the men squirm in somber uneasiness for a moment and then asked Have you ever been in love with the Son of Man?

They were noticeably relieved when they understood my devotion was about Jesus and not about my boyfriend. I went on to talk about the Lord, but I also challenged them to probe their own hearts. How can you know what it’s like to really love this Man if you’ve never really loved another man? The occasion didn’t permit a full disclosure of my perspective. I didn’t want to waste my time sharing the pearl of Bill’s friendship with a group of hungry men who were being overstimulated by the smell of fried bacon wafting from the adjoining room. It was enough that I had asked some questions. I would let them find their own answers.

The group relaxed when I finished and sat down. Breakfast grace was given and the men rushed the food. I closed my eyes and breathed a sigh of contentment. I comfortably embraced the wholesome truth that I had loved another man with all my heart and that love had been wonderful.