I heard a text come in on my phone.  When I checked it, I saw it was from one of my brothers, Cinque, and I typed my response.  We need to meet, I told him.  I’m available this week and next.  His reply was let’s meet for lunch tomorrow.  Tomorrow came.  I was late.  I hate to be late.  Hate.

But I make at least two mistakes a year.  Being late last Thursday was my first one.  Or my second one.

He sat waving in the bright blue and yellow booth at Yolks.  He wanted to go to the Hyde Park OHop, but I’m exhausted by that place, and plus I was coming from my office in Logan Square.  It was his turn to pick the place and I’m glad he gave me an option.  We greeted and launched into our conversation.  We picked up from the last time we talked when we were at Cedars, in my neighborhood, where he wouldn’t try the lamb or anything other than the wings.  Yes, I could use some new friends who eat more than wings where-ever they go, but that’s a post for another time. 

Me and Cinque sat in our booth.  I scanned the menu he already knew well.  I ate something with bananas and pecans.  I remember what it was.  I just don’t want to tell you because you’d know one of my weaknesses, and we don’t know each other that well.  But we ate.  And we talked.

That’s it.  We ate and talked.  And when he paid the bill–yes, my friends paying is a condition of my meeting them for lunch–we walked out to Michigan Avenue while finishing up the last pieces of our long chat. 

We had covered a neighborhood of ground.  This is how it is with us, with all our “brothers” actually, be it Winfield or Sam (who we mostly disown) or Shaffer or Nash or EJ or the next one.  We don’t see each other enough, and when we do, we push forward for two hours trying to talk through the details, changes, stories, problems and prayers that cement who we are for each other.  We’re brothers.  Not the biological kind, the spiritual or something like that. 

I turned to hug him, told him I loved him.  He said what he always does, what we always do, that we’ve got to do this more often.  We looked at each other, knowing that the lives we had just discussed–lives filled with problems about and related to God and God’s people, lives filled with relationships of every sort, lives filled with sermons and songs and studio projects and prayer retreats, lives with all the other people we loved–those lives, would not allow it.  So, he said, “Yeah, but it’s good.” 

It’s good that we can’t see each other more.  Sure, we live in the same city.  Sure, he actually lives a mile and half from me.  But he’s right.  In some way, it’s good.  Because when we do see each other, when I finally get Winfield on the phone because his voice mailbox is always full, when we are in another’s company, richness is our experience. 

And that’s really something we all need more of–enriching conversations with a brother or sister or friend, where the past is known and held and cared for and honored and sometimes laughed at.