Abide with Me

by Elizabeth Strout

Did Connie know—she probably did—that she was one of those women you pass in the grocery store and see without seeing?

But something else was at work here. Every night of Tyler’s childhood, his father had said, “Always be considerate, Tyler. Always think of the other man first.” (Who can estimate the effect of such a thing?) And if this had somehow mixed itself up with his own struggle to still believe he mattered,

He might have to point that out in the sermon; always speak to the lowest common denominator in your audience—that

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

He thought of Bonhoeffer writing that it was not love that sustained a marriage but the marriage that would sustain the love.

where a community of Christians listened to Bonhoeffer say that man’s sin was flight from responsibility.

His job was to stand in church with his shoulders back and his chin up, and make his congregation understand that being a Christian was not a hobby. Being a Christian was serious stuff. Being a Christian meant asking yourself every step of the way: How can love best be served?

People not familiar with towns like West Annett may not realize as they drive through the gully of trees leading to the sparseness of its Main Street that a social hierarchy exists there, exactly as it does in prisons, sixth grades, and Beacon Hill apartment buildings.

“What I didn’t know about death,” Tyler said, squinting at his fingernails, “was that it was not just the death of my father, but the death of my childhood, the death of the family as I’d known it. It reminds me of Glenn Miller’s plane disappearing above the channel. Not just the death of a bandleader, you see, but the death of a band.” He looked out the window. “That’s what death does. If that makes any sense.”

Do not be afraid, for you are deeply loved by God. Be at peace; take heart and be strong.

Did George know that about himself, he wondered. What did people know about themselves?

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide . . . Odd to think that had been his favorite hymn for years, because what had he really known until this year about the sadness and pleading tone of that hymn? The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. Tyler started the car, drove down the hill, past the church where he’d been married. When other helpers fail and comforts flee . . . O Lord, abide with me.

He thought his wife was an exhibitionist of a different sort. He thought her tears said: Witness my unhappiness.

It puzzled her, but she felt as though the long road of her life that lay ahead, that long, open-ended road where all sorts of wonderful things could happen (because she was young and wouldn’t die for ages) had curved around, and so many things were now decided.

there was no point in her coming to church only on Christmas and Easter. The point in coming to church was to learn the Christian rules of behavior of love and understanding.

“You’ve been through a great deal,” his mother conceded. “But the back strengthens to the burdens it has to bear,

He was glad he was not a woman; it seemed to him their job was immeasurably more difficult than a man’s. But he wanted his wife happy.

On Sunday mornings he assured them that only what came from a man could defile him, not what happened to him. He told them how the business of man’s life was to seek out and save in his soul that which was perishing.

In the summer he loved swimming in the lake, bicycling for miles on a Sunday afternoon to unwind after his sermon. As he pedaled past farmhouses, large fields of young corn, seeing the winding stone walls that went off into the distance, he would feel The Feeling, and give thanks for God’s beautiful, beautiful world.

Said we should separate the gifted and the retarded,

“My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

Now the dismal autumn days have begun and one has to try and get light from within.”

“Confusion will prevent you from being dogmatic.

A natural goodness existed in her, he thought. One that had become hidden beneath the dust of domestic worries.

“People will say it’s not nice to write about people I know.” My mother was tired that night. She yawned. “Well, you don’t know them,” she said. “Nobody ever knows anyone.”