The little white wooden church of the Flagstaff John Wesley Fellowship was over a hundred years old, and the pews were, too. That meant that they were only slightly more uncomfortable than the average rock in the Grand Canyon, but Nanci was used to them. She was sitting in the back of the church, just listening to Mrs. Dowling play the prelude. The ancient lady was still very good on the little electric organ that had replaced the much more elaborate one that still sat in the back corner of the church. It hadn’t worked in many years, and the cost of having it repaired had always been far beyond the budget of the tiny congregation. Mrs. Dowling had been the organist for the Fellowship for well over half a century, and if the arthritis in her hands caused her to have to miss a note every now and then there was no doubt that her heart was still in the music.

It was Christmas morning, and it had been a busy week for Nanci. She and Sarah had stopped by Hillside Methodist to see Reverend Miller on Monday, and it turned out that he had a special request of her. His aged parents were both in poor health, and he had hoped to spend Christmas with them. It would be the first time that he would be able to manage that in several years. He had been extremely reluctant to bring in a supply pastor at Christmas of all times, but Nanci was still the associate pastor of the church, no matter that her position was slightly irregular. She’d often been there for the Sunday service in the last few years, and had spoken there several times, so the congregation knew her. Having Nanci fill in for him just wasn’t the same thing as having some unknown supply pastor do the job.

Of course, Nanci wasn’t about to turn him down, so she agreed to do the services even before she learned that there was to be an evening service on Christmas Eve, and then the regular early service on Christmas Day. It turned out that it had been decided months before to skip the later service, which meant that Nanci could do both services and still make it over to the Fellowship.

The services were joyful; Christmas and Easter always brought out people who rarely made it to church at other times, and it meant that both services had been close to a full house. They were the largest congregations Nanci had ever preached to, and she’d kept the length of her sermons down to allow more singing of some of the favorite Christmas hymns.

Nanci had often heard Preach complain that Methodists could turn the most joyful hymn into a dirge, and at times she’d conceded that he might have a point – but not this time. Maybe it was because of the constant repetition of the music during the season, or maybe it was the less-familiar attendees adding more than their share, but the singing was some of the best she’d ever heard at Hillside.

She’d had to prepare two different sermons, unlike when she did the normal morning services, but it wasn’t difficult. This time, of all times, it was important to keep things simple, at least partly because of those who only rarely showed up. The evening service had gone well, and the morning service was even better. Of course, she had to greet everyone after the service, and that took longer than usual, too – and it meant that she had to drive her mother’s car like a young maniac to make it over to the Fellowship in time for the service there. She didn’t want to miss the service; this was going to be something very special.

But she made it in time, although just barely; she wanted to slip in as unobtrusively as possible. Even the Fellowship church had a larger crowd than normal. Along with the extras Preach and Crystal were there, of course, but so were Jon and Tanisha, Ben and Joy, Al and Nanci’s mother, and Nanci’s best friend outside of the family in Flagstaff, fellow boatman Kevin Haynes. To top it off, a little surprisingly, Will and Jennifer Hoffman were there – it wasn’t the first time they’d been there, but they’d only been very occasional guests, and then only when Nanci had been speaking.

Jeff Pleva got up from one of the chairs in the front of the Flagstaff John Wesley Fellowship, and took a couple of steps to the pulpit as the congregation grew silent. Jeff was a special friend of Nanci’s; he was the bus driver, mechanic, and run-and-fetch guy at Canyon Tours, although he was backing off a little as his age neared eighty. But Jeff was also the lay leader of the church, and had been for some years. “The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” he said reverently.

“And also with you,” the congregation replied in a slightly ragged unison. It was the traditional opening to worship in the Fellowship, and most of the people there didn’t need to read it in the bulletin.

“Good morning,” Jeff said, a little more casually. “I have several announcements this morning.” He gave a brief update on a member of the congregation who had been hospitalized, and asked for prayers for him, along with a couple of other items.

“Finally,” he concluded, “our speaker today will be Sarah Lackamp, who is a divinity student at Hickory Run Methodist Seminary in Kentucky, where she attends along with Reverend Nanci Chladek, who we all know so well from the many times she’s spoken here. Reverend Chladek tells me that she is a very interesting and devout young lady, so please give a warm John Wesley Fellowship welcome to Sarah Lackamp.”

As Jeff stepped back from the pulpit, Sarah got up and walked to it. She was dressed conservatively in a floor-length green dress that was so low-cut it would have been scandalous if it were not for the white blouse she wore under it; a medium-sized wooden cross hung from her neck. The dress was the result of an all-out shopping expedition led by Nanci’s mother Karin, and so was Sarah’s attractively restyled hair. Nanci could honestly say she’d never seen her friend looking so good.

“Thank you, Mr. Pleva,” Sarah replied warmly, “and thank you to the members of the Fellowship who invited me to speak to you today.” She paused for a moment, and began the Call to Worship in a more formal tone. “‘It has been done! The News has been shared!’”

“A young maiden will bear a child, and she will call him Jesus.” the congregation responded, and this time they were reading from the bulletin.

“But that is the beginning of the story, a story that has not yet ended,” Sarah led.

“A story that includes us, a story of which we are a part.”

Like the services at Hillside, this one leaned heavily on traditional Christmas carols; the Bible readings were of the Christmas story.

Sarah had been extremely nervous all week long about giving the Christmas service – in fact, Nanci was still surprised that the combination of Jeff and herself had been able to sell the idea to Sarah at all. It had taken Sarah at least twice as long to prepare the one short sermon as it had taken Nanci to put together two of them, and at that she’d had to crib some notes from Nanci. Sarah had practiced it nervously half a dozen times or more, a couple of times when they were driving out to the South Rim.

But there was not a hint of that now. Sarah spoke slowly and clearly, without a hint of nervousness. She was serious, of course; that was to be expected, but she was also calm and collected. She’d had plenty of examples of what to do in her life; now all she had to do was to do it, and as Nanci listened she could tell she was doing it well – and apparently enjoying it! This was going to do wonders for her self-confidence . . .

The cell phone clipped to Nanci’s belt began to vibrate. She pulled it out and opened it, to see the call was from a number that had repeatedly called several times over the last few days when she’d had the phone turned all the way off. She was tempted to ignore it this time, but there was also the desire to share something special, too. Quietly, she got up and went out the front door into the crisp cool of a Flagstaff Christmas morning, punched the “on” button, and said, “Hi, it’s me. May the Lord be with you.”

“Reverend Chladek, is that you?” she heard Reverend Lackamp say – just exactly who she had been expecting.

“Yes, it is,” she smiled. “So how’s Africa?”

“Hot and disheartening. Is Sarah there?”

“Yes she is, but she’s busy.”

“Would you tell her to put down what she’s doing and come to the phone?”

“No,” Nanci smiled. “I don’t want to interrupt her right now. She’s busy giving the Christmas service at the Flagstaff John Wesley Fellowship.”

“Christmas service? I don’t believe you. She can’t be doing that.”

“Oh, she is, and she’s doing a stellar job of it, too,” Nanci almost giggled. “She’s a very good speaker when she puts her mind to it. It’s a nice congregation too, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen here. I wish you could be here to see her. You’d really be proud of her.”

Somehow Nanci wasn’t surprised that Sarah’s father almost ignored what she had told him. “Look, Nanci, if I can’t talk to Sarah right now, would you please ask her to call Reverend Bowman and apologize for not seeing him today? I have his number here.”

“No, I won’t,” Nanci replied sharply. “It’s not up to her to apologize for breaking a date she didn’t make with someone she detests. She’s the one who ought to be apologized to. At the very minimum that was an extremely rude thing for you to do. If anyone needs to apologize to Reverend Bowman, it’s you, not her.”

“Yes, but he was expecting her to be at Hickory Run. I had no idea she was going to be with you.”

“Still, she shouldn’t have to be the one to apologize since she has nothing to apologize for,” Nanci replied firmly. “Look, Reverend Lackamp, I told your wife and now I’m telling you: don’t push this Reverend Bowman at her because she wants nothing to do with him. If you continue to do it, she’s just going to push back.”

“Reverend Chladek, I’ve known Reverend Bowman for a good many years, and I think he would be good for her. I wish you’d at least try to get her to reconsider.”

“I will ask her gently, but don’t expect anything. She really dislikes the man intensely, and I’ve heard her talk about it several times. If you really want to drive a wedge between yourself and your daughter at what has to be just about the worst possible time, just keep doing it, but know that what happens will be your fault. She’s not very happy with you right now and pushing Bowman at her isn’t going to make her any happier.”

“All right, I’ll try to get hold of Abe again and tell him that she refuses to apologize to him.”

“Once again, she has nothing to apologize to him for. You do. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back inside and hear the rest of your daughter’s wonderful sermon.” Without giving him a chance to reply, Nanci pushed the “end” button on the cell phone, and then shut it off entirely before she walked back into the church. She’d tell Sarah about this call – but not soon, maybe not even today. There was no point in ruining what was a wonderful day for her, and one that might be a real turning point in her life.

Nanci just stood back and watched as the congregation filed out of the church. Sarah had done a magnificent job with the service; Nanci honestly didn’t think she could have done better herself. There were many warm greetings, and even a few hugs from the people who had been there. As the crowd inside dwindled down to nothing, Jeff also thanked her, and said that she’d be welcome to speak there again if she were in the area.

The best part of it was that Sarah didn’t seem to be shy in the slightest with all the strangers she was meeting. She was warm and friendly, not the rather withdrawn woman Nanci had come to know.

It wasn’t until they were in the car that a trace of her nervousness returned. “Nanci,” she asked, “how do you think I did?”

“I think you did great. I couldn’t have done it any better. In fact, I wasn’t anywhere near as good the first time I spoke there.”

“You don’t think people were just being nice to me?”

“No, they meant it,” Nanci smiled. “They’re all a bunch of good people, and I’ve really come to like them. So how do you think it went?”

“I think it went fine, even though my knees were shaking when I first started to speak.”

“If they were, I never caught a hint of it. Sarah, like I said, you did wonderfully.”

“I’m glad you think so. Your opinion means more to me than anyone else’s.”

“My opinion ought to mean nothing. Ask the Lord how well you did, and I suspect He’ll be able to tell you, too.”

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

“You know,” Nanci smiled, “when we get back to Hickory Run, you ought to run in and tell them to put you on the list for being a supply pastor. I think you would do just as well at a place like Colt Creek Methodist.”

“Nanci, I don’t know . . . I mean . . . do you really think so?”

“It can’t hurt. You really seem to have a gift for speaking the Lord’s word. A little practice would get you over a lot of nervousness. A pastor has other duties, but at a minimum I think you’d make a great lay speaker.”

“When you put it that way, maybe I ought to think about it.”

“That’s part of the reason we’re at Hickory Run in the first place,” Nanci grinned. Sarah’s speaking at the Fellowship had obviously had some positive effects on her. It was easily worth the trouble of coming out to Arizona for Christmas in the first place, and as far as Nanci was concerned the best was yet to come.

A few minutes later Nanci wheeled her mother’s car into the yard at Al’s house. It was not easy to park since there were already several cars there.

Since Nanci had left early to do the service at Hillside, there hadn’t been much in the way of early morning Christmas activities, at least partly because there were no small children in the house. In fact, only Jon and Tanisha’s Barbie was getting old enough to figure out what Christmas morning meant and she didn’t have it quite right yet. Nanci figured that in five years Christmas at the Chladek’s in Phoenix was going to be an absolute madhouse, and she hoped that she would be there to see it sometime. It was fun to remember Christmases when she was about that age in their home in Chicago, before things had fallen apart so drastically.

Christmas at Al’s house was a lot different than it had been back in their Chicago suburb. It was almost a “come one, come all” thing and there were a lot of people hanging around. The core family was all there, of course – Al and Karin, Preach and Crystal with Bucky, Jon and Tanisha with their two, along with Nanci, of course. But Ben and Joy were there, along with Will and Jennifer – they came to Al’s Christmas party every few years. Dan and Angie Plemmons were there; Nanci had married them a little over a year before, the first and only wedding she had ever performed. He was an office worker and handyman at Canyon Tours, and she was a boatman. They had no family in the area except for the Canyon Tours gang. Several other boatmen with no local connections were also there, including some of the college-student rafters.

Perhaps best of all, Kevin Haynes was there. Kevin was something special to Nanci; while they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend and never had been – although Crystal still teased them about it – he was Nanci’s best friend in Flagstaff outside the family. He, more than anyone else, had been responsible for Nanci’s becoming a Christian in the first place, and he’d sponsored her for membership at Hillside Methodist. She considered him a brother in the Lord, rather than a simple boyfriend, and she had on occasion wondered why their relationship had never gotten beyond that. Neither of them seemed to mind it, though; they just enjoyed being good friends.

Colorado River boatmen are very experienced at putting on meals for large numbers of people on a river sandbar, so Karin had a lot of help in the kitchen. If anything, there were too many helpers, not that she minded in the slightest, at least partly because she was a boatman, too, although she usually only ran a trip if it weren’t possible to fill a boatman’s seat otherwise.

The result was a huge dinner – there was no table big enough to seat everyone, so it was served buffet style, and people ate where they could, just like they did on the river. There was music; Tanisha had a terrific repertoire of old time-gospel songs popular in black churches like the one she’d grown up in. Her a cappella singing of such standards as Go Tell It On The Mountain and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot had become a Christmas tradition in the house. Nanci got dragged into it too; she was famous – some would say notorious – among Canyon Tours people for singing a somewhat modified version of Down By the Riverside when facing a tough rapids, and, although she felt she was a lousy singer, Tanisha helped her out. They did several straight verses, but when she did the one that went “Gonna hop on a big blue raft, down by the riverside” it caused a lot of laughter and good feelings among these people, most of whom considered the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon their second home.

Of course, there was a lot of standing and sitting around talking, usually about the river and the Canyon, but occasionally other things, too. Sarah, Nanci, Al, and Preach were sitting around in a relatively quiet nook in the living room, when Al happened to mention the words, “Canyon magic.”

“You don’t really mean real magic, do you?” Sarah asked with a frown.

“Of course there’s magic down there. Sarah, you may have seen the Canyon from the rim but it’s a different place down on the water. The vastness, the complexity, the grandeur of the place often hits people in places where they don’t expect to be hit, and Nanci can tell you that. She’s one of the better examples of Canyon magic working on someone that I can think of. The awe of the place, well, it really makes you think about God’s handiwork and the job He must have had in creating the place. But I have no doubt that spirits dwell down there, too.”

“Spirits?” Sarah frowned. “I don’t know that I can buy that.”

Al smiled. “I could explain, but Preach, would you rather take a swing at it? You can probably explain it better than I can.”

“Sure,” Preach said. “Sarah, as Christians we pretty well have to accept the reality of spirits, such as angels and demons, and of course, the Holy Spirit. Most people, including many who are very educated in Christianity, have trouble with the concept of spirits. They’re not something we can easily get our heads around. Now, there are people, and I’ve talked with them, mostly of native religions, who have a different view of spirits. They may not have names or concepts for them but they don’t doubt their existence. I’ve come to believe in them, to the extent that I have to believe in spirits. I may not have names for them, and they may be the same Christian spirits we understand very poorly, and they may not be. I don’t understand them, but I can accept them.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I have to say I find it hard to believe, but you might be right.”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” Preach grinned. “A few years ago we had a famous woman harpist take a harp with her down the Canyon. I was there, Crystal was there, Nanci was there, Al was there, Karin was there, and some of the other people here saw at least parts of it. She made some really evocative, sensitive music down there, so much so that she made a second trip and recorded it. If you haven’t heard the album, Canyon Tours, have Nanci play it for you before you go.”

“I’ve heard it. Nanci plays it in her room at Hickory Run sometimes.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. Now, this woman is very skilled at the harp. If you ask her, and I have, she will tell you that she wasn’t playing the harp, but that the spirits were running her fingers. She didn’t come to believe that easily since she’s not a particularly religious person. She says that because she has real difficulty playing almost any of that music outside the Canyon. I’ve seen her try and fail. I have come to agree that spirits were leading her, and I don’t want to get into the question of whether they were Christian spirits or what. So yes, there’s magic in the Grand Canyon. Some of it comes in our own minds from the pure magnificence of the place, some of it from God and some of it . . . I can’t honestly say, but spirits are as good a term as any.”

“Canyon magic,” Al grinned. “Sarah, if you were to take a trip down there with us sometime, you might find a little of it yourself.”

It was late in the evening before all the guests departed – and at that, many of them had helped with the cleanup. Al, Karin, Nanci, and Sarah were sitting by the big crackling fireplace in the living room, just watching the flames cap off a great day.

“Al, Karin, Nanci,” Sarah finally spoke up, “thank you for having me here with you. It’s the best Christmas I ever had, and I wouldn’t have had it if my parents hadn’t abandoned me to go to Africa on a wild goose chase, so I actually have to thank them a little for going. Everything has been warm and wonderful, and it’s like a dream to me. Thank you again.”

“I guess we made a pretty good move in deciding to come out here,” Nanci said, thinking that now wasn’t the time to tell Sarah about her father’s phone call – and that there might never be a right time.

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