ST. ARBUCK’S & THE BUCKET LIST

As Helen and I drive to church this morning, just as we are almost there, all the cars in the line ahead of us will turn right into St. Arbucks. They always do. And I shall say, as I always do, “Everybody gets to worship at St. Arbucks but me.” And Helen will respond, as she always does, “There is coffee at St. Mark’s.”

She is right, of course, but coffee at St. Mark’s is not the same as coffee at St. Arbuck’s. At St. Mark’s, it’s free. At St. Arbucks, I would have to pay five bucks, and also it would taste awful, proving it’s the real thing. St. Mark’s coffee is… just coffee.

At St. Arbuck’s, you get more than just coffee. You get aura. Each person sits and looks at a screen and sips coffee and ignores everyone else. I think a Sunday morning like that would be so neat. That’s on my bucket list.

St. Mark’s doesn’t have aura; it has people. Everybody wants you to experience the peace of Christ and have a good morning and extend an invitation to go curling or brass rubbing. They won’t leave you alone.

One woman said she went to another church in town for nine months when she moved here and no one spoke to her the whole time. The first Sunday she came to St. Mark’s, before the morning was out, she had been signed up to play in the bell choir. Now she can’t get away, even to go down the hill seventy-five yards to St. Arbuck’s.

“Maybe if you didn’t go around before worship at St. Mark’s and tell everybody they’ll go to hell if they don’t sign the attendance pad, and go around after church asking them for bail money, they would leave you alone,” Helen says.

“That’s pail money, not bail money,” I say, “for my bucket list.” But I guess worshiping at St. Arbuck’s will never get marked off my bucket list.

  

That’s about all that is on my bucket list now. Helen has an even shorter list. She says the only thing on her bucket list is “Never make a bucket list.”

It’s okay if you have a bucket list, but at a certain age, you are past the point of regretting stuff undone because you are too tired to want to do stuff, anyway. It’s kind of neat, just to be satisfied with the experiences you already have.

My bucket list has turned into a memory list. Life is not about longing for the future now but about appreciating the past. My bucket is full almost up to the brim.  I have to keep the bucket upright just to keep all the memories in. And I have to drive past  St. Arbuck’s and on to St. Mark’s to get coffee.

John Robert McFarland