There were three empty seats in a grouping of four with a breathtaking view of the Danube River flowing by our cruise ship. An elegant lady in the fourth chair took her eyes off the German countryside long enough to meet our gaze as we stopped.

“Do you mind if we sit here?”

“Of course not. Please, join me.”

“We’re Penny and Paris,” I said.

“I’m Marsha,” she replied. “My husband stepped out for a minute, but he’ll be back soon.”

Her Southern accent floated to my ears like the scent of magnolia blossoms on an April day. As a native Georgian living in exile in the land of Chicago’s nasal twang, her drawl was music to my ears. I could not help myself. I asked the first stereotypical tourist question.

“So… Where are you from?”

“Well, I grew up in south Georgia, but now I live in Jacksonville, Florida.”

“Is that so? I grew up in north Georgia, and now I live in Chicago.

“Really? Whereabouts in north Georgia?”

“Roswell.”

The smile disappeared from her face, replaced by the look you make when finding a hair in your soup.

“I have very unpleasant memories of Roswell from my high school days.”

“You must be from Irwin County,” I said.

She gasped as if I had just stepped on her foot in a hobnail boot. “How did you know?”

“I was at that game.”

I still remember THAT GAME like it was yesterday. I was a junior at Roswell High School when our team played Irwin County at our home field for the state championship. It was early December, and, for Georgia, brutally cold. Winters are typically mild in the Peach State, but that night the ground was frozen. The poor Irwin County High School team had never played in such conditions. They could not get their footing, their south Georgia hands were stiffened by the cold, and the Roswell boys ran over them all night for a final score of 36 to 6. Along with the rest of the student body I ran on to the field when the game was over to whoop it up and chant, “We’re number one! We’re number one!”

“That was the saddest bus ride home to Ocilla in the history of the world,” Marsha mused. “I was a majorette, and none of us expected anything like that. It was pretty traumatizing.”

“I’m sure it was,” I replied.

Just then a tall, lanky, distinguished looking gentleman took the seat across from me.

“This is my husband, Ken,” Marsha said to us. Then turning to her spouse she said, “This is Paris and Penny, and you’ll never guess where Paris is from. He’s from Roswell, and he was at that game.”

Ken smiled. “I’m surprised she’s talking to you.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to win her over.”

The long-ago gridiron matchup hung like a fog in the air between us, but we moved on to other topics. Because a dear friend of mine had hailed from Ocilla, and I had visited the town with him many times, Marsha and I knew some of the same people. The serendipitous nature of our encounter was not lost on either of us.

After a while Ken asked the second stereotypical tourist question. “So, Paris, what do you do?”

“I’m retired.”

“Retired from what?”

I hesitated. Any member of the clergy learns what a conversational minefield the subject of religion can be in our current national climate. In some circles the word “Pastor” elicits a response like discovering something disgusting on the bottom of your shoe. There are people nowadays for whom the word conjures images of fiery demagogues or pedophiles at worst, unenlightened chumps at best. But Ken had asked politely so I took the plunge.

“I was a pastor,” I said.

Ken gazed at me with a look of appreciation and said, “Pastors have a hard job.”

He could not have given me a better gift. When he related stories about the mission trips he organized and led from his church, I was deeply impressed with his commitment. Still, I was not unaware of the theological chasm between us. Although I had been raised in a theologically conservative denomination, I left it decades ago to minister within a much more liberal church. I worried that the gulf between us might be more than either of us could cross.

As it turned out, my fears were no more grounded in reality than the Bogey Man or the Tooth Fairy. The four of us spent the week discussing family, work, faith, our mutual love for travel, and life in general. Penny and I met numerous fellow globetrotters during the cruise with whom we enjoyed meals and drinks, but our moments with Ken and Marsha were particularly delightful. We even waded into the tremulous waters of biblical interpretation, and still ended the evening as friends. On the last night of our cruise Ken looked at me with his kind eyes and said, “I’ve come to the place in my life where faith is something I do more than something I say.” Having preached to congregations for years that a Christian is known by faith practiced more than spoken, I knew Ken to be a kindred spirit.

And before we parted, Marsha confessed she really harbored no ill feelings for Roswell. It was all in fun. I suspected as much, but the friendly teasing made the trip even more pleasant.

Albert Einstein once said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” If so, I thank God for the coincidence of meeting Ken and Marsha on a boat thousands of miles away from our homes. Such a coincidence demonstrates, for me, the bonds we all share if we dare to listen to, and respect, one another. Who would have thought a high school football game 54 years ago would generate a connection between people of varying beliefs and perspectives on the other side of the world?

PBS travel host Rick Steves says, “Travel is a way to broaden perspective…Fear, to me, is for people who don’t get out very much. If you take the most frightened people we know in our communities, I bet they’re the people who travel the least. They’re not interested in enlarging their understanding of others. They don’t know what it means to be surrounded by other people who look and think differently…Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice, and narrowmindedness. It’s not for wimps.”

“Not everybody can travel, of course,” says Steves. “But there are a thousand ways to have a traveling mindset.” In these days of deep polarization, God grant more of us a “traveling mindset.” I know Ken and Marsha take one with them everywhere they go.