After I was through inside the church – this was the last interior photo I made – it was time to walk around the building. As I made it around to the side that faces the highway, I saw him. The monk. He was on his way to the mailboxes.

In a minute, he came down the hill, and stopped for a chat. He talked about the town, the Mennonites who live just across the border in Mexico, the weather, Minnesota (where he’s from), a 1940 murder at the liquor store* and showed me the bullet holes, and gave me directions to the cemetery.

But you know what? I never told him about the icon, partly from residual shyness that still pops up from time to time, and partly because it seemed a little too fan-girl.

The whole encounter starts to seem like it was more of a dream than anything else, but I can see clearly his dusty brown robe, his desert boots, his long reddish beard…

Shafter, Texas
photographed 11.4.2017

* True.