One warm August night and only two of us standing on our neighbor’s deck. The others had gone inside to escape the heat and eat the dessert waiting in the cool kitchen. Alone on the deck in the descending darkness of early evening my neighbor asked, “So, how did you find the Lord?” It was not a question I was expecting at a neighborhood dinner party, or any party for that matter, where politics, religion, and conviviality don’t mingle with one another. It made me uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. Honestly, my first thought was that he might have had too much to drink and was just teasing his neighbor, the Reverend, as he refers to me. Then I looked at his face and knew he was serious, whether drunk or not. His question was about more than me. In the uncluttered directness of that mom…