In his autobiography, Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner recalls the story of an evening visiting his mother in Manhattan. To welcome her son, she prepared and served a gourmet meal then the phone rang. A friend of Buechner was calling from the airport where he was waiting for a flight to join his family who had been seriously injured in an accident. The friend wanted to know if Buechner could come and wait with him at the airport. When Buechner's mother learned of this request, she was furious. The meal was ready and was starting to get cold. She called him a fool for thinking about ruining a rare evening together for such a ridiculous reason. Buechner writes, "And for a moment I was horrified to find myself thinking that maybe she was right. Then the next moment I saw more clearly than I ever had before that it is on just such outwardly trivial decisions as this, should I go or should I stay, that human souls are saved or lost."