Coneys, Friendship, and Kairos: A Thanksgiving Story

Reading Time: 4 minutes

On Thanksgiving day, my best friend, Bruce, and I had our eyes on more than turkey and pumpkin pie. We were going coney hunting. Imagining ourselves Pilgrims, we planned to provide the day’s feast, not realizing rabbit may not be much of a feast in size or taste. What do ten-year-olds know? So far, we’d only killed a couple of Folgers coffee cans practicing in our backyards. But we held high expectations.

Full of bluster and Cap’n Crunch, we promised our moms we’d be home by dinner with a surprise. Bundled against the twenty-degree weather, we wended through our neighborhood streets up the north side of Bear Valley, the Denver suburb we lived in. Strange sight we must have been—fiberglass bows and several practice arrows in hand—glimpsed from the picture windows of the mid-century homes lining the street. 

Our destination was a farm marked by a three-rail white fence with acres of bony cottonwoods, maples, and rabbit-inundated winter wheat. It seemed a wilderness to us. It sat near the top of the valley, about two miles from our houses. We only hoped the farmer was too busy stuffing himself with Thanksgiving to catch us trespassing on his land.

At first, Bruce and I bragged about who was the best shot and who would arrow the first bunny. 

“Won’t our moms be surprised when we walk in with a brace of coneys?” Bruce said. Somehow, Bruce always knew how to end these types of arguments. Though I never saw him with a book outside of school, he knew something about everything. So, I switched the conversation to what we liked best about Thanksgiving. 

“The turkey, dark meat,” Bruce said.

“Sweet potatoes covered with marshmallows,” I offered. “Washed down with a cold sixteen-ounce Dr. Pepper,”  We were Peppers long before they coined that slogan. 

Climbing the hill, we lapsed into the silence of our imaginations. I imagined becoming a mountain man. Living off the land in a teepee. I couldn’t wait to get away from metal fences, concrete curbs, and brick houses. Dig my boots into the dirt. To smell the rotted cottonwood leaves and wood smoke as it twisted through the overhanging tree branches. To watch the cold Colorado blue sky soar endlessly above me. 

“I’m sure glad school’s out,” I said, trying to kill the silence. Bruce nodded but did not take the bait. Though I couldn’t recognize it as a ten-year-old, Bruce was comfortable with silence. It was one of the many things I loved about this creative, wild-haired, dirty-fingered kid. Unlike me, he didn’t always have to be talking.

Finally, we climbed the wood fence. The morning sun painted the wheat golden.

“Stay low,” Bruce said. We nocked arrows and ghosted through the wheat, hoping to scare up a rabbit. The field was far more open to the farmhouse than we had imagined. Windows like shiny eyes staring at us.

“He’ll see us,” I said. I hid behind a big, knobbly tree.

“We need to stalk to scare out any rabbits,” Bruce said, standing out in the open. “We can outrun him.”

But it was no good. We saw not hide nor hare. Our imagined hunting trip was better than the reality. Reluctantly, we snuck back to the fence and walked home, now telling stories about where we’d hunt next. Bruce was a fine storyteller.    

We had been friends all through grade school. But that day, I learned what friendship felt like. 

“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it,” C. S. Lewis wrote.

That morning, the truth we shared wasn’t Truth with a capital T. That came later when Bruce, like John Irving’s Owen Meany, became the instrument for me to believe in God. And we saw the same truth but from very different eyes.

The small t truths we experienced but couldn’t name that morning were living in the moment and the fabric of friendship. 

So, Bruce and I walked astride, not in lockstep, just being. Two weird kids who felt less weird together. We didn’t have to feel or think the same things. I found a peace, comfortability next to Bruce that day. And many others later. I think he did with me too. It didn’t always happen that way.

My mom was not surprised when I walked in empty-handed. “No rabbits?” she said, smirking. “Get cleaned up for Thanksgiving.” 

I was the surprised one. Surprised by something I could not hold in my hands but a moment that has held on to me ever since.  

My childhood Thanksgivings mostly blend like so many mashed potatoes. Except this one. That several-hour adventure stands in my mind as a banner, a signpost.

It set a yearning in me. Bruce and I lost touch, but I’ve hunted for authentic friendships ever since. Someone to walk beside in all the adventures high and low. Someone to search for truth with. By God’s grace, I found them. The Redheaded-Wildflower is one.

I’ve also dreamed of celebrating Thanksgiving on a farm or in a cabin where we go hunting in the morning. Today, I know this longing is not for repeating the specifics of that day but the unfurling of a day of slow, connected, unexpected beauty. The ancient Greeks called this kairos. Kairos is time without the unrelenting ticking of the clock. A moment that possesses you more than you possess it. Expectancy versus expectation. Kairos is entering God’s time, a moment of eternity. Like basking in a ray of sun breaking through the clouds. It brings clarity, allure, warmth, and peace. What Bruce and I experienced was not high adventure but something better: kairos. 

I pray for kairos, God’s time for you and me this Thanksgiving.

P.S. I finally found Bruce again after nearly forty years of each of us wondering where the other was. We talked on the phone as if no time had passed. Again a kairos moment. He passed several months later. But I know we’ll have more kairos moments in the future.