This afternoon, I drove out to a nearby nursing home to visit with a long-time member of the congregation who has Alzheimer’s disease. He just recently move into the nursing home.

He was quite talkative today. When he talked, some of the phrases made sense, and sometimes even whole sentences made sense. Mostly, though, I paid attention to his body language and his facial expressions and his hand gestures, and I paid attention to the rhythms of his speech. Maybe I couldn’t quite understand what he was trying to say — maybe he couldn’t quite piece together whatever it was he was trying to express — but you could get a sort of general sense of it.

I will readily admit that I glanced at my wristwatch while he was talking. It’s been a difficult week at church this week. Our new Director of Religious Education called me Sunday to resign for health reasons. A key member of the congregation died on Saturday night. I have a memorial service to plan, I have to scramble to put together a church school program for this Sunday, I don’t have any time. I glanced at my wristwatch, saw I had been there in the nursing home for twenty minutes.

But I didn’t leave. I was enjoying this conversation. I like this man, he’s a sweet, gentle guy. Many conversations don’t make much sense, if you consider the content of the words alone. In many conversations, what’s really important is the simple fact that two human beings are paying attention to each other; and that’s something that isn’t carried by the words of the conversation.

We continued having that gentle conversation there in the nursing home for a full hour, and then I really did have to go. It was a good conversation, even if we didn’t say much in terms of words.