Today’s find: Chester

The fried chicken from Rozier’s did not disappoint.

Hot…fresh…moist…crunchy. Delicious! It’s a palate-pleasing delight, and it’s become one of the reasons why I really don’t mind spending an otherwise perfectly good summer Saturday in Chester, Illinois.

Chester’s primary claim-to-fame through the decades has been its favorite son, E.C. Segar, creator of the spinach-chomping fist-fight-pickin’ Popeye cartoon character. But for my money, Rozier’s fried chicken is a far more satisfying local attraction.

I only learned about this delicacy by showing up in Chester for my first Kairos Prison Ministry team meeting nearly 15 years ago. Among our many Kairos traditions is breaking bread together…sharing a meal.

Yesterday, we began the formation process for our 23^rd Kairos Weekend at the nearby Menard Correctional Center. And there were a couple of us there who’d been on the Menard #1 team, so we shared stories about the earliest days of the ministry back in 2010. We recalled, too, how Rozier’s fried chicken had been part of our communal meals right from the start.

Along with satisfying food, we encountered something like this as well, both yesterday…and way back in 2010:

…be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.

Saint Paul wrote those words nearly 2,000 years ago, as a consolation and instruction to his friends in Ephesus. But it’s intriguing (and amazing) to me how they remain operative today. Somehow, there seems to be connective tissue running between Chester and Ephesus, matter that forms a holy bond even across the miles and the millennia.

I’m pretty sure it’s not the chicken. Rather, we Kairos team members (and indeed every Christian who believes) are being fed by Living Bread. Strangely, mystically, incomprehensibly – because (in our case) we Kairos team members consciously agree to avoid anything that tends to divide Christian denominations, including communion rites and the theological nuances that surround them.

And yet – strangely, mystically, incomprehensibly – Jesus, the Living Bread, is present to us when we meet in Chester. Jesus finds a way to unite us there… and to make his love and mercy known.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS