Step 1: Play "How Great Thou Art" during the service over Memorial Day weekend.
That's all.
I remember the elderly man walking into church. He held his military baseball hat in his left hand as he walked to a pew toward the front. The hat was brown; I don't recall seeing one in brown before. Navy seems to be the color of choice for military baseball-style hats. I wasn't able to see the specifics. My eyesight isn't that good.
Two bars into the song, used for the communion hymn, he makes a hasty retreat to the back of the church, holding his hand over his mouth, face flushed red, and holding back tears. We watch him go, helpless to help him. He leans against the wall at the back of the sanctuary, and the sobbing begins. His shoulders betray what he was trying to hide. A near-by usher goes over and puts his arm around the man. For those of us watching it all unfold, if we weren't crying already, that moment sent us over the edge. The usher did what the rest of us wished we could do. He composes himself in time to be the last person in the whole place to receive communion. The usher makes sure the priest waits. We are still weeping, wondering his story and what made him react.
A few people ask the usher at the end of mass, since the man left fairly quickly, why the man reacted as he did. I didn't inquire. Two reasons. 1. I couldn't stop crying. (I'm crying as I write this 12 hours later.) 2. It really wasn't my business. I just wanted him to be comforted; it didn't matter that it wasn't me. He story is is own, and I was a stranger. Based on his age and his hat, I'm sure he heard that song at many a funeral: for fallen comrades in arms, maybe a spouse or a child. I don't know.
Thankfully, the universe has a way of giving us perspective. A toddler escaped his parents during the announcements. He ran to the nearest stoup, and blessed himself repeatedly using scoopfuls of holy water. He was very proud, and we were thankful for the levity.
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