Pew buddies are important

One thing I've learned in my time here on earth is how important it is to have friends.

It seems an obvious statement, but you'd be surprised how many people can forget it, and how often.

Friends can take on many forms. They can be the longtime pal who knows all your secrets. They can be the person at work who provides an ounce of sanity.

Or, in some cases, they can just be a friendly face you grow accustomed to seeing in your personal routines.

When attending church, I find comfort in seeing the people who often sit by or around me during Mass, from friends who'd actually make a point of sitting together to the people I grew up seeing as my family and I walked in each weekend.

I call them pew buddies.

As time goes by, we go from faint acknowledgment of our respective presences to expressions of "Hey, I've seen you here before" to ultimately looking forward to seeing each other and at least saying hello, checking up, to see how our respective weeks went and how the next week will go.

Sometimes, it's important to know there's at least one person out there who might notice if I'm absent one night, be it for work, illness or because I'm out of town.

In Moses Lake, my pew buddies include Frank and Vera Clem and Ruth Caroline, to name just a few.

They're the friendly faces whose smiles greet me Saturday evenings, whose hands I hold during the "Our Father" prayer and whose hands I shake during the handshake of peace.

These might seem like small acts — they might not even think they're doing very much — but I've been the new face in a new church before, and sometimes there's no lonelier feeling than being the only one without a hand to shake or hold.

So I appreciate their presence, their warmth and their friendliness. They're living up to everything a regular churchgoer should be and do — a friendly face imparting kindness on to the people around them.