Returned to where she started, as if it were the first time.

T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Last night I officiated in a service of remembrance for a ninety year old woman. She had grown up in Iowa and gone to college at Iowa State and become a teacher. Her teaching career took her to a series of schools and colleges during the 1930s and when World War Two came to the United States she joined the Red Cross and was assigned to service at Fort Hood, in Texas. She married an army physician and settled in New York where they raised two children. and she returned to teaching art in a high school.
When her husband died and her retirement came she moved to Florida. It was in Florida that she met an old college classmate, who had introduced her the Unitarianism way back in college and she found her way to the church that I serve.

She thought of herself as a Unitarian all those years, but going to Unitarian church had been associated with the relationship with her friend. After graduation, pursuing a career and a marriage, raising a family took her away from that relationship and from church going for fifty years. Ten years ago she resumed her friendship with her Unitarian friend, and returned to where she had started, as if it were the first time.

Churches also serve, when they just stand and wait.