Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Maylan Schurch
Friday, March 27, 2026
A few days ago, in an era when the sun began to happily appear (yet whose temperature made it needful to wear head-warming hats), Shelley and I paused beside this patch of grass. I snapped this photo, not primarily of our shadows but to try to catch the glint of sun off some grass-spears.
As you can see, the grass-spears were too tiny to make this a success, and I ignored this photo until I happened to see it again today in my phone’s “gallery.”
There we are, my sweetheart and I, having known each other for 49 years and having been married for almost as many. We’ve moved through life together as a pastoral couple, and have treasured the people who’ve cast their shadows over us.
This matter of influencing other people isn’t an exact science. It happens whether you know it’s even happening at all. When I was 16 years old I worked fulltime in a creamery, helping get out milk products. One day the other workers and I took a break together in the “coffee room” upstairs in the plant.
We had gathered at tables in the little room, and were making small talk. Suddenly, I noticed that the room had gone fully silent. I glanced around, and saw that everybody was staring directly at me.
I blinked, and asked “Is something wrong?”
Doug, a worker who operated the machine next to mine in the bottling room said in a hushed voice, “Maylan, what did you just say?”
“When?” I asked. “Right now?”
“Yeah. What did you just say?”
I thought back to the conversation I’d been having with the person across the table from me, and repeated what I thought I’d said.
As soon as I said this, the whole room burst into laughter. When it finally died down, Doug said to me, “We thought you’d said a cuss-word!”
I was indeed a meek young Christian, and grew up under parents who never swore and who admonished me not to. But I had never once even mentioned being a Christian to anybody in the plant, let alone expressing my embarrassment when somebody let fly an oath.
But all these people – every one of them – had felt my shadow, my influence. They knew who I was, and how consistent I evidently had been in portraying my beliefs. So it must have been like an electric shock to hear Maylan’s language turn grotesquely blue.
So yes, you do have a shadow – an influence — whether or not anyone will ever mention it to you. Your shadow falls everywhere you go, far from the door of your house of worship.