Sometimes it takes awhile for the hyphen to disappear. Two words expressing a unit idea first accept a hyphen then release it to form a compound word. Basket and ball were once separate words that became basket-ball, then basketball.

At a wedding dinner, the curiosity of a young boy prompted him to pull up a chair. He was full of wanting to hear about my dog guide, I thought.

After some dog talk, he paused. “Then, you’re not afraid of the dark,” he said with the relieved voice of one who might be. “I’m not afraid of the dark with Leader Dog Treasure,” I said, Both of us knew we had gotten rid of the hyphen, and he went off with a friend.

Later, wanting to confirm my gate number at an airport, I heard a man at the gate opposite mine and crossed the hall. Learning that my gate was #4 rather than #6, I started the short backtrack. Ordinarily when someone offers to assist me, my independence rules. For some reason, I let the man accompany me. He said, “My daughter is visually impaired.” Then he left.

Minutes later, he returned with his daughter. We had a hyphen, the beginning of a bond. The third grader was curious about Treasure. However, when the dad said an inoperable benign tumor pressing on her optic nerve will steal her sight, general dog talk turned to tool-specific.

I began telling her that after becoming skilled at mobility cane travel, she will be ready for a dog guide. Her father interrupted again. Cane travel lessons, scheduled to begin soon, had been postponed after her doctor saw slight improvement in one eye.

Prompted to tell why her sight had improved, she said she asked God to make her eyes better. I remembered her prognosis. I remembered my angry childhood struggle when similar prayers proved futile. How could I best tell this third grader that she and God need to be on friendly terms for the journey?

Despite her hesitant celebration, she heard. “If some day your eyes cannot improve, it does not mean God is mad or does not like you,” I said. “It just happened, that’s all.”

Something changed in the child’s voice. The hyphen that also separates one person from another at the level of soul had disappeared. “Then,” I continued, “you just change your prayer. You ask God to help you find another way of doing what you want to do.”

We have the opportunity, especially in our churches, to form hyphenated, embryonic relationships with others who are different from us. Sometimes, when we dare to connect at the level of soul, we find that kinship has emerged. Having dropped the attitudinal hyphen, we understand why we were brought together in the first place.

Reading the Signs is a can-do forum about accessibility for the whole church family edited by the Rev. Dee Brauninger, First Congregational UCC, Burwell, Nebraska