Further thoughts on "Among the Weave"

Good Morning --

I'm really enjoying what Steve's blog triggered for me. I know, I know, this should all go into the comments section, but what the heck. I think, more than anything, what I'm feeling after reading his post is how it captured the whole bloody point of this exercise for me.

This is where I can go: That didn't work out, so damn it...everything sucks. Like this, my friend Bob has this friend Jane. All this happened years and years ago,...anyway, Jane was dramatic, she seemed somehow to have cast herself as the tragic heroine in her own story. And the universe responded. In large ways and small, like one time we were eating dinner. Eating dinner with Jane always had this air of suspense, because she would never really quite get to eating. She would load her fork and then talk, and raise the fork, and stop, and talk some more, the fork suspended. Then the fork would descend back to the plate, still full, unload itself, and reload. And rise slowly, while she was still talking. And I would find myself beginning to focus on whether or not the fork would ever find its destination, or would simply contine to rise and fall without ever delivering its payload. And all the while, a story was unfolding, a story of injustice, and how nothing in life ever ever succumbed correctly to her careful manipulations. Adding to that were moments, such as this particular dinner, when in watching the fork rise and fall, I began to notice something. There is something odd about her salad. Is it the lighting? Is it my eyesight? Then Jane looked down, finally, at her meal and screamed. Not a small shriek, but a full throated, goggle eyed berserker of a scream. Heads turned, hearts stopped, and in the middle of it, we all were drawn to notice that Jane's salad was moving. The whole thing. Undulating almost. Her salad was full of small green worms. There was another time involving a sandwich. I wasn't there for this, but I heard about it. They were eating in an outdoor cafe, and the sandwich rose and fell and rose and fell, until just as it was finally finally approaching her mouth, a bird unloaded on her hand. Inches from her open mouth.

So anyway, Jane went with Bob to see Sophie's Choice. Now, granted, there is not much to celebrate in that particular film. But they emerged from the theater in silence, and walked part way to the parking lot, where Jane stopped, and firmly announced that "That just proves that everything is shit." And then she burst into tears.  Like I said, there is not much joy to wrangle out of Sophie's Choice, but I'm not sure exactly how it can be summed up thematically with that statement.

But then again, as a matter of choice, everything can be summed up with that statement. Its all dependant upon the part you look at. I can choose to look at what I don't like. Or I can choose to find what I love, what works for me. And focus my attention there.

For example. I'm uncomfortable around born again Christians sometimes. Okay, that's not even fair. I'm uncomfortable around zealotry. It doesn't matter where it originates. I get a sinking elevator feeling when I find myself caught up in it's web. Like yesterday.

I had a loose crown. So I went to the dentist and had it fixed. The woman, and I really wish I was better with names, because she was really nice, and I'd like to say more than "the woman," and I were chatting, and she said everything looked fine.

"So, I don't need a root canal?"

"Oh, no."

"Great. The whole time I was driving over here, I was praying, please please please don't let me have to have a root canal."

"It's nice when He answers our prayers."

Oh. Well, I was speaking more rhetorically. I wasn't really praying.

"Right," I said.

Anyway, we were off and running on to the topic of dental stuff, and comparing wisdom teeth stories, and we both had had two dry sockets when we had our wisdom teeth out.

"Yeah, oh it was horrible, I woke up at two in the morning, nothing to do for hours, but lie on the floor and moan," I told her, "And say 'please please please just let me die...'"

I don't learn the first time.

"I bet your glad that He didn't answer that prayer..."

Really? Why? Why is this conversation happening? I don't want this conversation to be happening. I don't want to have to pretend to agree with you because you have sharp instruments in your hands.

But the big deal is exactly what? My discomfort is about me. She's perfectly fine, and after all I was the one who brought up praying, albeit inadvertently. Then she had a coughing fit and had to leave the room. When she returned she explained she had bronchitis, and that she was fine, but the cough stuck around. We compared notes on that, laughing, and then she said that she was a little worried because she was supposed to have surgery, but she knew they wouldn't do it while she still had the cough. We were wrapping up, and I said, well I'll keep my fingers crossed (I had learned about the praying thing...) that your cough goes away before the surgery.

"Well, we're still praying that the surgery won't be necessary..."

I didn't ask, what the surgery was for. I figured that if she wanted to tell me, she would.

She continued by saying, that the whole thing was in God's hands, and she was really fine with that.

"It's the scariest thing thats ever happened to me, but I've never been more at peace."

At this point, I'm so glad I kept my mouth shut. I'm so glad I didn't feel the need to announce that I wasn't on her page. Because in that statement, she nailed it. In that statement she and I got to the exact same place.

"Thats fantastic," I told her. "Thats really what faith is right? I mean its easy to have faith when everything is going great and you're just pushing your grocery cart through the store."

She laughed.

We all find ourselves in the dark from time to time. Scared. Lonely. Hurt. Faith is the thing behind us, the thing we can reach out in that darkness and hold onto, the arms we can fall back into. I have that. She has that. We call it by different names. So what?

And I'm grateful that I didn't stumble over the detritus on the tracks of our earliest words together, those bits of gravel and broken things that might have kept me from experiencing something with her. I'm glad I kept my mouth shut. I'm glad she was so kind and sweet that she kept my mind open to her. Because I got to lie in that chair, while she leaned against the counter, and we looked into each other's eyes and shared something. Found our common ground and recognized each other as simply beautifully real and human.

Like you said Steve, its among the weave.

--Dan