Thinking About The Woman Next To Me At The Self Checkout Earlier Today Who Tapped My Shoulder And Whispered

how can you be so controversial and yet so brave

(reposted from Twitter)

Hey so, have I ever told you about the time I was at an interfaith event (my rabbi, who was on the panel, didn't want to be the only Jew there), and there was a panel with representatives of 7 different traditions, from Baha'i to Zoroastrian?

The setup was each panelist got asked the same question by the moderator, had 3 minutes to respond, and then they moved on to the next panelist.

The Christian dude talked for 8 minutes and kept waving off the poor, flustered, terminally polite Unitarian moderator.

The next panelist was a Hindu lady, who just said drily, "I'll try to keep my answer to under a minute so everyone else still has a chance to answer." (I, incidentally, am at a table with I think the only other non-Christian audience members, a handful of Muslims and a Zorastrian.)

So then we get to the audience questions part. No one's asking any questions, so finally I decide to get things rolling, and raise my hand and the very polite moderator comes over and gives me the mic.

I briefly explain Stendahl's concept of "holy envy" and ask what each of theirs is.

(If you're not familiar, Stendahl had 3 tenets for learning about other traditions, and one was leave room for "holy envy," being able to say, I am happy in my tradition and don't desire to convert, but this is something about another tradition that I admire and wish we had.)

The answers were lovely. My rabbi said she admired the Buddhist comfort with silence and wished we could learn to have that spaciousness in our practice. The Hindu said she admired the Jewish and Muslim commitment to social justice & changing, rather than accepting, the status quo.

The Christian dude said he envied that everyone else on the panel had the opportunity to newly accept Jesus.

I shit you not.

Dead silence. The Buddhist and Baha'i panelists are resolutely holding poker faces. The Hindu lady has placed her hands on the table and folded them and seems to be holding them very tightly. Over on the middle eastern end of the table, the rabbi, the imam, and the Zoroastrian lady are all leaning away from the Christian at identical angles with identical expressions of disgust. The terminally polite Unitarian moderator is literally wringing his hands in distress.

A Christian lady at the table next to me, somehow unable to pick up on the emotional currents in the room, sighs happily and says to her fellow church lady, "What a beautiful answer."

anyway I love my rabbi to death and would do anything for her

except attend another interfaith event

it’s the great pupupu bake off !

Say you break your ankle. You could know everything there is to know intellectually about the injury. Even with this vast knowledge, you will still experience physical pain.

Now take this logic and apply it to things like ADHD, autism, clinical depression, and other less visible/divergent disabilities. You cannot think your way out of feeling.

That is to say: you are not a bad, lazy, or selfish person for struggling, even if you know why you are struggling.

So I work at a library and about a month ago I helped a little old woman who is legally blind figure out how to listen to our audiobooks on her tablet. We got to chatting and I mentioned that I always listen to audiobooks while I knit, which made her very excited and she told me all about the afghans she used to make when she could still see. She was so sweet and I was so glad to be able to help her figure out a way to still enjoy books without being able to read.

Yesterday I answered the phone at work and when I said my name the woman on the other line got so excited and said “Madeline?? You’re exactly who I wanted to talk to! This is Marie, you helped me about a month ago. How late are you working today?” It was her!! And about an hour later she and her husband showed up, and she was carrying a huge stack of old knitting patterns for me, and her husband brought in a few boxes full of yarn. They couldn’t stay long but I was so touched that she remembered me, and I struggled to not just flat out start crying when she handed me the patterns. When I looked through them later I realized it was her entire personal collection from over the years, including all her personal notes and drawings and even some photographs of her finished pieces. No one in my family knits, and to have someone pass on their legacy to me like that was incredibly moving.

This isn’t what I usually post here, but with life being especially dark lately I wanted to share a moment of happiness and a reminder that a bit of kindness goes a long way ♡

cats + nature <3

A mannequin at The North Face.