so i have this friend i met out west. she is mexican and very dignified. she was one of the only other young people who was speaking at the conference i attended. for three days i had been a loner. i had met two horses, and that's about it. she sort of befriended me about an hour before i had to lecture. i had been jittery and tense all day, and this young woman approached me for some conversation. it turns out she was speaking the same time i was. it also turns out she's a feminist sociologist. it also turns out she's brilliant. much smarter than i am, really.
anyway, after the conference had ended, she and i had agreed to keep in touch via email. eventually i asked her for her messaging name, and we started chatting online. one night we had this exhausting conversation about feminism and christianity. well, it was supposed to be just about feminism, but when i told her i couldn't completely agree with her, then it became about christianity too. my friend is not a christian. she's not an atheist either, but she pieces her worldview together as she sees fit. she was very generous, even when i was speaking christianese and talking about God and the garden and men and women being equal in the bible.
something strange happened when i was presenting my case. i felt threatened. in retrospect, my friend hadn't intimidated me or made me feel stupid because i wasn't as clever as she was. she kept saying that she wanted to hear what i thought, even that my thoughts weren't stupid, but i went on. i kept trying to prove things to her. i think i was really trying to prove it all to myself. to get it all out so that i could be cogent and intellectual and clever and still a christian. i botched it all up, it you want to know the truth. somewhere along the way i had come to this understanding that everyone who wasn't a chrsitian was out to get me, out to prove me wrong. my friend really just wanted to understand me, but i didn't get it. instead of speaking to her from my heart about how i really felt about Jesus, and about why, deep down, i believed what i did, i tried to brainwash her with my spring of knowledge.
so i was thinking about it yesterday, and i really felt as thought my friend valued my opinion when we were talking. like she valued me. this was really strange to me, because i couldn't understand that two people, from two completely different worldviews, who disagreed so thoroughly, could really value each other. sure, in my head i knew people could do this, and that i should, but outside theological arguments, i don't think i had ever really loved and respected someone who disagreed with me about something i felt was important. but my friend did. and it shocked me. i know that everyone deserves my love and acceptance, but i guess i thought there were corners of my room the sunlight didn't reach.
i know now that light reaches far. i know his light graces even the corners of our rooms. i really feel like i've had an epiphany, like i never knew there was a blue sky.
today i saw my friend online and i told her that i was sorry for being stupid, and that she had taught me an incredible lesson. she was great about it, and actually turned it around and thanked me for some other stuff i had said.
my friend's name is paulina, and she is a good woman.
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