Coexist

I've been on vacation the past week, a much-needed respite from daily life. Man Friend has made an abrupt exit, so I sold our tickets to the music festival and bought a ticket to see my oldest, closest friend in New York instead. Turns out she needed it as much as I did, so it was a happy impulse.

Friends make everything better, don't they? Nothing like a few nights of wine, conversation, and belly laughs to put the vagaries of life back into perspective.

Coming back yesterday was an adventure. Flight delays make traveling exhausting - I've always found it both amusing and puzzling that waiting, then sitting on a plane doing literally nothing but reading, can be so tiring.

Anyway. The first flight was delayed over an hour and we all had a tight connection in Charlotte. I hope that beautiful girl next to me made her flight to Atlanta but I doubt it, we didn’t get to the gate until it was set to take off. I was luckier: we arrived just in time for me to run down to the gate, only to see this flight was delayed too. Good thing or my bag probably would be in Miami or something right now.

In any case, on this second flight, I have an aisle seat near the front, which is my favorite place to be. Not only did I make the flight but I got a good seat! I have good luck this way.

Someone pulled the wrong lever and there's only emergency lighting and no air circulating as we board. Nevertheless, it's freezing. The girl across the aisle in a sleeveless dress asks the flight attendant for a blanket. "We don't have one," she's told.

I wish I had a sweater to offer her. I usually do, but it's summer, and I'm traveling very light.

In my row, there's a youngish man at the window and a big fiftyish woman in the middle. I sit down and immediately bury my face in my tablet (Wolf Hall; great book) as the two of them are chatting up a storm and I, the introvert, want no part of small talk today. He's coming to Denver to see his mother who is going to have heart surgery at St Anthony, and she is peppering him with questions - where are you from, how old are you, how old is she, what's the issue, how long since you've seen her, on and on. He’s from Boston but lives in Charlotte and has a total Southern accent now. Much is made of the change in his accent. 

It’s all very ordinary chitchat and then she asks him, “Do you know the Lord?”

I freeze.

“I do,” he says.

“But do you really know the Lord?” she persists.

“Yes ma’am,” he replies.

“That’s good,” she nods. And asks the name of his mother and says she’ll be praying for him.

I’m waiting for her to turn to me and ask me the same question just because it seems like she’s going to, but lucky me, my “please do not speak to me” cues are accepted for what they are and she does not.

But what would I have said? I was preparing an answer, and I was uncomfortable at the prospect of explaining myself. “I’m a pagan.” “I am not a Christian.”  “I have been previously acquainted with the one you call Lord, but we are no longer on speaking terms.”

I have no desire to be an ass about my non-belief in the Christian faith. I am fully aware that the stories I consider another mythology, others regard as literal truth. I believe there is truth in all mythologies; not necessarily in the details of the stories themselves, but in the lessons they teach us.

My 10^th grade English teacher once began a lesson with the statement, “Myth is Truth.”

We all stared at him.

Myth is Truth, he explained, because it is believed.

I can’t remember exactly how he broke it down, but here’s what I took away from it: Myth is more than “legend,” more than “fiction.” It is more, even, than an attempt to explain natural phenomena. Myth seeks to expose the deeper truths of nature, both of the Earth and of humans and of our place in the world. 

Most stories do this on some level, really.

I'm grateful that she didn't ask me my faith, because I have a feeling my reply (which likely would have been the shortest one, 'I'm a pagan') would have been met with disapproval at best and hostility at worst.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what we believe. It's what we do that matters. This woman prayed for the man's mother: this is a kind and generous thing to do, whether or not you believe prayer has any value.

The woman is offered a seat in the exit row a few rows back with more leg room. Apparently she had a first class ticket and was bumped, and this is their only recourse to offer her something better than this least-desirable middle seat. She accepts and heads to the back.

The man smiles at me. "Looks like we'll have more room!" I smile and agree, it's nice - I can't remember the last time I didn't have anyone next to me on a plane.

He hauls his backpack up onto the seat, rummages around for a minute, and pulls out a hoodie. Reaches across to the woman on the other side of the aisle. "Are you cold?"

She accepts it with a smile of pure gratitude as he jokes that "it's clean," and drapes it over her goosebumped arms.

Kindness. This is what life is about.

As we are leaving the plane I can't help noticing that several of the first-class seats do in fact have blankets, and several of them are still in plastic, unused.