The Dangling Conversation

It has been persistently and soothingly raining for hours now and my house has that still, calm, slightly dark ambience that makes writing seem more leisurely and more profound than it usually is.

So write I will.

Sometimes when friends get together, the conversation settles on easy trivialities: schedules, updates, bills, restaurants, plans. The sweet comfort of lives intertwined on a daily basis allows for a steady quotidian commentary and permits the sharing in a common life, shallow as the topics may be. But on other occasions, something not necessarily more important, but exceedingly more rare, occurs. Instead of mere talking, the conversation becomes a sacred space in which to contemplate higher ideals and questions, to ponder and wonder about the profundities of our station in the world and the eternal questions of the human condition. Last night, Baja Burrito, with its pretty white Christmas lights lending a transcendent glow to the porch, (which pretty white Christmas lights almost always do) was transformed into such a sacred space.

A conversation that began with the relative merit of fish tacos miraculously meandered into the role of the government, the nature of education, the place of the university, the inequalities birth affords, the diversity in Christian denominations, the peace found in the phrase 'It is finished,' and the heartbreaking love found in families.

It is a sincere and humbling privilege to contemplate such weighty themes with the same people with whom I sweat in the garden, practice music, clean dishes, throw wedding showers, and interpretive dance. Life is full of both small details and great matters, and there is a subtle depth to the whole of it all. While there is intrinsic value in the shared commonalities of everyday experience, there is also an assuring and awesome communalism expressed in the hours where we can join together with the voices of the ages to opine about things we don't know. Those plastic chairs yesterday evening hosted not only friends from Atlanta and East Nashville, but from Ancient Greece, Washington D.C., Nazareth, the burned over distrinct, Cambridge, and the very unapproachable light of heaven.

And as all of us sat, lulled by the surprisingly warm breeze that would bring today's rains and the musical hum of familiar voices, we participated in something ageless--something utterly human and mysteriously divine.