Girl at Cafe

I'm sitting here at a local restaurant stop and I have given myself a 30 minute window to write for 30 minutes. I people watch and I see this lady sitting near me and I want to write about her...she is reading a very large book, it looks like a bible and my mind goes to work on all the assumptions that I have about someone that would read their bible in a coffee shop over their lunch hour. They are not good assumptions, I'm afraid and I am embarressed by my own cynicism. I feel guilty so I ask her, "what are you reading". Maybe she knows what I'm thinking? So I try to be nice, to assuage my guilt in some tangible way. She smiles up at me and says, "The book of Matthew" and I cringe. I am torn between two very distinct possibilities -- either I play dumb, like someone who has never read the bible for myself or I try to disarm her with intellectual questions. I find I am a bit put off by her saying, "the book of matthew" in such a matter of fact way. What if I was someone who just landed on earth and didn't know what a bible was? What is the book of Matthew? Why would one read it..? Who is Matthew? Why did he write a book..??? My questions start and I am again, feeling very sad that I am so cynical of someone who clearly is having a great time. I'm getting all worked up for truly no real reason.

She then says, "reading the bible helps me stay calm"? Oh yeah? I am tempted to say, just to be crass "I feel the same way when I take a Tylenol PM late at night?" Should I say, "what do you need to be calm about?" or do I just let it go? So many questions, so little time.

I find it is times like this that my sad bias towards those that would read their bibles in broad daylight astounds even me. I wonder, "was I ever that smug?" Did I ever have a time in my life when I had so many answers? Probably. And that's exactly what is bothering me, I think.

I am bothered by my lack of answers on faith and the cosmos. I am bothered by my lack of faith in so many things. I am most of all bothered that I can create this whole scenario about a poor girl who just is trying to find some peace at her lunch break. Symbols are powerful things and there are few things more symbolic to a recovering fundamentalist than a big bible. I have this theory, the bigger the bible, the smaller the mind.

None of this is fair, I realize. I am reacting to 40 years plus of brain wiring that has suddenly, at age 40, come unwired, blown a fuse, or whatever the technical, electrical terms would be here.
40 years of bible toting, bible banging, bible-throw-it-down-your-throat-until you puke. I have become innoculated, unable to read it myself for the sheer emotion that seeing a bible brings to me. I have become, comfortably numb in this post-faith state that I find myself in these days.

I want a God that is so big that he/she/it cannot be understood and that I can spend the rest of my life ponidering the many things about it/him/her. I don't want pat answers. I'm tired of cliches. Don't give me a 3-point sermon or 7 steps to anything. I want to think, to ponder, to reflect. Most of all I don't want to spend time with those that live in bi-color -- black or white-while I dabble in the deepest recesses of gray.