sharing nicely

I agreed to the interview with some trepidation. My friend Sheela from my aerobics class wanted to interview me for a paper she is writing for seminary. She said that she needed to talk to someone who is not a Christian. (She's Assembly of God, and saw Unitarian Universalism as a religion that embraced all world religions. True enough.) She wanted to share her faith with me and find out what I thought.

I said, "S-sure." The only reason I agreed to this is that I do love Sheela. I have been at her house for an interfaith, international gathering - mostly other evangelicals from India like herself, but a few Hindus sprinkled in, so I couldn't quite wear my "Sore Thumb" t-shirt. People spoke about their lives as couples on an amazingly personal level. (Sheela & her husband Tom teach a couples' class at their church, so people were probably quite comfortable talking in front of them.) I was tense; not unlike someone wearing a dress and pantyhose sitting right next to a pool with people laughing and splashing around - convinced someone was going to try to push me in at any minute. But they didn't. Really. She heard what I thought - at least the tiny bit I shared in my nervousness, and still liked me.

This meeting today upped the ante, I must say. There we were, in my office, she sitting next to me on my love seat, asking me to read highlighted verses from her Bible, and asking me to say what I thought they meant. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me." Etc. My little forays into discussing the different meanings of the Greek words or the context of the verses didn't go anywhere. My descriptions of God that included the interdependent web, the divine spark in all people - zip. I was sad to have confirmed what I suspected going in: she really didn't want a dialogue. She was sorta hoping I'd see the light. Her light.

But God bless her. Every time I said what I know was heresy to her - Jesus was not the only person in whom God was manifest; the resurrection was probably not bodily, some of the words attributed to Jesus were probably put in his mouth by people writing them down 50-90 years after his ministry - she took it like a trouper. She did argue back when she disagreed, but it didn't get ugly. Mostly because, I think, we agreed to be nice.

Well, you know what? After reading all week about fundamentalists of various stripes turning to violence, hooray for nice. In thinking about the troubles in Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the shootings of Dr. Tiller and the guard at the Holocaust museum, all done because people care more about themselves and their beliefs than other people, let's give nice a standing ovation. In my study about fundamentalism, and in my experience today, I have a renewed respect for the challenges of true interfaith dialogue. We ain't there yet. But we can care enough not to hurt one another. I suppose that's niceness at its best.