On the Beach

Heather and I sat watching waves roll in with toes in the sand under a gray blot of clouds and talked about religion. It's like I always say, Your true friends are the ones that talk politics and science and religion on the best days and talk about weather on the worst. We told each other tales of religious profundity and spiritual harassment, laughing at the latter and trying to figure out what exactly is meant by the former. The blue and gray melted into one.

"That's the problem with religion - how can you have nineteen-hundred religions telling you what to do, each one saying that their's is the only one. The only right one," Mom said to me. And I responded by talking about Freire. We melted the two together, talking about oppression and what it means to be right.

These are the moments when I can tell what we are supposed to learn and how we are meant to communicate, as partners, as people sharing ideas and responding to one another. We don't have room for The Right People to tell us what is up and what is down. The only way we are going to learn from one another it by communicating and listening. Listening listening listening. Who do we hear at the end of the day? What we believe can be spoon-fed to us by the hand of the oppressor or unearthed, excavated by the blood and sweat of finally breaking that need to be right and finding a way to communicate. No one has all the knowledge in the world, but collectively we come pretty damn close.

"The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools" - Ecclesiastes 9:17