I'm thinking about tomorrow evening when the man I love and I will be joining friends for dinner. It will, no doubt, be a sweet, cool evening; unusual for this time of year in the Southwest, but we've been given grace from the desert heat this week.
Perhaps we'll dine outdoors in the garden, a lovely small oasis of wild flowers, vegetables and grapes among the alien green lawns or sensible xeriscaped front yards of cacti and stone and the Mediterranian herbs that grow so well here ... rosemary, lavender and the delightful foreigner, the Russian sage. I suppose a deal of water is expended on that garden, even with the drip irrigation, but hey, that's what an oasis is for -- water, green solitude in a desert where people may meet in peace.
But when we do -- my lover a Christian, I a wayward Catholic who wandered for a while and came back a pagan witch, and our hosts, Jews who not only identify as Jews but worship as Jews -- when we meet in their oasis of a garden ...
What will we talk about?
The weather, the cool breeze, how the kids are doing; and look how well their older dog is getting on; they'd been worried about him, as we do about our ageing pets. And the food will be delicious; no doubt the wine will be as well. (I'll be taking people's word for that.) Our host will be, as ever, gracious and after all the catching up is finished and the clatter of dinner over ...
What can we talk about?
We cannot talk about the state of the world. That is clear. Someone might try to, but we know, all of us, that we'd better not. After all, we'd all edged quietly past "The Passion of the Christ" -- and we all thought it was hideous.
(And everyone's lord knows we are not going to talk about Mel. No, no, not Mel.)
"The Passion," even Mel's latest rancid blathering -- these are small potatoes compared to what the world looks like tonight and will look like tomorrow night. We are not all of a mind about Israel and Lebanon, Israel and the American President, the Middle East itself. No, we certainly are not going to talk about that.
We have not been able to have any but strained discourse when it comes to Israel and her neighbors. In Yahweh's name (but he doesn't really have one that we know), in Christ's or that of any goddess I can mention, how can we talk about the Middle East now that it's all so much worse than the last time we met to dine?
And yet, we should start talking. Soon. At dinner tables, in coffee houses, in the small oases of our back yards and gadens, we should be talking about Israel, Lebanon, the American President, Iraq; about Syria and Iran and the unthinkable -- nuclear weapons gone astray.
We really should talk about it and find a way not to lay blame. We should try to find a path to a small oasis where we can meet in peace.
It won't be easy, but all of us should try, because, in the words of the old song:
The eastern world, it is exploding . . .
