I've been reading David Dark's The Gospel According to America. It's a pretty good read, if somewhat dense at times if you're not familiar with the stuff he's interacting with (everything from Melville to Elvis). One of the images that he uses that I think is just fascinating is Waffle House Conversationalism, which he describes as:

No appeal to the court of fact has more resonance than another, everybody has to let everybody else finish speaking, and nobody's allowed to talk too terribly loud, because people are trying to eat in peace. You're welcome to bring the Bible or the president into it, but if you don't keep your ego at a reasonable volume, you can take your conversation elsewhere.

The main thrust of the book is the loss of Waffle House Conversationalism, at least as it pertains to most of what passes for rhetoric in America today. The end result is entrenchment of views, enthronement of perspectives, and indictment of any voice that doesn't reassure and reinforce our own self-baptized take on The Way Things Ought To Be™. In other words, we look for conversation partners so that we can mutually reassure each other of our own right-ness. (I'm thinking of Virgil's comment on my earlier post as I write this.) We don't approach difference from a healthy place; in fact, we find it unsettling and somewhat frightening.

Juxtaposed with this is the wonderful news that a good friend of mine is regaining health after a very difficult couple of years. My friend owns a comic shop about a mile from my home. It's a place that I've frequented for nearly ten years. I've spent countless hours in his place playing strategy games and discussing everything and nothing, making friends with the oddest of people. (We're all gamers, so odd comes with the territory, I suppose.) Unfortunately, two summers ago complications from a health condition nearly caused him to go blind. While preparing for surgery on his eyes, he also discovered that he was in need of a bypass operation on his heart. It's taken him nearly two years to recover from open heart surgery and work on his eyes. His shop is now open only six hours a week, and only recently did he start to come in himself. Yesterday we had the chance to talk for the first time in over a year. I really miss the place; our gaming community pretty much collapsed along with his health. It was what I referred to as my Cheers - a place where the rules were simple and everyone was welcome, as long as you weren't a jerk. It was somewhere that I could be myself with no fear of judgment or rejection.

This morning as part of the worship service we participated in communion. It was one of those fascinating moments for me when, just for a moment, I stood outside the proceedings and looked on things as though I were disconnected from myself as a participant. I thought of the church community that we enjoy as a family but where we haven't really developed much in the way of relationships. I thought of the comic shop, of the impromptu community that just sort of sprung up there around card games and comic books that I miss terribly at times. And I thought of the symbolism of the ritual, of how through the bread and the cup I am in some mysterious way connected to these people in a way that I never was to my friends at Heroes Universe.

It's an odd sort of community that we have, isn't it? I think the New Testament writers chose a beautiful metaphor when they wrote of the body of Christ as family, brothers and sisters every one of us. Family, when it is healthy, is where I know that I will always be home, where I do not have to fear rejection or shame, where room will always be made at the table for me. But it is often not healthy, and we bring our own dysfunctions with us as well. Family, when it is not healthy, can be the most damaging place on earth, and unfortunately that is often true of us. We don't handle difference well; we sit entrenched and enthroned in our own self-righteousness while lobbing hand grenades at the wounded who stumble to our doors. We don't partake of one loaf and one cup - we're too busy identifying everything wrong with our brothers and sisters at the table.

I hold to the hope that all things will someday be made new, that we will have family, true family, with no empty seats at the table and no food being thrown at our siblings, where there will be no shame or hurt but rather trust, dignity, and love. I confess that I don't really know what that looks like - but I'd like to. Sometimes you want to go...