I began this post a couple of weeks ago after I missed the opportunity to attend the ordination to retirement ceremony for one of my best friends. I worked hard on it coming up to yesterday in the hope of getting it up in time for her birthday, but it tends to be one of those writing experiences where despite my desire to be, and my feeling that on a good day I am, "good with words," the words run away from me like a skittish bunny that is unsure of my intentions.Elizabeth is one of three people I consider my "best" friend. She has been in my life for the last 26 years - nearly half of my life - and despite the fact that I am incredibly inept at being a steadfast and dependable friend to her, she is, and has always been that to me.
We first met, very briefly, in Seattle at a meeting of the Evangelical Women's Caucus when I was both a new seminary graduate and a new father, carting my kid around in a denim blue snuggly (something that I can't even find a Google link to in this age of modern pram/land speed vehicle high end strollers) and smiling in self-congratulatory smugness at my "feminist husband" act. The fact of the matter was that I didn't have a clue what I was doing, with my life, my marriage, my supposed calling, or for that matter, my new baby girl. Elizabeth, and her husband John, on the other hand gave me a sense that maybe there was something more grounded and honest in all this political/ theological posturing. From the very beginning I sensed a centeredness, a humaness, and a genuineness that drew me like a warm fire.
Over the next few years, with their visits to San Francisco and my visits to Los Angeles, we gradually became closer and closer friends. The glow of warmth that emanated from their lives and their home even made me love Los Angeles (a real stretch for an inveterate and unshakable NoCal boy like me). On my first visit to their house I tasted lox and bagels for the first time on a Sunday morning. Lox and bagels remain one of my central food cravings and weekend rituals. I even have fond memories of an afternoon spent in the sunshine with Elizabeth eating ceviche at Gladstones 4 Fish; an afternoon that turned into an evening of food poisoning misery, but which makes me smile now as I write about it.
At the time I thought of myself as a hotshot forward thinking progressive with a tiny little record company that I was hoping to turn into the next Geffen Records, allowing me to make millions of dollars while also changing the world. In reality I was pretty much like I am now: a wild eyed dreamer with little discipline, minimal resources, a whole lot of intellectual chauvinism, and so much hopeful idealism that I should have been given a handicapped pass. Elizabeth, even in the midst of less than fulfilling professional circumstances, was a solid rock and a light hearted fairy who could simultaneously make me laugh and think and hope. She knocked the air out of my windbag bullshit without knocking the hope from my heart in the process. She was serious, and solid, and spiritual, and fun. On several occasions I shared meals, wine and words with Elizabeth and John (and family) and those experiences have forever colored my concept of heaven and my underlying expectations for most other human interactions.
A few years later, when Elizabeth started making regular trips to the Bay Area for work on her Doctorate of Ministry, we each made time to eat well, drink a lot, talk more, and take in the loveliness of living where we live. The only moments in that time of my life that equaled those moments were the times I spent with my daughter. During those years, these were literally my best times; they were, repeatedly, Perfect Moments.
There was a definite sense in which Elizabeth saved my life. In the years since, she has remained an amazing delight at each and every moment. If I catch her note at the end of a blog, or a phone message saying she's coming to town, I am affected with a tunnel vision that momentarily blocks all else from my consciousness.
As I write this now I find myself experiencing those moments again, as if they happened yesterday, or this morning. The memories transform this otherwise mundane moment, and the task of cobbling these words together, into it's own Perfect Moment. I find myself loaded on joy and memory as if on psychedelics carrying me into a place of effervescent time and space. There is a joy in the memories from the last 26 years so solid and bright and real that it forces the majority of my other experiences into the shadows.
I believe that the only way any of us REALLY experiences The God/Goddess is in the body and blood of other human beings. I believe that THIS is the heart of the Christian myth of God and Jesus... A choice by the Divine to BECOME a flesh and blood person; a choice to live with joy and sorrow, abundance and want, pain and ecstasy. I believe there is no other God but us.
Elizabeth IS the face of The God/Goddess to me.
She is also my friend.
Happy (Belated) Birthday E. I am VERY glad you were born.
