The Table

This afternoon, I walked across the school campus, from D block which houses the year seven students, to the Information Hub.  They used to call these places 'libraries,' but the word 'library' brings to mind books, and cobwebs and fine smelling, inked pages; but the contemporary Information Hub, nee library, has relatively few books and the shelves that hold them are easily movable.  Often, when events are held at the school, they are shuffled out of the way on mobile carts into a back room leaving only computers lining the walls.  Information seems to be divorced from books now because it takes too long to find the context of the book - why would I actually read preceding chapters when I can just 'google' the phrase?  Books are antiques, right?

I struggle with 'Information Hub' even though it is an appropriately good name for the building.  I sometimes long for the days when we could walk into a public library, sit in silence and open a wonderfully old, odoriferous book which smells of past knowledge.

Ah, melancholic nostalgia... Can you smell it?

I entered through the automatic doors which swished open and I was greeted with the sounds of kids playing chess; a gaggle of girls were printing off reports on the communal Xerox machine in the back; a group of boys was huddled around a computer staring at a screen, giggling and pointing at what was probably the ninety-seventh consecutive youtube video that they had loaded.  The search probably started with something relatively academic - medieval trebuchets and devolved into Monster Trucks on Outback Roads - ten best fails.

Either way, I was not particularly keen to interrupt any of the groups; I was simply looking for a student I hadn't seen in a while.  After scanning the main library, I went back to the study room where four students were postured in various states of idleness.  It was the last period of the day and I'm sure that they had already packed their brains in for the afternoon, which, as I find more often than not, gives me a great opportunity to pick the brains of young people.

As what often occurs, the kids small talk until someone looks at someone else and the real question of the day arises.  Today it was:  Can a person be 'unbaptized?'  It took me by surprise as more often than not, they ask the question of relevance of baptism in contemporary secular culture, but the six who were there were like a spectrum of spirituality: One twelfth grade girl wanted to be unbaptized because she 'didn't believe in any of that stuff because there is too much bad in the world for there to be a God.' 

I smiled and scratched my head.  "When you were baptized?"

"When I was little," she said, pulling her own chair over to the table where I sat now.  "I wish my parents would have let me choose."

I leaned forward placing the weight of my body on my arms.  "So, can you wash the water off?  Does it work that way?"

She laughed which allowed another year twelve student to turn his chair around from his table and add his elbows to ours.

"I'm not really into religion that much either," he said holding up his hands as if surrendering, perhaps thinking that I was going to shoot him with my holy guns, "but I've got nothing against people that believe stuff.  Good for them."  He spoke as if faith was equated with an addled mind.

Another girl piped up.  "I never believed in God until I felt Jesus one night."  This surprised me a little bit because this young woman is relatively ambivalent about most things spiritual in religion and ethics class.  She must have seen my raised eyebrows.  "No, really, one night I was sitting at home, I was watching TV and then I felt Jesus.  A real sense of happiness." 

"What were you watching?" her classmate at the end of the table asked.

"I don't remember, but I know Jesus was there."  Interesting, I thought.  It seems like there is not so much spiritual ambivalence in our world as much as there is spiritual lethargy - a laziness that needs to be awakened.

"So," I asked the three now sharing my table, "What are you afraid of?"  This is a question I ask almost everyone hoping that they will dive into something deeper.  These students had just given me an opportunity, an opening, with which to insert a question that could perhaps take them to another level.  What I'm noticing most about people, young and old, is that those that claim spiritual ambivalence are the ones that are most allergic to spiritual change.  In other words, they don't want anything to do with God, because the odds are, an awakening in the spirit will lead to an alteration in life.

A sound from the corner - a new voice drawing closer to the table of four.  "I'm afraid of spiders."  This young man was not usually interested in joining in conversations, but he was willing to pull us up from the inevitable depths that most students, at times, want to swim in.  "Big ones.  I saw a youtube video the other day of a great big spider that got swept up and when it popped, all these baby spiders exploded from the eggs.  It was so cool."

The rest of my spiritual Breakfast Club table nodded in approval.  Talking about God requires taking a breath.  It's a practice that we are not used to.  The other boy chimed in.  "I'm not afraid of much - a snake or two, maybe failure..."  He trailed off.  Good.  Submerging again.

Now there were five of us at the table, leaning intently into a discussion that probably never should have taken place, but inadvertently we had stumbled over some of the deep questions of life.  Now, the young lady who had started it all off smiled over her chin in bridged hands.  "I'm not afraid of anything, really - not even of dying."  In my mind, I had already started the words Gotcha.  Those who claim no fear are usually the ones who want to talk about it most.  I was excited until the other young lady began to lead us through her Christian understanding of reincarnation. 

Yeah, it was different.  "See, I think when you die, you immediately are transferred to the belly of some pregnant lady, or someone about to be impregnated."  We didn't follow that line of discourse to its logical conclusion because the girl at the opposite end of the table was ready with her end of life understanding. 

"There's nothing.  You live and you die.  I want to be cremated and have my ashes dropped from a plane.  That way I could finally have the feeling of free fall."

"You mean," I started quickly before anyone else could begin to talk about the birds eating your ashes, or they would be swept up into the clouds where you would reside until the rain dropped you on some foreign soil, "that after you die, you'll be able to feel something."

"No," she said, "There's nothing.  You live, you die..."  It was almost as if it was a question rather than a statement.

The boy to my right took his elbow from the table and put his hand on his mobile phone which was illegally buzzing during school.  Ignoring the buzzing, he searched everyone at the table.  "All that I know is that I don't want worms eating me."

The other boy was all.  "I don't mind worms as long as the spiders stay away.  Nasty things.  Legs and teeth and sticky webs and stuff."  He fake shivered.  I wondered how many spiders that he had actually seen with teeth.

"Seriously," I said, "If there is nothing after this life, aren't you afraid?  What if..."  Just as I was about to finish the question that would take us from the shallows right to where only whales go, the school bell rang.  The students seemed to rouse themselves from almost a dream, look around at each other sitting at the table.  There is probably no other time that the four of them actually sit together.  They almost seemed embarrassed to be talking about these deep things: Meaningful things.  As they gathered their bags I lamely said, "We should continue this discussion next time, right?"

They already had their headphones in. 

Stupid bell.

What great kids they are.  Just like every other teenager I've ever known: strong willed, rebellious, inquisitive, diffident, unbreakable.  I wish discussions like that happened over tables everywhere in the world where people would allow questions to resound like restless gongs and the answers floated somewhere else in the harmonics of life; in the ethereal sphere which can only be grasped by extensive listening. 

Reminds me of another table that we all gather around, or should gather around.  Not the breakfast table, but the table set for us in the sanctuary.  As we all come forward from different places, turning at different times, coming from different understandings and difficult situations, we place our elbows next to each other and reach out for the ultimate answer from God - the final answer in Christ.  And, instead of turning people away from the table because of oddities of opinions, we welcome them to the discussion, but even more, welcome them to forgiveness of sins and salvation itself. 

That, my friends, is what the real table is for.