Vachon Imagined

I live in Northern Virginia, where religion is spread out like the buffet I worked at when I was a teenager and in college: Ryan’s Family Steakhouse, where the folks are friendly, as long as you tip and, apparently, clean up after yourself, you filthy heathens.

It always amazed me on Sundays, the day of God, how people would behave in restaurants.

The entitlement.

The mess.

The sheer explosion of macaroni and cheese that, in less than an hour, could become so deeply ingrained in the carpet that you would think it had been installed that way.

It wasn’t just disgusting. It was fascinating to me.

Because these people represented God.

At least, that’s what I had been taught.

I grew up in the Bible Belt, where there was practically a church on every corner. And yet, I didn’t see people who were particularly filled with joy.

Frankly, I saw a lot of hate.

Anger.

Entitlement.

Judgment.

Fear.

All the things we see in the world and then conveniently label as other.

But that’s the human condition.

And acceptance knows this.

Love knows this.

Peace knows this.

It knows because it is a part of it.

Now I live in Northern Virginia, where you can sometimes feel like you can get to Egypt almost as quickly as Boca Raton, depending on which direction you drive and how aggressive you are with I-95.

The culture is everywhere.

The religion is everywhere.

I’ve been to a Buddhist temple, Vietnamese, so I mostly just felt the vibe.

I’ve been to a Bat Mitzvah.

I’ve been to churches with names that seem almost designed to avoid saying the words God or religion at all.

Something along the lines of:

Here’s a building. Come see what we have to say.

And honestly, I love it.

Because they don’t call this area a melting pot for nothing.

It’s a buffet of religion, culture, people, opinions, politics, and being right outside of D.C., politics gets its own buffet table.

I recently saw a sign that said:

God loves you.

And I couldn’t help but wonder:

Which one?

Because around here, God seems to have multiple personalities and an astonishing number of opinions.

Everyone has a version.

Everyone knows what God wants.

Everyone has an explanation.

And everyone seems remarkably confident that their particular interpretation is the correct one.

But when you begin to understand that God is, in some sense, simply a word pointing you back toward love, acceptance, and the wholeness of yourself, you start fighting less.

You resist less.

You can still disagree. You can still have very strong opinions. You can even think someone is completely out of their damn mind.

But something relaxes.

Because you stop needing your version of God, yourself, and everyone else to be the only possible truth.

You begin to see that tension, stress, and fear around what you see, and what you are, can build monuments of another kind.

They’re called pride.

Pride of self.

Pride of belief.

Pride of opinion.

Pride in being right.

And the way through pride isn’t necessarily to get rid of it.

It’s to have it.

Have your opinions. Have your beliefs. Have your anger. Have your contradictions. Have all of yourself.

And then learn to be with it.

Because if you can be with yourself, with all of yourself, you become much more capable of being with everyone else.

You can disagree without needing to destroy.

You can believe without needing to convert.

You can love without needing someone to become like you.

And maybe you can look at the person who left half their macaroni and cheese on the floor and, instead of thinking, What kind of Christian does this?, simply think:

Well. There I am.

Not because you’re endorsing the behavior.

Because you’re recognizing the humanity.

Peace doesn’t begin when we finally agree on which God is the right one.

It begins when we stop needing everyone else to be wrong.

And honestly, that’s a buffet I think we could all afford to eat at.