the flute player and the cellist

It's a well-known fact that I am a serial book-killer.  So far on my break, I've almost finished Kathryn Stockett's The Help and Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  The first is about female empowerment through shared stories, told primarily through the eyes of a black maid and a white writer in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi.  The second is a love story about an interracial friendship wedged apart by a World War II internment camp, an Asian Romeo and Juliet of sorts, set in a tea house I often study at.  I've also re-read the first Hunger Games books, which of course is a contemporary rendition of Lord of the Flies [crossbred with the Japanese film Battle Royale and Connell's The Most Dangerous Game], a commentary for children on the ugly nature of war, politics and power.  Reading these three stories in the comfort of the home I grew up in and listening to the following song reminded me of a small story of my own.

 

And I said, "Please, I know that we're different

But we were once under the sea in the beginning

And what we're made of was all the same once

We're not that different after all"

-The Minnow and the Trout

I was born in the OC, in the part of Orange County that many associate with luxury and waste.  It's a land of Evangelical Christians and red-blooded Republicans: upstanding families of diligence, industry, and country, of warmth and hospitality.  I never had any particular wants, I always had everything that I needed— placated by the 360 days of sunshine, by a room full of books, and balmy palm tree littered play dates.  
 

I played duets with a boy, a flute player, who drove an hour to get to me.  We went around with our instruments to play in different spaces, outdoors and indoors, in parks and auditoriums.  In one particular place (a church), I performed twice a month over the course of two years.  It was the only occasion I had to see him, when we played these songs, this song, Amazing Grace to close out our performance.  He stood there with his flute before the pews and stained glass images of suffering, and I often saw a slight discomfort register on his face like he wanted to say something but decided against it.        

There was a math teacher who was fired inexplicably, an English teacher who was constantly teased, a girl who played badminton with me, who sometimes sat alone in the locker room because the others would call her names.

It may be unpopular of me to say it, but I still love Jesus and I do love the church for what it means to many people around the world, and what it has the potential to be.  But it may be even more unpopular of me to say the following: In one of the most Christian cities I have ever lived in, I experienced an unspoken hatred, a casting off of a group of people—out of what? Out of fear, out of intolerance, out of a distaste for the unexplored, the foreign, unexplained?  It is natural to push away issues that are confusing to you, but if we say we love this faith we hold so dearly to, it breaks my heart that we could push anyone away.  We are called to love, but I too often see the hate that courses like a thick, pulsating vein through the spine of the history of the Christian church.  (Need I parade the persecution, enslavement, mistreatment— the blood on our hands?)

I don't know everything, or anything really.  And in my world, not many of the people I love agree with what I am saying (what I often say).  God knows I should be a much braver and better person, but I do know one thing, one fundamental tenet of my faith.  It teaches me to meet with a person, to run outside when I see her walking up my driveway, to embrace her, to welcome her; my faith also teaches me to build people up and not to strip them down, not to "fix" or "cure," but if you insist on doing anything, then love as you have been loved.  My faith teaches me that we are equal, you and I.  We are made of the same dust, and we will return to the same dust.  Anyway, so in my senior year, I went to prom with the flute player.  We lost contact after that, but some years ago, I ran into him while taking a walk from a friend's apartment in L.A.  He saw me from across the street, shoved his Whole Foods grocery bag onto his partner, threw his arms around me, and gave me the warmest embrace.  We're made of the same stuff, you and I.

P.S.  Please at least ask yourself, what does this mean?

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

John 8:7