The No I Don't Know

Dear Kate,

Let's flesh out a little bit more the idea of liberty.

To say a person is free to say Yes to God is to respect--not merely condone, not wink at, not even to forgive, the person's freedom to say No.

Why?  We assume this as part of our human dignity in every turn of decision we make, the liberty to choose, even the wrong things, but why is it so hard to extend the same courtesy to others, especially on matters we deem important, especially to those we claim to love the most, respect the best?

I wish you are holding out both of your hands now when you are counting the reasons.  You might need to use your toes too.  Let me try to point out one that might not be the most obvious: We are not God.  (Dah!)

Dah! is the right expression.  It means, I wonder if you know, "dumb as hell."

Yes, we are dumb as, really, anything that can ever be dumb, if we so choose to let ourselves descend.  To know whether someone is really saying No to God is to assume I know what saying Yes means--and sure as heaven, am saying it, again and again in my life.  Is that true?  Do you say Yes to God now and always?  And Yes is all that you have ever said to God?

And to not respect the No in others is to say we are at the receiving end of the disrespect.  Which is to say we are God.  Well, we are not.  Dah.

Even more outrageously, if it is so easy for us to judge the Yes and No in others, we must have discerned the mysterious workings of the heart of human and (gasp!) the way of God, and are in possession of a transcending knowledge of when a No is not a work-in-progress Yes and a Yes is not really a subversive No.

This, I think, is a central human struggle, one that is being played out, often very violently, in all sorts of human drama on all kinds of stage, not just in the last half year, but certainly heightened by crisis and tragedy.  When leaders of a supposedly most dignified nation cannot have a minimally respectful conversation, you know the end of a civilization is ushered in.

That's also how marriage ends and family breaks.

Yours, Alex