DREGS

We were sitting on bean bags in the Teahaz loft.

We’d skimmed over a menu of a hundred or more varieties of tea, smelling herbs and spices wafting from the canisters downstairs, waiting for our hot drinks to brew strong and full, enjoying our first uncluttered moment since our trip to Poland. (sigh) We had our own absentminded wanderings through the back of our minds for a bit.

And then we talked.

We talked and talked and shared and ruminated and wondered and proposed and, in the end, I suppose it didn’t amount to much more than the musings of a bunch of college students over steamy tea in a sidestreet nook, all our heavy thoughts floating easily, freely out the open window with the scent of orange and spice…Nothing revolutionary came out of it, and we have no notes or tangible record to mark the two hours we spent there, not even a few dregs. But we shared and that is important.

We remembered and shared and hmmmed and, after all, isn’t most of history the result of recording and passing on and communally remembering? The entire Bible is a volume of divine testimony about the world and all the musings between God and man and man to fellow man.

We spoke into being those doubts that have jolted and roused and disturbed human minds since the spark of creation and wondered aloud many “Why…”s and “Dear God…”s. We shared a lot of disbelief and wrestled over what to believe…about God and humanity, about the Holocaust specifically, global suffering more generally, life and death most abstractly.

It is all these jumbled musings that I am slowly and deliberately disentangling this past week. Be patient with me; the result is sure to be a molten mix of disordered thoughts, but I will be as true as possible to what I heard and saw.