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There are two things I know for sure when I visit my friends Joni and Rusty Langston.
One, they see me – they may not always agree with me, but they see me. And two, they prepare the finest martini with the plumpest olives I’ve had anywhere in the world. And it’s not like I’ve made a martini tour of the world, but I have sat on several continents with a peppery vodka martini, and I’ve never had a smoother one than in Joni’s kitchen in Murphy, North Carolina.
It’s possible the drink is so good because of the company. We are an unlikely trio. On paper, our friendship doesn’t work. Our politics smash against each other, and our economic stratifications dangle on opposite sides of the median. Perhaps most alarming is their unassailable belief in Christianity, which contrasts with my agnosticism.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that the strongest argument for Christianity was found in Christians themselves, and that the strongest argument against Christianity was found in Christians themselves. Joni and Rusty fall into the former category. It’s not that they don’t care that I’m not a believer; they probably secretly pray for me. They’ve invited me to their church, an invitation I happily accepted because I love to learn and their pastor is a scholar.
It’s more that they don’t need me to believe like them in order to love me. They aren’t afraid of my non-belief. They don’t try to talk me out of it or consider me a threat to their own beliefs.
Like I said, they see me. And it’s that kind of enthusiastic acceptance that Lewis was talking about. They live Jesus’ 11th commandment found in John: love one another.
When I got to their house recently, Joni had the baked beans in the oven, the slaw was cooling in their complicated refrigerator that promises ice but never delivers and fat, luxurious hamburgers were waiting for the grill. We fell into our assigned seats on their porch, Rusty and I sharing the cushioned swing while Joni’s tiny, elegant frame settled into the chair by the bird feeders.
We laughed and talked about everything and nothing when Rusty suggested we ride in their “chuckie,” a golf cart-like contraption with a powerful engine, to look at the progress of the kudzu that has aggressively moved into their housing division. Unsurprisingly, Rusty is the president of his HOA. He’s a charismatic diplomat – in other words, perfect for the job. He cranked up the chuckie as I inhaled puffs of gasoline, and we made our way down to the undeveloped portion of their neighborhood.
And there was the kudzu, creeping across the meadow, covering the trees with large, floppy leaves. Its vines wound tightly around their trunks, a python suffocating its prey. It softened every sharp distinction of the plants that lie beneath its blanket, creating hills of sameness.
As we drove back to their house, sombered by the magnitude of the kudzu and Rusty’s helplessness to eradicate it without chemicals that would leak into the nearby well, it occurred to me why I sometimes feel so afraid in the world. Those who are slightly variant or distinct from whatever the current blanket ideology says is correct, and you better keep up because it can change in the time it takes to post a Twitter, we feel the shadow of the floppy leaves of conformity above our heads trying to smother us in sameness.
We’ve become a people of binaries, I’m right, therefore you’re wrong. It can be dangerous to voice an opinion, and I sometimes feel sombered by the magnitude of social fanaticism and my helplessness to eradicate it.
My solution is to act like Joni and Rusty. I want to stop being so lazy and learn to seek out the distinction of those who aren’t like me. Because I’m also guilty of assuming I know a person based on their bumper sticker or reading a post they wrote 10 years ago. We must stop being so careless with our seeds of judgment, because we may all end up suffocated under our own intolerance.
For now, I’ll sip my martinis and laugh with my unlikely friends until I come up with a better idea. At the moment, happily, nothing better comes to mind.
Abigail Blythe Batton is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her column runs every other week. Email her at ablythebatton@gmail.com or leave a message at 837-5122.