Last night we went out to dinner with a client, but before that we went to their house for a drink. I’ve not been to a client’s house while on a trip before, but this isn’t the first time we’ve worked with this client, we feel pretty close and familiar  with them at this point; they’re great.

They’re also the first client I’ve worked with that was incredibly upfront about how religious they are. Maybe that’s just because I’m quite receptive to such things now, in a way that I never have been before, maybe it’s because we’re in North Carolina, maybe it’s because this is the third or fourth brand we’ve worked with alongside this client, maybe it’s their quality as a person, being quite open and communicative and loving.

The last time I travelled was to Wyoming, and we met with a bunch of liberals living the dream of working at a cool shoe company They would speak in quite an abstract way about the divine or spirituality or the purpose of being outside and what it stirred in them, but if any doctrine or structure was brought up they turned away from it hissing like a night cat in a motion light.

The subtext for this meeting in North Carolina was that everyone was religious. I believe each person in the meeting at some point mentioned the church they attended and what they did for it, or what it did for them. Some more than others, the contact person’s husband in particular had just gotten back from a weekly community dinner they’ve been putting on since the hurricane laid much of this community low.

I wonder what people here assume about others regarding religion. It seems obvious that it’s the norm, but do they know that in Vermont it isn’t? Do they project that belief on us? Were they surprised when I brought certain things up?

I did notice that a certain attitude of coldness or distance or trepidation was the response to some of my analysis of certain things and approaches regarding a rather vague idea of “the church,” that warmed considerably after I mentioned my own church and my desire to emulate the aforementioned community meal.

Maybe I’m projecting, I probably am.

Religion isn’t something you often talk with new acquaintances about, and certainly not clients. But talk about it we did, in often very vague and roundabout ways.

I believe that Wittgenstein has a great deal to teach us about how we communicate. When I spoke of my church I spoke of Saint Jacobs and orthodoxy and the whole universe of that. When they spoke of church they spoke of a Presbyterian church, or their son’s unitarian church in Boston. I wonder what the shape of that gap is.

We probably own’t talk much more about it.