One of my favorite things that can happen in a meeting is when I have the opportunity to bring up some theological concept I’ve been reading about. I love this because most clients and coworkers are not up on Christendom, at least not consciously. So I’ll bring up an idea like Agape, or love being to will the good of the other, and they’ll think I’m really quite clever. Of course I’m not, and these ideas are not especially complex or deep, it’s pretty much theology 101, which is what makes it work. They may not know the words or they may not be familiar with the specifically elegant phrasing, but the concepts are in their bones. We’ve grown up in a society with great Christian thinkers as our foundation, this foundation goes back thousands of years. That’s a lot of harrowing. 

Then there are moments like today, when I am inclined to use a fundamentally secular word for something that doesn’t seem unportentuous. Spontaneous is about as unsecular a word as the everyday parlance gets, really. It is describing a heady and divine thing that is impossible for us humans to describe or understand. 

People who have decided there is no such thing as the divine must nonetheless navigate divinely inspired or guided or nudged circumstances, much to their chagrin. At least there’s a cute word for it, like serendipity. 

Anyways we went to church this morning, but Pascha is celebrated at midnight the night before. We did not know this, and neither did the other young family that met us, confused, in the church parking lot. It was their first time and our third. 

We got coffee instead. I hope we’ll be friends.