It was a free day to take broken appliances to the dump.
My dad and I spent most of the morning working on all that shenanigans, and at about 1:30 it was decided that we were hungry. He asked what I was feelin, but it was unnecessary because the answer is always the same: gyros. And it was silently understood that there is, of course, only one place in Ames to get gyros.
So to Pammel Grocery we went.
My dad (who, in case you didn't know, knows EVERYONE in story county) is good friends with the man who owns the store. Who happens to be a Muslim.
We chatted for a little while, ordered our food and sat down. He brought us our salad and went back to the kitchen. As he brought out our gyros, I caught the glint of tears in his eyes. Before heading back to the kitchen, he said, "Mark, you are an honorable man-- you have an amazing heart, to come into my store today..." and then he walked away.
I didn't understand, and from the look on my dad's face, he didn't either, at least not at first. We were silent for a moment and my dad said quietly, "It didn't occur to me how meaningful it would be for him to have a white, christian American come into his store today, for the first time in years, on September 11th, and treat him like the friend I consider him to be." Neither of us had even thought about what day it was; we just had spent a day working hard together and decided it would be nice to eat out.. and gyros sounded pretty tasty.
He came back when we were almost finished with our food, pulling up a chair and sitting down, saying, "I have a story I want to tell you."
Within the first sentences of our three-hour long conversation, I wished I had some means of recording his words. He spoke of the heart of a person, the nature of love, the relationship between God and creation. The story was from the Quran. He went on bunny trails, discussing the symbolic meaning of each turn of events in this story about Moses. He spoke of current events, ancient events, philosophy, personal experiences, scripture from the Quran, the bible, the Torah... But there were such misinterpretations about the trinity, about Christ and his purpose, about covenants. We discussed and listened and shared. It was beautiful, and the whole time my thoughts danced between what amazing faith this man had, how much I wanted him to understand the actual implications of what Jesus Christ did, and how sad I was that his words, while they were being grasped and cherished in that moment, would be lost in time and the vault of my own memory forever. He had an amazingly poetic way of saying things, and despite the fact that his English was not amazing, his mind truly was.
He had read the bible three times in it's entirety. His reason for this was that, "so many people are trying to convert me, and I want to understand...everything."
In the words of my dad, we spent three hours wandering through the forest, beating around the bush. At 4, he resolved that he needed to get back to work, but wanted desperately to continue our conversation. As soon as we got to the car, I wrote down the words that were spoken in the moments before we left:
My dad said, "At the end of all of this, there is something you will have to decide for yourself. Do you need redemption, did Jesus die for you, and could you accept that amount of grace?"
He responded with a metaphor, saying there was no way it could be that simple. "If you were going to die from cancer, Grace, and I promised you that I would find the cure for cancer within a year... Would you believe me? Would you have enough faith in me to depend on me completely, not getting any other treatment for it?"
"No," I said pretty blatantly, "because I don't trust you." And at my dad's laughter, added, "at least not in the same way that I trust God. You're right; it isn't simple... Because that amount of faith can't be simple. We want inherently to earn our way to heaven, to do it on our own, but it's impossible: we need redemption by some other means. And the means... No, there's absolutely no way we can deserve what Christ did for us, but he offers it freely. And to accept that and have raw faith... It's not simple. But we do it every day."
And that's where we left it.
My dad and I spent most of the morning working on all that shenanigans, and at about 1:30 it was decided that we were hungry. He asked what I was feelin, but it was unnecessary because the answer is always the same: gyros. And it was silently understood that there is, of course, only one place in Ames to get gyros.
So to Pammel Grocery we went.
My dad (who, in case you didn't know, knows EVERYONE in story county) is good friends with the man who owns the store. Who happens to be a Muslim.
We chatted for a little while, ordered our food and sat down. He brought us our salad and went back to the kitchen. As he brought out our gyros, I caught the glint of tears in his eyes. Before heading back to the kitchen, he said, "Mark, you are an honorable man-- you have an amazing heart, to come into my store today..." and then he walked away.
I didn't understand, and from the look on my dad's face, he didn't either, at least not at first. We were silent for a moment and my dad said quietly, "It didn't occur to me how meaningful it would be for him to have a white, christian American come into his store today, for the first time in years, on September 11th, and treat him like the friend I consider him to be." Neither of us had even thought about what day it was; we just had spent a day working hard together and decided it would be nice to eat out.. and gyros sounded pretty tasty.
He came back when we were almost finished with our food, pulling up a chair and sitting down, saying, "I have a story I want to tell you."
Within the first sentences of our three-hour long conversation, I wished I had some means of recording his words. He spoke of the heart of a person, the nature of love, the relationship between God and creation. The story was from the Quran. He went on bunny trails, discussing the symbolic meaning of each turn of events in this story about Moses. He spoke of current events, ancient events, philosophy, personal experiences, scripture from the Quran, the bible, the Torah... But there were such misinterpretations about the trinity, about Christ and his purpose, about covenants. We discussed and listened and shared. It was beautiful, and the whole time my thoughts danced between what amazing faith this man had, how much I wanted him to understand the actual implications of what Jesus Christ did, and how sad I was that his words, while they were being grasped and cherished in that moment, would be lost in time and the vault of my own memory forever. He had an amazingly poetic way of saying things, and despite the fact that his English was not amazing, his mind truly was.
He had read the bible three times in it's entirety. His reason for this was that, "so many people are trying to convert me, and I want to understand...everything."
In the words of my dad, we spent three hours wandering through the forest, beating around the bush. At 4, he resolved that he needed to get back to work, but wanted desperately to continue our conversation. As soon as we got to the car, I wrote down the words that were spoken in the moments before we left:
My dad said, "At the end of all of this, there is something you will have to decide for yourself. Do you need redemption, did Jesus die for you, and could you accept that amount of grace?"
He responded with a metaphor, saying there was no way it could be that simple. "If you were going to die from cancer, Grace, and I promised you that I would find the cure for cancer within a year... Would you believe me? Would you have enough faith in me to depend on me completely, not getting any other treatment for it?"
"No," I said pretty blatantly, "because I don't trust you." And at my dad's laughter, added, "at least not in the same way that I trust God. You're right; it isn't simple... Because that amount of faith can't be simple. We want inherently to earn our way to heaven, to do it on our own, but it's impossible: we need redemption by some other means. And the means... No, there's absolutely no way we can deserve what Christ did for us, but he offers it freely. And to accept that and have raw faith... It's not simple. But we do it every day."
And that's where we left it.
i never told you how much i love this.
ReplyDeletehey grace: this is brilliant. keep going.