seed pods

sitting on the train today, reading my book. it’s a book of arabic grammar, so i was looking at it and kind of talking to myself, reading things aloud. i figure, i might as well be the weird one on the train if no-one else is gonna step up to the plate.
but this guy stood next to me in the door, looked down, and said “it’s not that bad, you know. once you learn the forms of the verbs it’s easy.” and when i looked up at him, puzzled, he said “i was a muslim for 15 years, but then i got mad at god. the religion is fine. it was god i couldn’t take.”

and then he got off the train.

i was sad i had to go to work, because that was a conversation i wanted to continue.

sometimes i forget that all these people i curse for stopping at the head of the stairs when I am trying to make it down them in time to catch the train that is tantalizingly just sitting there, or whose drippy umbrellas rub up against my legs and send a trickle of rain into my shoes, or who just put their heads against the subway pole and sleep, all these people; they are three dimensional and miraculous. they’re the seed pods i played with as a child, smooth on the outside, but if you peel them open a profusion of hairs and tiny seed grains, infinite complexity, spills out into your hand.

quakers say there is that of god in every person. i think real religion is the capacity to see it, to respond to it. to call it out.