Ponder This!

When all else fails, tell the truth!

I really need to stay out of the Super Evil Bigmart. On the Weird-O-Meter Index of Bizarre Encounters, about half or more of mine seem to occur when I’m on those premises.

For instance…

I absolutely refuse to use the self-checkout lanes unless I have very few items. I can never figure out how to ring up all my groceries by first taking them out of, and then putting them right back into the same cart at these lanes. Not to mention that no matter how many times a less-than-patient clerk demonstrates the process, I can never remember how to ring up a bunch of bananas, or any other fruit or vegetable that’s not pre-bagged with a bar code.

So on a recent food shopping excursion, I trundled my cart to the only available checkout equipped with a living, breathing clerk to ring up purchases. It was, as usual, a long line.

Now, there have been a number of occasions when I’ve passed the tedious wait time in line chatting with congenial strangers.

This wasn’t one of those times.

As I pulled my cart into the line, the person ahead of me glanced back. Immediately, I experienced that brain numbing sensation of, “Oh, gosh, I know this person from somewhere; where? What’s her name? Oh, hell.“
So I fell back on a cheesy smile as she exclaimed, “Well, hi! How are you?”
Answering honestly, I replied, “I’m great. But I’m sorry to say I just can’t remember your name.”

As soon as she said her name, it clicked; I’d known her from my workplace, years before my retirement. Known her very slightly. The “small talk in the elevator” type of acquaintance. I faintly recalled having heard that she retired just a year or so after I did.

This was apparently true, for now she remarked, “I heard that you got cancer, but I must have left work before hearing that you recovered.”

I was able to give her a genuine smile as I said that I was five years cancer-free. And here let me point out that I’ve had this conversation numerous times previously, and the response has inevitably been, “That’s great!” or, “I’m glad to hear that”, or something along those general lines.

It was a bit jolting, then, to hear her reply, “Well, I hope the experience brought you closer to Jesus.”

I was trying to frame an appropriate response to this unusual remark, but found it wasn’t necessary as she rushed to continue, “Everyone said you weren’t a good Christian, so I always prayed that something drastic would happen to help you find your way to salvation.”

Uh….

I’d like to have been a fly on the wall where security was monitoring the video feed in the store. I’m sure one of them must have exclaimed, “Oh gawd, that woman in Lane Six is choking!”

Actually, I don’t know why I was surprised—well, shocked. First, it’s true: as a renegade Roman Catholic who left that church in adolescence, and as someone who rarely attends church services in any denomination, I certainly don’t qualify for the “good Christian” category. In fact, my spiritual beliefs have wandered so far afield of my upbringing that I couldn’t slap any Christian label on them. As one friend so aptly describes it, I’m “spiritually blended”. And content to be so.

Further, a friend who is an escapee from an Evangelical family mentioned months ago that her “saved” sibling found no problem at all with praying for catastrophe to strike if it meant another individual might convert to their narrow brand of religiosity.

I find this mindset utterly incomprehensible! The very notion of wishing, hoping, praying for some calamity to occur in the life of another, for any reason, is so beyond my understanding that it blisters my brain.

I found myself thinking that if there really was a God, then right at that moment the checkout next to us would open and I would dash away from this conversation, jogging over with my filled cart.

That didn’t happen…not definitively proving that there is no God, but certainly demonstrating that He/She/It was leaving me to my own devices. That whole “rational Deism” thing, I guess.

So…when all else fails, tell the truth. “I learned a lot from having cancer,” I replied. “Mostly, to treasure every moment of life and give others as much love as I can.”

Ms. Saved Christian sighed. I could see my answer hadn’t satisfied her lust for Conversion of An Unfaithful Rotter Headed Straight to Hell.

But perhaps there is a God, or Goddess, or Guardian Angel, or something, for at that moment the customer ahead of her finished paying and left, and Saved Christian had to drop the conversation as she began unloading her purchases. I escaped without further discussion of my philistine status.

Oddly, as I left the store, a fragment of biblical verse popped into my head: “And Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Ponder… To pray that troubles befall another, supposedly in the name of doing them good, well, ponder it as I may, from now until the end of time, I will never be able to comprehend that mindset.

I simply don’t even want to.

As always, feel free to repost any quotes from, or this full essay, with author attribution.

If you really liked this essay, then you will probably also enjoy “A Missionary Trip To…The Hell You Say!” You can locate it in the Archives by scrolling below. It was originally published on January 4, 2023.