Ask Barbara 


A very incomplete profile of a very dear friend. 

Barbara read my blogs and sent me an email the other day. I'm going to start this entry with a quote from that email:

"Wow, Jim. I learned a lot of new stuff about you. I can see how much thought you've put into this. I think maybe I would like to try this although I'm not sure I can be as honest and open as you have --probably not even with myself. I don't assert that there is a God, but you haven't explained yet why God is essential to your philosophy. Actually you haven't explained why music is essential either. Neither one seems important to me except when imposed on me."

In that one little paragraph, I find three things that I love about Barbara: her gentle atheism, her indomitable spirit in anything she sets her mind to, and her fascination with technology.

First of all, she is an unabashed, unapologetic, but genial and gentle atheist. She just finds the hypothesis of God to be both questionable and unnecessary to fulfillment in her life. Yet Barbara will always discuss this matter if you want to. She listens carefully to what you say. In my case, I try to point to what I call miracles and to my speaking relationship with that which created me—more on that in another entry. But she just doesn't have any parallel experiences in her life. Why would I love this about her? Well, we've been over this ground a lot, and as far as I can see, it's a draw. It makes me aware that my faith is just that—a faith. This is something a lot of people forget, and they can sacrifice geniality in the relentless pursuit of their own truth. It's something to treasure about a friend when zealotry ranks lower than friendship.

Now on Barbara's music comment, I have a story to tell you. I met Barbara when I was invited to become a member of a dinner theatre group. She's been in it for over 30 years, from the beginning. We meet once a month in the home of the host, and the director, also someone from the group, presents a play dramatically read by still other members. We alternate the refreshments and the dramatics: appetizer, first act, dinner, second act, dessert. So one time a few years back, Barbara decided to put on a Tom Lehrer review. We must have ended up doing 25 of his songs. Barbara had picked the musicians and singers from the group. But the funny thing was, she didn't realize that even musicians needed more than one rehearsal to put on a dramatic musical performance. I was dying from a bad cold at the piano, and the other four singers were sweating big time. But she gently lashed us into form, and we put on a fairly acceptable performance the next evening.

Barbara is an inveterate emailer. She can forward ten emails a day. But unlike your run of the mill forwarders, who can confuse a thoughtless and lazy flick of the send button for staying in touch, Barbara customizes her emails, if you will only work with her. And so, over the last few years, even though I already have a great face to face relationship with her, Barbara and I have met many times and many ways in cyberspace. I take those forwards and twist them and zip them back to her, and then she zips me back another twist. Any time I come up with a new technological twist: Yahoo! Groups, chatting, blogs, web publishing, you name it, Barbara is game, while others of her generation profess disinterest, ineptitude, or worse, express hostility to technology. Not too long ago, she and three female companions went on a rafting trip, the slides from which she published on her .Mac account. So I could use my sleep slide show to view her trip.

Barbara has literally been on every continent on this globe, mostly traveling with husband, Dave, now deceased. They reared a family of four kids who now are rearing their kids. Dave was a truly awful punster, but we waited for those puns to fall. Barb does the whole ball of wax, she's politically responsible, gives service to the educational community, maintains membership in several groups, and maintains a network of significant relationships. Still, she will drive 20 miles to play a game of Yahtzee, when she'd rather play bridge. And she uses her GPS to get there.

Barbara, this profile may be used as an example of bad writing in some class, but I am your fan. Keep it up. 

Posted: Fri - October 28, 2005 at 12:18 PM          

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