The chaff in the bus
Our public life is a crowded bus on a field trip, and everyone has an opinion on where the driver should go. Some people will voice it by telling other passengers; others keep walking down the front with megafones despite urges for them to take a seat; others stare out the window, certain no one would listen if they tried. We are at turns apathetic and incensed. We try to say the bus is neutral, a polite way of keeping certain topics off-limits. We see other passengers as the enemy, denying them a chance to speak. We are frightened and overwhelmed; we do not know what to think. We try to focus on structure and talk about getting a shinier bus.
The problem, of course, is within the passengers. We are wheat and chaff at the root. Hope and passion mesh with fear and anger. There is no way of getting one without the other, and one is matched by the other in magnitude: One can only imagine the horrors that plagued Mother Teresa. The biblical text expertly weaves it into its structure: The story in which we are banned from the garden, signaling the separation between God and humankind, is immediately followed by a story of murder. We do not get far on our own — and then we get put on a bus. What do we do? How do we decide where to go?
At some point, we stop at a gas station, we get chips and coffee, we face each other to talk. We find vocabulary that allows us to engage in conversation. We reimagine the bus neither as neutral nor confrontational but conversational, a place where we bring the wheat and chaff and the coffee. We see the dignity in the other, not the enemy but a friend; we let them speak. There is something transformational, empowering and healing in saying things out loud to listening ears. This is where the ancient text is revitalizing: It has been dealing with our human frailty for millennia, trying to teach us how to deal with the stranger and the enemy. Those are much needed instructions today as we try — as Bill Bryson would put it — “not to touch anything that will get us on the evening news” and make the most of the field trip.
