Postscript to "being from Toronto" (or, My big fat apology to AJL)

A while ago, I wrote about something that, at the time, kinda bugged me a little bit. It was about assumptions and outward appearances - specifically, those of a racial nature. I took a little incident that was, in the grand scheme of things, not really as bad as it could have been (or, not as really as bad as it ever was) and wove it into a grandiose post about racial uneasiness (which by the way, I do feel somewhat reassured on, after conversations with people like my therapist).

And now, thanks to that wonderful literary device known as "retributive justice" (or what some would just call Karma) I find myself falling victim to those very same assumptions - not quite racially based mind you, but they were assumptions nevertheless, and that they weren't racially motivated doesn't make them any less wrong.

...Take 3

So fast forward a few months after the aformentioned incident. Since then, he and I actually got be pretty good friends and while I didn't knew him extremely well outside of our Christian Fellowship group, we knew each other pretty well, well enough to trade friendly barbs and jabs here and there as only two fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grain could.

Anyway, the other night we were conversing and he brought up a comment I'd made earlier about how I found him quite intriguing (which was actually what I'd said). As if he read my mind, when I was trying to answer his question of why I found him intriguing, what he said was something to the effect of "Well, it's probably because I'm not what you expect..."

And well, that's right - he wasn't what I'd expected at all. Lo and behold, we had much, much more in common than I'd thought - shared general socio-political interests, shared theological interests, attitudes and experiences, even shared experiences and thoughts concerning The Opposite Sex...oh and of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Oh, and we've both developed a liking to Rickard's Irish Red.

Closed-minded facist Bible thumper? Au Contraire. As a matter of fact, someone for whom I've developed a profound amount of respect. Not that I didn't respect him a lot before, anyway - but now it's like that respect has taken on a newer sense of depth. I compare how I think of him now to how I thought of him, say, when I first met him, and it's so wholly embarrassing that I could ever have thought that. I mean, what else would you expect someone who's a leftist/socialist "Liberal Christian/Reformed Catholic" anti-war and pro-women's/LGTBQ rights wacko, so used to congenial ostracism and polite isolation (or downright hellfire-and-brimstone righteous indignation) when he first meets one of the people coordinating and heading up the local Christian group? If you've been through more than your fair share of Christian hatred and intolerance then I'm sure you know what I'm getting at, but nevertheless maybe you're also probably thinking of the kind of feelings I really should have had, but didn't - the feelings should have been there instead of an emotional sensation akin to a caged animal thinking that the fanged baddies are all around him.

If there's a moral to be learned from all of this, it's that we are so comfortably perched on our moral high horse when we accuse people of making undue assumptions and prejudices based on first principles that we never truly see the forest for the trees - we end up being guilty of the same sins we accuse others of making (something I'm sure I've opined about before, but in my usual fashion probably forgot about). Come to think of it, that's quite a bit of the root of why we're so downright unpleasant to each other, isn't it?

Nevertheless, what I can only offer is a tip of the hat to my friend for a wonderful evening's conversation, an humble apology for my own embarrassing sanctimoniousness, and, a resolution that next time, I'll try to do just a little better than before.