Seeing God

—

American Airline flight 1849 from CLT to PDX.

There’s a man sitting in the seat across the aisle from me. He is wearing athletic shorts, a short sleeve t-shirt, and Giorgio Armani Collection glasses with matte nickel frames.

He just keeps talking and talking to the woman in the seat on the other side of him, of whom I can only see the bottom of her yoga pants and white high tops trimmed with metallic pink laces.

My dad, he was in the military, and he and my mom, they are always drinking the—what you just called—um—tomato juice and the stuff with Bloody Mary spices, and I forget the name of it, it’s a little sweet, a little—V8! They drink tomato juice all the time.

She doesn’t say much.
She doesn’t get a chance.


***


I sit there judging him until I realize I was him, but with Uber drivers in Mexico City who had to endure me practicing Spanish, talking about traffic and food.

The man blathers on and as he does, I wonder what separates the two of us—both wanting to be seen, acknowledged, recognized.

I wish to be seen, too.

Isn’t that part of why I send out an article 40/52 weeks a year?
To be seen and heard?

I calm myself some and remember that, as opposed to the drivers, to whom I might owe a cosmic apology, you asked to receive my words.


***


Nothing wrong with wanting to be validated.

After all, feeling recognized is essential to feeling loved.

My family, I couldn’t say was particularly religious, except for my grandmother, who looks sixty, even though she is seventy five, she was very important in her church. Well, anyway, I have a lawyer who told me that the house that I’m thinking of buying, if I can move the money…

I just don’t think we all need all those extra details.


***


I am not advocating theism, but just to think metaphorically—so I use the gee-oh-dee word here loosely—I wonder from God’s POV if God doesn’t often feel like the guy in seat 10C—wanting to be seen, validated, heard.

Hey, Brian, I wonder if you haven’t noticed the cherries that you are enjoying so much, the different varieties, the tastes, the flavor, the dark sweetness? Do you spend much time thinking about where they came from and how different they are from plums? How about the peaches and nectarines? Aren’t stone fruit lovely this time of year?

Poet Mary Oliver reminds us: “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”


***


How about you and I try something?

The next time we find ourselves on the hearing end of extra details, let’s be patient and filled with wonder.

After all—like us and, maybe God—the person plying us with random details wants to be witnessed.

***