"What will you give in exchange for your soul?"
Three
times a week I walk past the evangelist's table in the student union, with its
banner announcing this question in bold lettering. Sometimes I come very close
to approaching the display and talking to the man. I want to attempt a
conversation.
Other times I just want to reserve a
table right beside his, posing a different question: "What will you give in
exchange for a cookie?"
I'll never actually pursue such a
bake sale. His question—originally asked by Jesus—isn't nearly as amusing as it
is terrifying, and it's followed up by a second question posted on his banner: "Are you going to heaven?" It is that dilemma that kept me awake at night when
I was nine and ten and eleven. Am I going to heaven? Now and then the query
still keeps me up.
One late-fall afternoon when I
reluctantly pass the table the man's young daughter is helping him pack up the
familiar banner and books. She smiles shyly at bundled-up skeptic me. She
whispers something to her dad. Then comes his gentle reply, in reference to
what I deduce to be my snowflaked winter hat: “Yes, hers is just like yours.” Chastened, I feel my face return her joy, and for a moment these eternal
worries fade to grace.
"Compassion and gratitude come down
from God," Simone Weil writes, "and when they are exchanged in a glance, God is
present at the point where the eyes of those who give and those who receive
meet."
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| This is just outside Laramie, Wyoming, where I wrote the above. Circa 2010. |