Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Psalm 23:5
So yesterday was full of drop-in visitors and long conversations strapped together from small talk and despair for my project-driven husband who was gracious beyond compare as he watched his hopes for a Saturday rainy afternoon and evening dribble down into a pool at his feet, much like the water stain on the back bedroom wall.
For me the day was framed by the movie of the previous evening, our Friday night group whose very warp and woof shifts from week to week. An amazing feast of Asian food was followed by a film by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, After Life. The premise is a bit difficult to place in the setting, but when one dies, one goes to what appears to be a midcentury English boarding school, where for one week a team of kind and humble experts help you sort through your life to come up with the one memory you want to take with you to the afterlife. They film it, from your interview details, and then everything else is forgotten. Everything. Sort of like the biblical briars and thistles that will burn.
And there were some memorable concepts, beyond the vividly quiet characterization of twenty-three disparate souls intended to represent all of humanity. The emotional connection to the moon shining up above, unchanging over the generations, except for the perspective from which it’s viewed. And a man desperately sorting through a stack of videos of his life, looking for evidence of life. But what was most striking, was the sameness of the selected moments, from a World War II prisoner of war eating a plate of rice to a sweet young thing who decided it was not Disneyland, but a three-year-old swirling in a bright red dress to the shared memories from our group afterwards, simple and sweet, leaping carefree and beloved in an attic bedroom, hanging with a group of chosen friends, or watching the steeple of a monastery disappear in the dusky sunset, bereft of cultural baggage and stuff.
And as I pieced together a conversation at a wedding feast, sitting next to Chicago friends of the parents of the bride, I was struck by how these moments tie together humanity. With everything stripped away, the moments for a Sudanese refuge would not differ much from an electrical parts salesman who is building a second home in the suburbs. Or the girl from Alamos to do Christmas shopping sitting on the couch in front of the fire while it is dark and cold and rainy outside, to the rocket scientist who is so enjoying the round almond cookies left over from last night. The LORD is our shepherd. Each of our shepherds.
As the preacher last night reminded the bright-eyed smiling couple, life is not easy. We will have tribulation. Howling wolves will circle around watching for the kill. Or it could just be the piles of rat-a-tat things I gotta do, I gotta do, I gotta do that rip their teeth into my joy. But Thou preparest a table for me. He feeds my soul in the presence of mine enemies. And anyone who knows her cannot help but picture Nicole and her bottles of olive oil, smoothing a healing balm into every imaginable ache of life. Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. With the moments. That last.
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