Which side?

We were talking, seriously I thought, B and I, at one of our classic Happy Hour chats a few days ago. We spoke of many things. Somehow the talk got around to people we know. It turned to good people we know. I’m talking about really fine people, the kind who provide foster care for babies that no one else would have, and then adopt them. I’m talking about the kind of people who will get up in the middle of the night to go and care for the ill and needy. I’m talking about people who bear nary a blemish on the record of their life.

“Oh well,” I said. “I try but fall short.”

She comforted me. She’s good at that.

“No, really,” I said. “I try to be good but the bright lights and alluring colors of sin have always had a strong attraction for me.”

She comforted me again. She’s very patient.

“If I were to have it to do over, I’d try to do better.”

She looked off, then back at me. “You know,” she said. “You were just a big lump of dough and we all just had to wait and see if the yeast would make it rise.”

I’ve been thinking about that all week. I seem to think it was a compliment. She refused to elaborate. She’s like that. Once she makes a decree, there is no “instant replay.”

I guess there is room in a person’s life for redemption, if they don’t wait too long. That’s why I have hopes for the so many of the politicians we have in our state. Thomas Becket found it. Saul of Tarsus found it, redemption that is. Can you imagine the impact it would have on one of those who have voted for every piece of hateful and mean-spirited legislation in recent years to say, of a sudden, “I once was blind but now I see?” Gosh, how the Galilean would smile. How the Forces of Darkness would wail and gnash their teeth. I can only imagine.

People like Libby Phelps-Alvarez did it. As the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) founder Fred Phelps, she was raised to picket soldiers’ funerals, carry homophobic signs, and rain down fire and brimstone on anyone who didn’t agree with the WBC’s extremist ideologies. But since leaving in 2009, Phelps-Alvarez has publicly apologized to the family of a dead soldier whose funeral she picketed. Now she also supports Planting Peace, an LGBT organization whose rainbow-painted headquarters is located right across from the WBC.

Right across the street? Get that? You know, it seems that the step from the wrong side of history to the right side is a short one. It can be as short as right across the street.

Today, I’ll concentrate on the good. First thing I’ll do is go wake her up and tell her that the dough is rising. She’ll be glad I did, just you wait.