it never takes long

so i wrote the blog below and in less than two hours i found myself in
a position to start articulating what was whirling around inside of me.

three of us were meeting for coffee. she arrived last and in tears.
she had just come from a service which was trying to deal with the
shootings. in the process, people were sharing their feelings and it was
all quite emotional.

she sat down and told us she was upset and cried.
and she immediately brought up gun control.

oh man.
i had just made this promise to myself to try to talk real about this stuff
and not just keep quiet with my thoughts. to try to look at all the threads.

i didn't want to upset her any more than she already was.
i didn't want her to misunderstand me.
i certainly wasn't trying to defend guns.

how do i even approach this?

i was so tempted not to.

but my gosh, i JUST told myself i would do this. i mean, how could
i duck out of it right off the bat?!

and so i started in softly.

'i just wrote a blog about this...' i started.

told her i understood her feelings but had been wondering about the many
layers and threads to it all and i've been wondering what our responsibility
in all this was.

i was gentle and we're friends.
she could hear me cause she knew where my heart was.
she heard me and the three of us began talking.

my other friend started out a paragraph with 'this is going to sound really weird, but...'
and she presented a thought she had been having about things going on in the world
around us.

it was a thought that made perfect sense to me, but could sound strange to some people.

i asked her about that. pointed out how she felt she needed to preface her thought with
'this may sound strange, but' with us, and asked her if that was the case, could she talk
to other people about it?

absolutely not, she answered.

and i was struck with what had started.
i think that if i hadn't said anything, we would have continued to talk about just the
one topic of gun control. instead of the many threads that we started laying on the table.

and we only touched the surface.
we only just began.
but i could feel the layers being looked at.
and it felt right.

and i was surprised.
i honestly didn't want to put my thoughts out there.
i didn't want to make things harder than they were.

i didn't want to rock any boat.

and what i found wasn't any rocking of any boats....
i found genuine sharing taking place.
i found a space open.

wow.
go figure.