Climate Change or God

I was on line at the post office, one woman was at the clerks desk mailing a package and another stood next to her.

They were talking about the fires in California.

They didn’t know each other, both were empathizing with the people affected by it.  Both woman knew people who had been forced to leave their homes, but were lucky enough find them still standing when they got back.  Although around them there was devastation.

Then one woman said, “It’s time to start believing in God.”  The other woman, clearly upset, replied, “We need to believe in Climate Change.”

“Oh that’s a hoax,” the first woman said, “there’s no such thing as Climate Change.”

I didn’t hear anymore, after that.  They were already walking out of the Post Office and I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other.

I looked at the postal clerk and she said, “That goes on all the time. I just step back and be quiet.”

Here, I thought, was the argument that our whole country is having, personified in our little Upstate NY Postoffice.

When I told Jon about it he asked if I had said anything to the two women.

It was only after I left the post office that I even thought about saying something.  I certainly wasn’t about to get into an argument with them.

But, I began to wondered what I could have said.

So I thought about it.  And when I did, what came to mind was when I was a kid and I learned in school how the earth was formed.   I was confused because I’d always heard that God created the world in seven days.

When I got home I asked my mother about it and she said it was both.

God created the world and what I learned in school was how it happened.  She explained that saying it took seven days was just a matter of perception  (seven days to God is billions of years to us humans) and that made sense to me.

This made me think that maybe, what  I could have said to the women in the post office was, why couldn’t it be both?  Maybe God is pissed at us humans for destroying the earth and this is his way of letting us know. We’re always doing things to annoy him in the bible and being punished for it, why is this any different?

I understand this goes to the heart of the argument about climate change, the belief that humans have nothing to do with it, if it’s happening at all.  I also know my response  is very simplistic.

But, maybe, it gets my point across without being combative.

Anyway, it was the best I could come up with.  And that was after thinking about it for much longer than the conversation between the two women went on.

Which I is why I didn’t say anything at all.

The next day I went back to the post office to mail out some of my Potholders and I brought the postal clerk a bag of Lindt Lindor Dark chocolate salted caramels.

She smiled and said that caramel was her favorite.  I told her it was my favorite too.

Eight years ago I decided not to argue politics with my neighbors and friends.  Instead I would focus on what we had in common rather than our differences.

I don’t know what the postal clerks politics are and I don’t really care.  She works hard and does her job well and is kind and helpful to me.

And now I know something about her that I didn’t before, something we share.  We both like the same kind of chocolate.