Living in Star Trek

I learn a little about my Quaker faith by day drinking with the boys.

Beer lunches are a great way to learn a person’s truth. Three beers in while the sun is shining you will get some nugget of truth about someone you have known for decades. Erik and Karl and I make a habit of it every month or so.

Both Erik and Karl are Star Trek fans, I knew that. I did not know that they actually wanted to live in Star Trek. I was surprised. It looks like hell to me. A mayonnaise hell.

“Those skin tight suits” Said Karl.

“The badge communicator computer thing!” Said Erik.

“It would be like living in Tupperware,” I said, “Really? You want that?”

I thought about dirt. The different natures of dirt here as there, when dirt is soil, how dirt sticks to a dress shoe or adorns a muck boot. The different smells of dirt when the heat of summer roasts it then in a fall rain. I thought about blue jeans. About discovering a good new beer by drinking a couple bad ones first.

At the point we were talking, I will admit that all beer was good beer. Our slurry dialog continued.

They wanted peace, I suppose. And the resolution of all social ills.

I want organic matter. I want to come upon unexpected things.

“You want the dancing green ladies? You can beam down to the Dancing Green Lady Planet,” Said Karl.

I want the world other than a built environment. Weather. A new kind of sock. Strange people to talk with in the dentist waiting room. A trail up a forested hill or a path by a curving river that reveals itself step by step. Perhaps past a no trespassing sign. Perhaps in cougar country.

I suppose at times living is exhausting, and you might want to have it all cleared away.

I wonder if my Quaker faith and worldview is part of my clarity here; living in a world steeped in wisdom and ineffable light, I am in a state of wonder at it. I am, when I can clear away despair and frustration, grateful that I get to touch, experience, and witness the messy world.

I wonder that faith is respite that helps me stay engaged with the dynamism of the world.

Not everyone is going to look good in those skin tight suits. I know a lot of bodies that prefer something more draping. More true for me — and harder to defend halfway through a third beer when no sentence can be finished without your dear friend tromping on the important bit — is that mystery and friction are essential in my world. Organic materials with a grain, that came from a tree that came from a place that has stories of its own.

Synthetic, featureless, consistent items that are spontaneously produced behind a sliding door that makes a satisfying swoosh sound are without the massive value of contemplation I have at hand with the ceramic cup of tea I am drinking from this morning (or yesterday’s beer stein).

Life on The Enterprise is a literary device that works great to discuss isolated moral or social questions. I would walk into it for 50 minutes to discuss the idea of autocratic rule or the nature of evangelism. But I need to wake up the next morning in my bed, surprised that the wind is still bellowing down the street.