We always have the utterly stereotypical "she's always cold, he's always hot" controversies wherever we go. All three of the ladies in my life seem to have ice in their veins - they are always cold. On the other hand, I'm always sweating. I love cool, fresh air. I'm the last person in the world to complain about a cold room.
Anyway, as we were driving to the gym at 6AM, I had my window down enjoying the cool, fresh morning breezes. There's nothing better than the crisp, fresh air of a Minnesota fall morning. Of course, we only went a couple of blocks before Monica complained about the cold, questioning my sanity in the process. Knowing full well I was going to lose the argument, I still tried to convince her of the healing importance of fresh morning air. It gets your brain going, sweetie! It clears out your sinuses! It blows the stale apartment air out of your hair!
Nothing doing.
Finally, I pulled out my libertarian trump card. In a very smug, authoritarian and scholarly way, I explained to her that there were four windows in the car, only one of which was open. While I deeply respected her legal right to keep her window closed as long as she wished, I respectfully demanded my right to maintain my window open. All issues of hot and cold aside, I explained that what we were dealing with was actually an epic issue of human freedom and adult equality. There were significant principles of human civilization at stake here! If she truly valued human dignity and democratic ideals, she would accept this important sacrifice of her utterly selfish desires and surrender to the higher good.
She punched me in the arm and told me to close the
Looking back on the incident, it occurs to me that this silly, early morning moment might actually serve as an interesting metaphor for church life. Thinking of the Apostle Paul's comments in Romans about stronger and weaker brothers, it occurs to me that sometimes we're going to have to roll up the window even when we want it down. Even though we may fully have the right and freedom to do as we wish, we regularly surrender those rights for the benefit of those around us. That's just the way this thing works.
At the end of the day, we don't operate independently in the church. We do "what seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit." That means I can't keep the windows down whenever I wish. And hopefully others will also realize that they can't keep the windows up whenever they wish. We're a body here. We listen to each other. We serve and love each other. When one part suffers, we all suffer.
Who knows? Maybe an open car window on a cold morning isn't such a good idea after all. Maybe there are a few things more important than morning wind in my hair. We'll see...
______________
*When I told Monica of this blog post, she objected to my characterization of her using the word "stupid." She did not, however, object to striking me on the arm. Odd, the violence is acceptable, the bad word is not.
