I know she meant to be kind. In fact, she didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. We were in our mid-twenties, my girlfriend and I. She was talented, cheerful, and sincere…and also happened to be a born-again Southern fundamentalist Christian. Being Jewish, this caused me — and us — a not insignificant amount of dissonance. One warm summer evening, I took the opportunity, in a quiet moment walking along the shore, to ask her about her beliefs. I smiled apprehensively but warmly, “Julia, you don’t really think I’m going to burn in hell, do you?”
“Sweetheart,” she began, sadly shaking her head. Her eyes were full of a blend of compassion, pity, and wistful resignation. “It’s not up to me.”
Not the answer I was expecting. Or hoping for. My heart sank. And not because I was afraid she was right that I was going to burn in hell. (After all, if that’s where I was headed, at least I wouldn’t be alone…I’d be roasting with all of my friends and virtually all of my heroes.) No, what pained me was that I felt a grim disconnection: I couldn’t make her “see” and she couldn’t “save” me. We still cared about each other. But I realized that gap could never — ever — be bridged. It was a bittersweet sunset…