Visiting our grown daughter's adult Sunday school class, I ended up sitting with her at a table with her friends -- all women. One guy was there; me. The teacher (my daughter's husband), wrote a question on the board and asked the class to take a few minutes to discuss it. Immediately the women ignored the question and began catching up:
Well, my son had his first trip to the ER...
People are so rude to you when you call them for surveys -- I'm looking for another job...
Wow, 9-years old? We'd made 2-3 trips by that age...
This coffee cake is delicious...
Staples -- not stitches; he thinks it's so cool to have staples in his head...
And, etcetera. My daughter leaned over and said, Sorry you got stuck at the table with all women. It was a little creepy, like I was an invader on the surface of this world that guys are only supposed to see from high in orbit. It didn't matter that they had a teacher's question to answer or that an alien was at the table -- these women needed to connect and nothing was going to stop them.
At The Purple Cellar they're talking about women's friendships this week:
Women are uniquely created to enjoy friendships with one another. Sadly, as is the case in so many other areas, our ideas of what friendship means have been thoroughly distorted by the culture in which we live. In our self-driven society, a friend is often someone who is essentially a copy of me, with whom the chance of disagreement or conflict is minimal. Some friendships are purely recreational, providing a convenient side-kick so that one doesn't face the unthinkable trauma of shopping for shoes or seeing a movie alone. Other friendships are sentimentalized...we fantasize about the perfect bosom friend who will meet all of our emotional needs...Is this what we're looking for in the church?
All that reminds me of the conversation I had with the same daughter a few months ago, posted below.
Comments