A few months ago, I was sitting at Starbucks reading for my Teaching Methods class when I struck up a conversation with the woman sitting right next to me. I'll never forget the shoes that she was wearing that day. As a fellow high heel lover, I was envious of her stellar shoes. She had the kind of personality that was warm and incredibly outgoing. Through the course of our conversation, we discovered that we both were regulars at that particular Starbucks. For the sake of this blog, we shall call her Lilly. After I left Starbucks that night, I knew that I wanted to interview her for my world religions class. We have to interview someone from another religion, and quite honestly when I first discovered the assignment I just planned on just making my paper up completely. Afterall, I live in the Northwestern American White Christian bubble, so where on earth am I going to meet someone of another religion?! Sure, I see people all of the time in this city who are from a completely different culture and religion, but I do not have enough courage to walk up to a complete stranger and ask to interview them on their religion - the very essence of who they are!
Over the course of the weeks to come, I began to run into Lilly while at that very same Starbucks. The staff have come to know us, and sometimes when we are all at Starbucks together I feel as though we are hanging out instead of being patrons in a coffeeshop. Our conversations were usually just on the surface, but tonight was different. Really different. Good.
I was sitting in the rusty orange chair reading a book, "The Death of a Guru." This was my assignment that I had put off and put off until tonight. Praise the Lord it was due at midnight, otherwise I probably wouldn't have been reading that book at that time. Lilly came in and sat in the chair adjacent to mine and we struck up a conversation about how we hadn't seen each other in awhile, kind of caught up a bit. After some time, Lilly glanced up and saw what I was reading. She asked if she could see it, and instantly I knew this was a door opening. I explained to her how the book was about a Hindu who converted to Christianity, and she became very interested. She mentioned that she is a muslim, and she knows that I am a Christian. She stated how fascinated she is by other religions and found it to be incredibly interesting - and I knew this was the perfect opportunity to ask her if I could interview her for class. Instantly she smiled and got all excited - she said of course.
Since returning home tonight, Lilly and I have been corresponding - about high heels and pictures. This is not just merely an interview assignment for my World Religions class, but rather the start of a friendship.
