An author friend of mine was telling stories today, and I wanted to absorb each one like an expensive truffle. But before I had even finished chewing he started telling another one. It seemed important to think, to digest it, to store it in the right folder of my brain. Yet there was no time, so I simply listened as if it mattered.

He said that God is like the ocean and we are the jars that hold a gallon of water. It appears as if we Are the water, but we only contain it. When we notice another jar, wider, or more slender, or made of a different composition of clay, we are fooled into thinking they are separate from us. But the ocean in them is the same as the ocean in us.

I was mad at John this morning. I had good reasons, all lined up like bricks building a wall between us. It seemed inevitable that if I really heard my friend it would be hard to keep a grip on annoyance. It was.

Hearing that we come from one Source of water, or are leaves on one tree made it feel like an absurd waste of energy to be angry.