MY TWO CENTS

Barry's Bar, originally uploaded by .Zickie..

If there's anything better than a neighborhood bar in the Carribean, it's a backyard bar on Cape Cod. Laura and Jake's backyard bar to be specific.

Arrive when it's still light and you can explore a backyard that is a world in itself. There's an endless variety of herbs and plants which Laura cultivates in her sprawling, expansive gardens, a couple of old boats that Jake is working on, and an above ground pool the couple scored at a yard sale a few years ago. In the summer, friends and neighbors who stop by the bar bring their bathing suits and float a while.

At Laura and Jake's, you can float alone and contemplate the trees above your head or the meaning of existence, or you can float with friends, and jumpstart the conversation that will take place at the bar later.

In season, Jake comes home with buckets full of Wellfleet oysters; and Laura is an avid clam digger. If that's not enough to lure you over, Jake has served up some of the finest wines I've ever had at that bar, and Laura is a gourmet cook.

But this wasn't supposed to be a post about Laura and Jake and their fabulous backyard bar. It was supposed to be a post about opinions. The proverbial "my two cents"
which the Sunday Scribblers tackled this week.

Opinions and bars are natural companions--whether it's a homey back yard bar like Laura and Jake's, a Dublin pub, or the dank "old man's bars" that T.C. Boyle described so well in TALK TALK. It's not always a felicitous pairing.

So anyway, a group of us had gathered at Laura and Jake's last week and it was starting to get late when the talk turned to politics. Religion. The Middle East. Within minutes, the bar was littered with pennies as everyone anted up their two cents.

Voices rose. Laura, ever a peacemaker, begged for quiet, a change of subject. (Jake had to work in the morning, and was trying to sleep!) But like war itself, once ignited, the surge of opinions was not so easily quelled.

And then Ryan, still looking serene from his hour of floating, spoke up quietly. "I'm sure there's a lot I don't understand, but I think..."

And immediately, the tenor of the conversation changed. Because no matter what we think, or how passionate our beliefs are, Ryan Is right: there's a lot we don't understand. We see, as always, through a glass darkly.

A glass darkened by our fears.
Our personal experiences and prejudices.
The fact that our knowledge and understanding, however vast it might be, is always limited.

Am I advocating that we stop voicing our opinons or passionately engaging with the world around us? Hell, no! (And here MY voice is rising.) What I am advocating is that we speak them in a way that seeks to expand understanding--both our own, and those with whom we're conversing--rather than suppressing it.

It doesn't take much. A quiet tone. A humble acknowledgment that there's much we don't know. A willingness to listen. It's one thing--maybe the only thing-- that we can do for peace. We can live it.

And that, friends, is my two cents. See you at the neighborhood bar.