Free For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

He.”
    Standing again, rubbing my fingers together, I found more stone stairways, more levels, and the street, the sunlight, the world. I found a van in the parking lot of what used to be, I try to tell myself, a stable—but this story was worn out for now, the paradox and scandal of any incarnation’s occurring in a stable. More powerful at the moment was the sight ofpeople converging from all over the world, people of every color in every costume, to rub their fingers across a flat hole in a bossy silver star on the cracked marble floor of a cave.
    Rabbi Menahem Mendel brought Hasidic teaching to Palestine in the eighteenth century. He said, “This is what I attained in the Land of Israel. When I see a bundle of straw lying in the street, it seems to me a sign of the presence of God, that it lies there lengthwise, and not crosswise.”
    I could not keep away from it. I saw I had a minute or two to rush back from the van into the church and down the grotto stairs to kneel again at the silver star behind the brocade, to prostrate myself under the lamps, and to rub my fingers in the greasy wax.
    Was it maybe tallow? I felt like Harry Reasoner at the Great Wall of China in 1972, who, pressed on live coverage for a response, came up with, “It’s … uh … it’s one of the two or three darnedest things I ever saw.”
    E N C O U N T E R S              Joseph took one of my cigarettes, and gave me one of his. He was a Palestinian in his fifties; his straight hair was graying. The deep lines in his face showed feeling. We smoked just outside the van, inthe heat. This morning as every morning, we had smoked together after breakfast. Now at noon in a town parking lot, we were waiting for the others, who were buying jewelry.
    Joseph drove a tourist van. Like 18 percent of Israelis, he was a Palestinian. Like 15 percent of Israeli Palestinians, he was a Christian. He spoke Arabic, Hebrew, and some English. Driving, he never said a word. He wore a thin cotton shirt in all weathers.
    After our cigarette I found the jewelry store in whose lounge the others would meet after shopping. The lounge was air conditioned, and a vending machine offered cold drinks. It beat waiting in the parking lot, so I gathered Joseph from the van, led him inside, and got him a Coke. We were sitting on distant couches; I brought out my book.
    “Tonight or tomorrow night,” Joseph said abruptly, “I invite you.”
    I raised my head; he saw my look.
    “Before dinner, at hotel, I invite you.”
    Across the room, on the couch, Joseph appeared kind and sincere, as always. Thank you, I said, but I’ll stay with my friends. I got myself another bottle of water. I closed my book. Joseph’s lined face was relaxed.
    Do you have a family at home? Joseph, with some animation, said indeed, yes he did, and told me he had a wife of many years, and two sons and three daughters. After a suitable interval, I hauled out pictures of my husband and daughterto show him. We were sitting comfortably; we smoked another cigarette in silence.
    After a longer interval, Joseph brought forth mildly, “When I say ‘I invite you,’ I mean—for drink. For drink only.”
    Oh. I laughed at my mistake. Tolerant, he joined the joke.
    “I invite you—for drink, only. In lobby.” He was smiling. An easygoing fellow. When we parted, weeks later, he gave me an old coin swollen and layered with age, which I prize.
    T H I N K E R              C. S. Lewis once noted—interestingly, salvifically—that the sum of human suffering is a purely mental accretion, the contemplation of which is futile because no one ever suffered it. That was a load off my mind. I had found it easier to contemplate the square root of minus one.
    Why must we suffer losses? Even Meister Eckhart offers the lame apology that God never intended us to regard his gifts as our property and that “in order to impress it on us, he frequently takes away everything, physical and