How to rattle my chain, Volume 8972662

This morning, I went to a women's conference.

  

Yes, it was an unusual occurrence in the life of Hanna Schmidt.

Yes, I was glad I went.

Yes, a few things happened that rattled my chain.

There was something a bit eerie about looking around a room filled with 10,000 mascara-ed humans coming together to find something they were missing, or chiseling something already within themselves. Packs of Van's-wearing 20-something guys eagerly hung around the entrances decked out in pitch black tees branded with a huge coral V (olunteer) -- like kids on Christmas morning. Literally? Today was their luckiest of lucky days. (As long as they didn't have to use the restroom, since all of the venue's urinals closed up shop and all the stalls were reallocated to the chicks.)

 I'm not going to bury my inner cynic just yet, but I have to say that today it felt like the edges I usually hang my hat on had gotten a bit of a sand-down job. There were some good things said, and there were some wrong things assumed, there was some theatrics with the lights and the sound and the music and there was some real beauty in corporate, authentic searching -- but I was less inclined to either take offense or jump on a bandwagon. 

All around me, it happened, and I could just let it be.

That is, until someone with a microphone took a crack at the world of literature.

 I'm still a little sore from this, and so maybe "taking a crack" is actually a little harsh, but when the words left her mouth it was like a rooster in my chest flared all its feathers and I wanted to jump up and say no. Just no.

 To end her talk, the speaker had decided to end with a reading that she felt applied to the things she said. It's a classic move and its one that I love: to crescendo and crescendo using someone else's words, creating a memorable experience that triggers people back to the topic of the talk. I was fine with all of this. 

Until she said these words:

"This quote comes from a secular book, by a guy who survived the Holocaust..."

 I was stunned.

 I hate it when people use the word secular to describe literature. Secular? Really? The dance of words and syntax and cadence and order that twirls events into stories and traits into characters -- if that's not spirituality at its best, I don't know what is. 

Yes, literature can be used as a tool of destruction.

It can rip and roar and stick into us.

But I think words want to be used to redeem. And when they're woven well, they speak for themselves.

Here's my cynic rearing its head again, but covers of books found on the spiritual shelf at the bookstore flashed in my head as she labeled this book "secular" -- books that I actually find destructive and a disgrace to the words butchered on their pages.

"It's a secular book," she said, but there was something beautiful to be learned from it.

 Wince. Cringe. Wince again.

 This is part of the quote that she read. (Updating this as soon as I have the full text in hand.)

 "The darkness enveloped us. 

  All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. 

  He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again." 

The scene she read was from Night by Elie Wiesel. Although I've not yet read the book in its whole, the words entranced me and captured me and connected to my soul, singing "yes, yes, YES!" like no other words that had been spoken throughout the day. 

I'm sorry, but there's nothing secular about the Holocaust. There's nothing secular about Elie Wiesel. And there's certainly nothing secular about a book whose words latch on and live in people's souls for decades and generations and across classes, countries and languages. 

 Poor thing, she didn't mean to. She doesn't even know me. For crying out loud, she said this in passing.

But now you know. If you really want to rattle my chain, start by throwing around the word "secular" willy nilly. It obviously works.