Salon.com > Alan Rifkin http://www.salon.com Sat, 25 May 2013 01:08:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Toward peace http://www.salon.com/2001/09/27/peacemaking/ http://www.salon.com/2001/09/27/peacemaking/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2001 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2001/09/27/peacemaking Naturally I am writing about God and peacemaking while clueless how to live at peace with the ones I love. It came to a head the other night -- I was knocking on the ceiling in the dark to chase off a possum in the attic. I reared up on the middle of the bed for better balance, and drove my fist straight through an overhead light fixture, glass raining everywhere. No one was cut, and no one said a word while I stood frozen in this militant disgrace. So we settled in to pluck shards from the bedspread, an almost lovely interlude of tactile self-preservation, and my wife didn't criticize.

But neither could she sleep, and then some fragile anxiety was ventured about money, and how she couldn't budget if there was nothing coming in. She was asking for reassurances, but I felt attacked, a loser both at money and at love; like G.B. Shaw, who could "sympathize with anything but suffering," I am perfectly capable of listening with compassion to anyone who doesn't require it. I raised my voice to be heard, she threatened to leave the room, I demanded she leave the room -- which is how we wound up barely talking until bedtime the next night. And I hope that God's triumph has been awaiting this human collapse.

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