Yesterday evening. Me and B. have scheduled our last tea date in Stags before I leave. He gets to Stags a lot earlier than me, I'm late. As I come to the pub, I'm rather annoyed to see that he's sitting at a table with two strangers, having a lively conversation with them. 'I wonder when are these people going to leave' is my first selfish thought. But they don't seem to be in a hurry so I sit down next to B. who introduces me to them - to an elderly father and a son (in mid thirties maybe?) who've come to the pub for an evening drink. The young guy has clearly had too many drinks and that makes me a bit uncomfortable. When he hears that I too am a theology student, he has a slightly ironic expression on his face for a moment, then he continues his conversation with B. So I start talking to the father who turns out to be a wonderful and witty man, a life-long journalist and a devoted husband and father. And before I know it, we're engaged in a serious conversation about life and stories, history and marriage, life goals and theology. He seems to be completely taken aback by the quality of our exchange of thoughts (you know, who would have guessed - in a pub, with a random Eastern European girl...) as I'm getting more and more excited about our conversation. Then B. leaves for couple of minutes and there's this awkward moment when the son just looks at me and listens to me talking to his father. He's clearly drunk by now.
And then he shoots.
'How would you treat an atheist?'
My jaw just drops. What?!
'Yea, how would you treat an atheist?'
'Uhmm, like one human being should treat another human being.'
'So you've got no problem with atheists?'
'No, I don't have any problems with atheists, with people who've lived and made observations about life and the world, who've seriously thought about things, who've made up their mind and who've come to the opposite conclusion compared to me. But I do have a problem with people who go through life without ever making up their mind about matters of such great consequence. As our friend of old has said, an unexamined life is not worth living.'
Silence. He looks at me again. And smiles.
After that we we're best buddies.
An hour later, which means many laughs and serious questions and witty answers later, with the number of glasses (or tea cups in my case) rapidly increasing on our table, we depart with words most warm and friendly. They declare it to be a great loss for this fine country to lose me to Estonia in two days, I promise to be back as soon as possible and look for them whenever I come to Stags again.
As we step outside with B., we just laugh. It's this happy and surprised kind of laughter.
'I think these two guys restored my faith in human kind a bit tonight,' I say.
And we walk back to Newbold.
Beautiful encounters.