So at that dinner last night.

An improved caption app on my phone means I can actually follow a conversation in a less than quiet environment. It wasn’t till today that I realized that she wasn’t expecting that. I don’t think she would have said this in front of me if she had.

There was an elderly woman and she was not talking directly to me when she lamented that (and it sounded like an out-of-context talking point straight from her preferred vulpine network) “A thousand churches in the US have been shut down and taken over as mosques. It’s the fall of civilization.”

The other person shrugged a yeah, okay, whatever, hon, and the subject was dropped.

I wanted to say, So people are still going to church (let’s not quibble over the cultural words for such), still looking for community, still trying to live up to their religions by holding themselves accountable before their fellow man simply by showing up to be reminded of their duty towards their fellow man and belief in G_d together. Cool.

Except that I knew she wouldn’t be able to hear me in both senses of the word if I tried.

But I did find a moment later to tell her that a friend of mine had been at university in the US when the Shah fell, and she knew if she went back she’d be perceived as an American and in great danger. So she married a man in the same boat and they raised their family here.

When their daughter got engaged the dad made a point that he did not want her to do the American thing of living together out of wedlock. The family wanted to throw a big wedding for her. He wanted her to wait.

Since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is very big on the waiting for marriage thing, I knew that that would mean something to my friend and maybe open her eyes a little.

To honor her parents, the couple chose to slip off to the courthouse and quietly get married there first so that they would be doing it right before G_d, or at the very least her parents’ perception of such: the commitment to each other comes first.

Maybe I got through a little bit. She seemed glad to hear of it.