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She shook her head, "Why don't we sit down? Let's talk for a while. I will tell you how Kolkwitzer See came to be."
"Are you sure?" I asked, "I must warn you, I may not be able to take my eyes off you."
She replied with a beaming smile. "I am honored by your desire to look at me," she said.
"Oh?" I said.
"If you were an artist," she said, "wouldn't I model for you? I would be honored if you would choose me. You would create a painting that would capture the very essence of me. It would tour all the great galleries of the world, and people would come and be moved by what they saw. This would honor me. So, why should I feel less honored that you want to look at me just for being myself?"
I didn't know what to reply to this. I simply nodded. I invited her to sit down on my blanket. We were facing each other and smiled. She asked whether I had been to Sunday School as a child, and if so, if I remembered some of it? She said she remembered a parable by Christ Jesus that had stayed in her mind all these years. The story was about inheriting a kingdom. The king addressed himself to two groups, one on his right side, and one to his left. He praised those on the right and said that they would inherit the kingdom. Then he gave his reasons, addressing those selected. Erica explained that the king's reasons were profound. "I was hungry and you gave me meat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me." She asked if could remember that story.
I nodded. I replied, that as I recalled the story the selected people said to the king that they never did such a thing. "When did we ever see you hungry, or thirsty, naked, sick, in prison, or as a stranger?"
"Yes," said Erica, "but the king replied that they did these things to him indeed, in as much as they had done them to the least person in his kingdom. Then he condemned those others who were not selected, because they had not done so." Erica added that the story presents a principle, or law, that is rarely recognized, because it goes so totally against the grain of the world's conventions.
She paused for a moment. "If only more people would realize that the law is easily fulfilled," she added, "and how richly rewarding it can be." Then she began to laugh, "All that I have to do to fulfill the law, is to be myself. Nothing more is required, and look it makes you so happy and I feel richer and more precious at the same time. That's why I said to you that I am honored. I really am. Something beautiful is going on between us, don't you agree that this is so?"
I would have dared for a kiss, but then she started to talk about the history of the lake where the beach was located. She said that the lake was artificially created by flooding a depleted open pit brown coal mine. "It has become a resource for the soul now," she commented.
We talked about many things that afternoon, about Ursula Fleischer, my diplomatic mission, Pittsburgh, my marriage. She said that she was married, too, and that her husband was away on an out of town assignment. Then we talked about the meaning of fidelity, and whether our being together at the beach might be considered a breach of trust, a loss of fidelity. We decided that it wasn't. She asked me to consider what Sylvia and I had sworn to each other at our marriage ceremony: "to love, to respect, to honor, and to support one-another. At least that's what I and Fritz have sworn to each other," she added. "So we never swore that we would not look at another man or woman as a sexual being for the remainder of our life, right? This means that there is room in our marriage agreements to also fulfill the divine demand, which is a demand on each one of us to help meet the human need in whatever form it may exist."
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