The Peace of God Which Passeth All Understanding

This morning I sat out a long wait for the next available commuter train home after a visit to a medical lab for tests.  I was in a large room with high ceilings and glass panels through which natural light filled the space, where people with their coffee from a nearby shop occupied maybe twenty or thirty tables reading or talking with one another.  I had a lots of time to kill, so that from time to time I took a rest from my reading to survey the others as they came and went in the room.  There was one table at a certain distance where a man of maybe sixty or sixty five years of age, with greying hair and jowels, sat placidly talking.  He was thoroughly nondescript and would hardly have engaged my attention if it were not first for the fact that he was talking to no one visible.  Of course, nowadays we are familiar with people talking into some apparatus on their person which conveys their words electronically to another, but upon careful inspection I determined that this was not the case.  My man was talking to the air.  Interestingly enough, he did not seem to be wildly declaiming into space, or evincing any of the other behaviors by which lunatics are so easily identified, but rather he seemed to be speaking quietly and calmly, gently and at peace, sweetly I might even say to judge by the look in his eye and the curve of his mouth.  On the table in front of him sat two stuffed animals, one a rabbit with long floppy ears, and the other a bear, who was modestly dressed in a pair of blue shorts, both of them sufficiently shabby and threadbare to suggest that they were in some way life long companions of the gentleman speaking to them.  I was interested to note that he was so non-threatening that a youngish fellow perhaps a student came to sit at that table to drink his coffee and read his paper not the least bothered by the strangeness of his table companion (or companions?).  After well over an hour the fellow gathered up his stuffed friends one under each arm and made for the entrance to the hall, and he passed close enough to my table that I caught him saying "Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la" on his way out.  Shortly thereafter I myself left to make my way to the train station which involved passing in front of two persons who had set up with placards, microphone, and loudspeaker whose message had to do with God's imminent destruction of the earth, the horrors of punishment awaiting those who did not follow the commandments of the Christian god.  Hell and brimstone and Sin, always Sin, were the important items of the texts written out on the placards, and these were accompanied by the harsh and angry voice of one of the two, calling out with a sneer and a howl, pointedly directing his words to whomever chanced that way.  What defense does one have against such hostile and destructive imprecations?  Well, instinctively, I suddenly said softly "Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la," the perfect protection against the malignity of the moment.