A Great and Spacious Building

This past weekend I went to Time Out for Women down in Portland.  That's its own post, maybe.
We stayed in a hotel that was hosting Westercon, a convention where science and imagination collide.  Lest you think we saw Trekkies or Star Wars fans, you would be mistaken.  This particular crowd actually preferred the less scientifically based and focused more on the imagination.  I'm not gonna lie.  The sight of so many "Doctors" enchanted me at first.  A young kid came all dressed up as Tom Baker's incarnation of the Doctor, trailing a pretty good replica of K-9.  There were several attendees attired in steam punk clothes, but we also rubbed shoulders in the elevators with vampires, horned beings, cats, painted ladies, villains, etc.  I was grinning and just loving the people watching that was available.   It was fun!  I could identify a little bit with the spectacle.  I like dressing up.  I like and knew some of the shows, books, games, or movies that were being represented. 
We went to the Friday night session and when we came back, the sci-fi party was in full swing.
 It was no longer innocent fun.
The smell of pot did more than waft-- it permeated everything.  We were cozily told about alcohol freely flowing in so and so's room.  We stopped by the ballroom to look in at a dance and if you know the sci-fi crowd, you know that there weren't many people in there.  One of my friends was propositioned by a woman in shorty-shorts looking for a "dance" partner.  On our way out and up to our room we saw the clever strap costume worn by Mila Jovovich in the "Fifth Element", only our model was not a skinny little thing.
My head hurt so bad and I think we got a little but sillier than just a late night usually creates. 
The next day I spent some time thinking about the two different experiences I was having that weekend.  This is what I wrote:
"There is a difference-- looking at the women [at TOFW] vs those at the hotel.  The women here, though with their individual struggles an personalities, are content.  There was a grasping feeling at the hotel-- needing attention, needing approval, needing drugs and alcohol, needing a release from reality, needing love and human connection.  How grateful I am to have always known who I am and where I came from and where I am going.  There is peace in this that encompasses all else.
At first I was enchanted and then I sensed their desperation.  Oh, despair!"
Riding up and down in our glass elevator, I realized where I was.  I was in a great and spacious building.
Eating at the hotel restaurant watching the girl who had painted her body completely jet black with her wide blue eyes begging every one to look at her, my heart broke.
I had been trying to remember to not judge, that each and every person there was a child of God.  But how could he reach them there?  How?
And then I was given to know that He couldn't.  He couldn't be in the world and in its chaos.  He doesn't go in, He has to wait until we come out.
He waits until the girl in her strappy costume puts her clothes back on and goes back home to her loneliness.  He waits for the man to unglue his horns from his head and to go back to his job and his computer.  He waits for the girl to wash the black off of her body and put on her normal make up.  He waits for them, because He has to.  And that's where we find them.  We aren't supposed to go in to bars and places where we would be in danger, but we can approach them at the grocery store or in the library or anywhere we have in common. 
I really don't ever want to see that much pain disguised as fun again.