Getting to Know You

Who did you try to avoid this Christmas? Everybody has somebody who they would rather not see, rather not talk to, and rather not be close to. Sometimes, it's inevitable and you have to interact with the person that you would rather avoid. Hopefully, in those moments, you were able to show love and kindness and control the inner cringing that could turn mean or hurtful.

I think the person that you avoided the most this festive season was probably yourself. In fact, through-out the entire year and perhaps our whole lives, we avoid ourselves more than we avoid any other person.

The average person doesn't spend much time by his or her self. When time opens up for us to be alone, we quickly distract ourselves with TV, a book, cleaning, Facebook, baking, or anything else that will prevent us from facing the reality of our aloneness.

In solitude and quietness, the questions start to rise from within us: Who am I? What am I doing with my life? Where is God? Is there a God? What are my dreams? Do I really matter? Why do I feel so alone? In busyness and noise, these questions can be avoided and left undealt with. We stuff them into the closets of our souls where they become skeletons that rattle and unnerve us.

Our determination to occupy our space and fill our time make it very difficult to be silent and spend time getting to know ourselves. Henri Nouwen says that most people would find it near impossible to bear the silence of a monastery. In fact, he says the first months of being there are usually quite tortuous. No one needs you or wants your advice. The absence of music, books, TV, newspapers, iPhones, Internet, and other distractions stir up a restlessness that make people want to run away from the solitude that unveils how alone they really are.

Strip away the trappings of this world and confront your existence. Grapple with the unsettling questions that lurk within you and seek the answers with all your heart. Open the closet doors and turn those skeletons into strengths. Stop avoiding the void inside of you and know that the fullness of God can dwell within you. He can reshape your loneliness into fellowship and infuse your life with purpose and confidence.

Wag Gag

Last night, Alicia, my sister-in-law, and I had one of the most memorable nights of our lives. What we shared last night will mark our friendship in an unforgetable way for as long as we know each other. In honour of my birthday and because she is heading to Florida for Christmas, Alicia found an excellent deal on Wag Jag and bought a manicure/pedicure for both of us. It advertized a shellac polish and offered hot beverages with a special treat as part of a very attractive holiday package for two. We were both looking forward to a couple of hours of peace and pampering.

As we pulled into the dim parking lot of the plaza we found the unlit sign of the salon. The windows were dressed with dollar-store Santa Claus stickers placed with five-year old precision all over the glass. Alicia gripped the steering wheel and said, "Marge, it's so ghetto. What do we do?" Thinking it couldn't be that bad, we walked through the door only to have the sketchy nature of the place confirmed even more. Half a Christmas tree with its top cut off was perched in the corner. For ornaments, they had creatively tied lip gloss to the branches. The floor was unswept and two of the walls were mere frames. The ceiling was short a few tiles and those that remained were brown from water stains. Adorning the finished walls were purple butterfly stickers and life-changing quotes such as "Dwell in Possibilities". Still, one should not judge a book by its cover nor a salon by its complete lack of decorative sense.

The lady behind the counter immediately advised us that they were behind schedule and that unfortunately, they only had four colours available in the shellac: mint green, blood red, goth black, and lilac purple. Generously, they offered us a normal polish or the option of rescheduling in the new year when they would have more selection. We decided to stay and work with what they had. We sat down in the only two chairs and were asked to fill out a form. A lady came out with two empty mugs, plopped them down on the end table and told us that if we wanted coffee, we could make it ourselves. Since we weren't really in a do-it-yourself mood, we skipped the hot beverage and continued with the forms as we waited for half an hour.

I'm not too embarassed to admit that I have a little bit of discolouration on my two big toes. I asked the mug lady what she thought and she summoned the nail specialist. A lady as tall as I am but 10x as wide came out to take a look at my toes. Her orange T-shirt was stained and untucked from her pants to allow space for the substantial belly that hung over her brown corduroy pants. Placing her hands on her knees, she hunkered down over my bare feet until I could only see the top of her bleached short hair and gruffly announced, "Yep, that's fungus. No pedi for you." Understanding her concern for the pristine conditions of the place, I agreed to a manicure only.

As we continued our wait, Alicia whispered, "Man, I hope it's not a 14-year old working back there." Upon saying this, a four foot, extremely young looking girl walked to the front and asked us what we were waiting for. I think she was a dwarf. Between the beefy nail specialist and pint-sized aesthetician, I wondered if we had inadvertently walked into a circus. I could barely contain my laughter as Alicia slowly turned her wide eyes to me and asked between clenched teeth, "What do we do?!?" We stayed.

Finally, we were beckoned to the back and seated ourselves in some classy wicker patio furniture. We had chosen our colours from a wide variety of 20 Shopper's Drug Mart polishes. I went with a festive, sparkly clear polish and Alicia chose a dark purple for her pedicure. My first clue that they didn't know how to do nails was the "Paint Your Nails by Number" book on their table. My second clue was when the girl pushing my cuticles back said, "You know, I don't really do nails."

Behind me, the beefy lady had placed Alicia's foot unto her lap on top of a previously-used towel after soaking her feet in the previously-used basin. As the lady buffed the bottoms of her foot, Alicia calmly said that she didn't want any razors or cutting done to her feet. Beefy lady said, "Oh no, we don't do that here. They only do that in chop shops." By the time she got to Alicia's second big toe, beefy lady threw her hands in the air and said, "I can't do this. Dwarf-girl*, do you know how to do purple?" So, Dwarf-girl took over and beefy lady sat down to tell us stories of pedicures past about old ladies with so much rancid fungus under their nails that she would have to shovel it out.

Once finished, Alicia realized that she only had her boots to put back on over her painted toes which quite truly were "painted toes" because the polish didn't stay within the lines of the nails. Concerned, beefy lady grabbed a hair blow dryer and solved the problem. After scalding Alicia's skin, she pressed her finger into the polish to make sure it wasn't tacky and left her finger print behind. Since words cannot capture the true artistry of Alicia's toes, there is a picture of the final product below.

Alicia walked bare foot to her car and I drove but not before losing it completely. We could barely compose ourselves so surreal was our experience of the last two hours. Thank you Wag Jag and the choppiest shop of all for the Wag Gag. In both senses of the word, it was an appalling and amusing memory that I will always share with one of my favourite people in the whole world.

*not her real name

Reshaping Loneliness

I wish books could talk. Sometimes I just love what they have to say so much that I want to speak to their pages and hear them talk back.

I am reading Henri Nouwen's "Reaching Out" for the second time and it is delicious. It's pages are toasted brown on the edges and they smell sweet when I press them under my nose. I do that every few sentences; close the covers and press the book to my nose while I shut my eyes and digest the words that were written just for me in the year that I was born.

The book is as old as I am and although I am certain Nouwen did not put his thoughts to paper just for me, I swear it seems like he did. The entire thing is quotable and all I can say is "Read it!" As for conversing with the content, it has of yet not spoken back to me even while it still speaks to me. Perhaps I can engage it to an extent in this space and invite you to join the conversation or simply listen in at your leisure.

In speaking of the spiritual life, Nouwen defines it as a "reaching out"; a reaching out to one's self, to others, and to God. He says it is a constant movement between poles: the pole between loneliness and solitude, hostility and hospitality, and illusion and prayer. In the spiritual life, we must leave measurements behind and simply face the pains of our human predicament. As we confront the loneliness, hostilities, and illusions of life, we become more aware of our need for solitude, hospitality, and prayer. There are no short cuts in the spiritual life. We must wrestle with the first three difficult things if we are to discover the simple beauty of the last three wonders.

Loneliness is a battle that everyone fights a few times or many times in his or her life. We are not made to be alone but to be in relationship, but how many of our relationships really satisfy us? It's Christmas and the television is saturated with images of shiny, happy people enjoying precious moments of love with other shiny, happy people. Their teeth are snow white, they look good in their clothes, and their lives are fantastic. Every time they look at me from the screen, I am keenly aware that my life and I look nothing like them. We are inundated by messages and images that tell us how social and good looking we are supposed to be.

Nouwen had the same sensation while sitting in the subway. Every where there were advertisements of "playful", "smiling", and "beautiful" people but surrounding him were silent, nervous strangers with their noses in their papers and their hands on their wallets. He wrote,

"(T)he words and images decorating my fearful world speak about love, gentleness, tenderness, and about a joyful togetherness of spontaneous people. The contemporary society in which we find ourselves makes us acutely aware of our loneliness."

We are afraid and we are lonely. We are afraid that we won't find love and we are afraid that we will. We are afraid to be alone but unsure what friendship and intimacy should look like when they are offered to us. In this tender season of togetherness, loneliness can loom. The parties and reunions can even heighten our sense of loneliness. Instead of ignoring this sensation, probe it and question it. Ask where it comes from and what can be done with it. Reshape loneliness; don't let it shape you. It's there for a reason. Reach out and find it.

Sold Out.

From the realms of PMS and exhausted relief from finishing my final paper, I am writing this blog. As if I haven't written enough pages over the past month, I feel like I need to write just a little more.

This last paper almost killed me. It was a monster that ate me up and spit me back out four times...that's how many times I changed the direction of this academic doozy. It was about the Ayoreo people in Bolivia. For those of you who do not know, I spent a few hours in one of their little squatter villages, Barrio Bolivar, every Wednesday for two years while I lived in Santa Cruz. I mostly played, sang, coloured, and taught Bible stories to the children with a lot of help from some Bolivian friends. If I pulled in with the truck, they would maul the truck and then swarm me so one or all of us were crushed each time. The squalor of their settlement was shocking; the ground was littered with garbage and a stroll around the place always meant walking with eyes wide open for fear of stepping in excrement. The images and the reality of Barrio Bolivar distress me to this day, but my love and concern for them has not lessened either.

So, I wrote about them. I turned them into a topic for my paper. I imagined that I could summon up a solution for the persistent problems that plague the Ayoreo. I hoped that my way with words and convincing arguements would get me an 'A'. I argued that Indigenous Education Reform was one of the answers to the social issues of Barrio Bolivar. I argued that for 20 pages. 20 pages of bunk.

I put the finishing touches on that document and opened up my email to this:

"For those who love Ayore girls: We woke up to sad news this morning. 17 year old Rebeca Cutamurajai (better known as Corea) disappeared on Friday night from Barrio Bolivar after climbing into a taxi to ply her business. Her body was found yesterday on our end of town. A reminder of the urgency of the work among these girls."

"Her business" was prostitution. What business do I have plying my opinions, perched in the halls of pedagogy, with the all the haughtiness of higher education behind me? Do I really believe that education is the answer? I feel like I sold myself for the price of a scholarship. That paper was bull shit. Professor Lafreniere, if you read this, you must know what I really believe: Jesus is the hope of the nations.

All that other stuff was only about the grade.
Rest in peace, Rebeca.