Time to get me some TLC...

"The only sign that he had held the hand of tragedy was the slightly subdued level of his affability, and also the swift, deep look of bafflement that might suddenly pass over his face. " ~ Elizabeth Strout

Monday, H. and I just got hammered. Never knew I could put so much beer into me in just one sitting. I came home, nursed a further very full glass of Scotch and then cried all night long.

Tuesday at work, I thought I would never be able to smile again. I was completely unable to relate with my work contacts in the friendly way I had before. Making a simple work-related phonecall while sounding reasonably friendly seemed impossible. I asked one of my friends from the counselling class if I might debrief with her for a quarter of an hour. She was great. I then forced myself to go to a voice class though I did not feel like it and hated every minute. Didn't sleep at all that night.

Wednesday, I got plenty of praise at work for a organisational relationship I'd spend six months repairing by being the middle man in all their communications and making sure this worked out. I also had plenty of time on the train to finish the novel I'd started reading a few days before on that platform. That night I slept like a baby.

Thursday, meeting in London. They all love me down there and can't quite believe what an efficient, clever girl they managed to recruit. I juggled stats for the whole day which impresses the hell out of people who don't do stats. It feels good. After the meeting I walked from Hyde Park to Clerkenwell Close just to take in a bit of London. At Clerkenwell Close I met the lovely girl from CRED Jewellery, who have been trailblazing fairtrade gold since 1996. I bought H. and I some seriously kosher wedding bands right here and right there. On the train back to Durham I read Joseph Stiglitz. Food for thought.

Friday in Durham, H. had an interview with the still-bishop of Durham for his research. I helped him prepare. I wish I could have gone in but meanwhile there was plenty of bookshops for me to browse in Bishop Auckland. H. had a rocking time and came out of his scholarly interview with a huge smile. I'm mildly jealous, but I'll listen to the MP3 anyway so it's almost as if I'd been there. We had a pub lunch. Then I called my best friend in hospital. Looking out the same window at H.'s place, I kept her entertained during the early phase of her first son's birth. Soon, we'll get hammered in his honour too. Any excuse.

I burst into tears right in the middle of the street each time I see a child or young adolescent for fear that they will grow up to throw themselves under a train.

H. screams in the middle of the night while he sleeps. This didn't even make the news anywhere. Not even the local news...

Dead stranger in my street

I'm writing ten metres away from some of the remaining body parts of a young woman who jumped under a train of the East Cost Railine around 4pm yesterday. H. heard a "bang", went upstairs to look at what that was on about and saw half a female body on the railway.

The police had to clean it quick as they had to reopen the line. So they picked up the obvious parts, turned the stones where there was too much blood. Poured a liquid on it that i've no idea what it does. But the vegetation being quite dense, bits might still be around. The policemen were sitting shellshocked in their car when I turned up, trying to get to grips with it.

I was out charity-shopping in a nearby town, just about to get back, on the train. I was miffed that it was delayed and had to beg the taxi office to let me use their toilets, because I had hoped to use those on the train and then that train didn't arrive. But it was a beautiful sunny day, and I'd just picked a few great books, so actually I did not mind reading in the sun in that semi deserted station of a very small town, I was having a fantastic time.

I try not to write that kind of mis-lit on my blog ususally. I find it plain voyeuristic and on some disturbing level I'm afraid it might be a bit self-serving: look at what piece of gossip I've got now! But this is the place where I collect all the bits that make my heart beat, and I didn't want my blog to be without this. I wanted this to be part of it for years to come, somewhere in the archives.

So when they reopened the line my train arrived, and then six or seven minutes later I was at the front door and H. pulled me apart and told me the whole story. I immediately lept into my rational self, inwardly, so I could listen to H. I ruled immediately that there was nothing I could do about the young woman, that in all likelhood it had not hurt one bit, and that she was in a better place. I still cried a bit. But I kept it together. We sat in silence completely stunned.

A couple of years ago something similar happened. Not quite in my street but close enough. It prompted a massive questionning crisis. I wondered why God would let us pray as earnestly as all f**** to let us serve him and our neighbours while three streets away someone was killing themselves, and we didn't know. I know for a fact that this young woman died ten metres from the most caring and genuinely warm person in this town, because H. is that person. He can listen to someone for months. He loves every obnoxious drunk at the pub, every annoying old lady at church, and they all love him back.

So I suppose you could theorise. Capitalism. Individualism. The death of community. It makes us unaware of the young lady five metres from our front door. But what are you going to do? I'm not a mind-reader and I'm happy to repent her death but I don't even know how. And in the immediate sense, her death is not my of H.'s fault in any way that I can meaningfully think of.

As we sat watching the football like 80% of the population yesterday night, H. thought about the family, who might have just been starting to realise that their loved one had not come home. He hoped that she would be identified so the family would not have to go through the complete horror of their loved one simply going missing. We were both disturbed by how invisible it all was, an our after her death, you could not tell that anything had happened there.

So I said, let's get flowers. Let's make it known, visually, that young women in our street jump under trains and it's not all pretty in good old Durham. I wrote a card apologising for the culture we lived in. I wrote that I wished she had knocked on our door. But then what kind of an idea is that? I worried that it might just give other people ideas of how to be really succesful at getting yourself dead. I can't be that stupid, so I bought the flowers but I kept the card.

A little while after the football, we took out the flowers to that little stone wall that separates the street from the railway, at the place where the wall is no higher than 1.80 metres and thus easy to climb. They are chips in the paint where I would have put my feet if I had tried to climb that wall.

I brought that candle-in-a-red-jar thingy I bought in Vancouver. I loved it because it looked a bit like a sanctuary light, and so whenever I needed to be reminded that God was present I would sometime light it. The whole area felt horrible and scary. There was nowhere that candle-jar-that-looks-like-a-sanctuary-light was most needed. There were those flowers and that light in a sea of hostile green vegetation engulfed by the dark night. And no matter how dark it all felt, my God that candle-jar was needed.

Later in the night, H. suggested we get the candle-jar back. I suspect he liked it too. It being a Saturday night, the World Cup being on, and our little street being one of the main throughways between Durham city centre and the suburbs on the hill... It gets a bit rowdy with kids walking home drunk. They're destructive somehow and break all the flowers in the street on purpose, that kind of stuff. I said leave it, if it gets broken it gets broken.

H. had to finish his sermon while the cops were still around picking the body bits they could. I asked what the Gospel was. It's the woman dousing Jesus' feet with tears. I know what I would have preached...

And it says that we need to get into despair-management. The type that doesn't involve getting your beautiful, God-created lips and nose and body smashed by a train, but just maybe go and despair in the right place, bathing Jesus' feet with our tears.

But hey, even that's dangerous. Because I get a lot from prayer but not everybody does, and importantly, I did not always do so myself. I went trough hell for years. I was a slave in Egypt and there was no sign of it getting any better. And although I wish I could show someone else the way, that is one area in which I'm not confident at all. And it goes without saying that I do not advocate "prayer" as a replacement for speech-based therapies or medicines when these are called for.

At 3am a bunch of kids threw the candle-jar up the street and it smashed. I pretty much expected it. And although I treasured it and have plenty of other red candles in the house, I wanted it there. And when I heard the sound of it smash on the pavement, my heart smashed too. Everything around me in that moment was and felt broken.

And so now I'm drinking the tea made with the teabag that I wish I'd used at 3pm yesterday to brew a cuppa for the dead stranger in my street. While I drink it and cry, I listen to the birds pour some healing on my soul, the trains go by, and I hope the dead stranger in my street is praying for us. God, have mercy on your sad and confused servants.

Jean Vanier and the abyss in Luke 16:19-31

Once in a while, your cool little radical readings on the train are going to bite you like an angry rabid Rottweiler. This is precisely what happened when I gingerly set out to read "Becoming Human" last Friday. So let me begin by quoting straight from the author:

In Luke's gospel, Jesus tells a moving story. There was a beggar named Lazarus who lived in the streets. He was hungry and his legs were covered with sores. Living opposite him in a beautiful house was a rich man who used to give big parties for his friends. Lazarus would have liked to eat some of the crumbs that fell from his table but the dogs ate them up. One day Lazarus dies and went to the place of peace in the "heart of Abraham". The rich man also died and he went to the place of torment. Looking up he saw Lazarus radiant with peace and he cried out: "father Abraham, please send Lazarus down to put some water on my lips for I am in pain!". Abraham responded: "It is impossible, between you and him there is an abyss that nobody can cross". He could have added: "Just as there had been an abyss between you and him during your life on earth."

This story of Lazarus tells us a lot about today's world, where there is a huge abyss between those who have food, money and comfort and those who are hungry or have no place of their own. I remember seeing children in Calcutta with their nose glued to the window of a luxurious resaturant. From time to time the doorman would shoo them away. The rich -and that includes me and many of you who are reading this book- do not like to see dirty beggars starring at them. Haven't we all felt embarassment and fear in front of those who are hungry?

One day in Paris, I was accosted by a rather dishevelled woman who shouted at me: "Give me some money!" We started to talk. I learned that she had just come out of a psychiatric hospital; I realised quite quickly that she had immense needs and I became frightened. I had an appointment and I didn't want to be late so I gave her a little money and went on my way, just like the Pharisee and the Levite in the Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan. I was frightened of being swallowed up by her pain and her need.

What is this abyss that separates people? Why are unable to look Lazarus straight in the eye and listen to him.

I suspect that we exclude Lazarus because we are frightened that our hearts will be touched if we enter into a relationship with him. If we listen to his story and hear his cry of pain we will discover that he is a human being. We might be touched by his broken heart and by his misfortunes. What happens when our hearts are touched? We might want to do something to comfort and help him, to alleviate his pain, and where will that lead us? As we enter into dialogue with a beggar we risk entering into an adventure. Because Lazarus needs not only money but also a place to stay, medical treatment, maybe work, and, even more, he needs friendship.

That is why it is dangerous to enter into relationship with the Lazaruses of our world. If we do, we risk our lives being changed.

[...]

Why do the rich and powerful -you and I in short- fear so much the Lazaruses of our world? Is it not because we are frightned of having to share our wealth, frightened of losing something. It is easy to give a few coins to a beggar, it is more difficult to give what is necessary to maintain our own standard of living. We feel so inadequate in the face of poverty. What can we do to change so many seemingly impossible situations? When I rushed away from that woman in Paris who had just come out of a psychiatric hospital, it was because I did not really know what to do, what was appropriate, I had this fear of being sucked into a vortex of poverty. To be open is an enormously risky enterprise; you risk status, power, money, even friendships, the recognition and sense of belonging that we so prize; you risk the chaos of loneliness.

[...]

I am not suggesting for a moment that each one of us must welcome into our homes all those who are marginalised, I am suggesting that if each one of us, with our gifts and weaknesses, our capacities and our needs, open our hearts to a few people who are different and become their friends, to receive life from them, our societies would change. This is the way of the heart.

Boy does that hurt! Boy does that hit so very f***ing close to home! At the same time, Vanier's words are incredibly gentle and fall like water on the parched land of my soul.

Vanier echoes my own sentiment in that recent post, in which I oscillated between feeling some pride for obviously being the nice girl in the story, but also an intense shame. I think Vanier is right in associating the guy who gives out a few coins with the Pharisee and the Levites. There is no openess. There is even less compassion. Just the desire to walk away. I felt like the parable's bad guy, maybe rightly so. The following bit of text -my own blog entry- is just plain embarassing...

I always liked the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. What I liked about it was that it was really scary, with all that sending the rich guy down to a hell-like place and all that. I liked Jesus's harshness in that story. I thought that if Jesus was prepared to use that kind of language he must have meant business. I thought that what seemed like a doom-and-gloom threat of hell was indeed a gift. A forceful way of saying: "Look, just freaking do it. There are not that many passages in the Gospel that are as scary as that one, just walk that road NOW, trust me on that one".

Fairly pleased I was too. I may not always behold the pearl of great price but at least I know where to look. Do your works of mercy to the absolute best of your ability and understanding, pray like a madwoman and then, well, then just wait. You're in for the best ride and the greatest happiness available to humans, be ready to fall on your face and cry for joy once in a (okay long) while.

But beyond that thinking about the tone of the story, I forgot the story of Lazarus and the rich man at pretty much Sunday school level. The rich guy is an idiot, I thought, why didn't he set up a direct debit to the Red Cross of his time? Why didn't he just send someone to give Lazarus a sandwich once in a while? That was just beyond comprehension.

If I encounter someone on the street, I'm pretty good at giving out change, £20 bank notes sometimes, cigarettes, buying Big Issues and what not. I might even go for a meal and a couple of pints if I've got time. But I'm so emotionally unavailable I'm not sure it's helpful. This is a matter for this evening only. I won't give you my phonenumber, I won't friend you on facebook, I don't want to take responsibility for more than my 45 minutes of availability, which really is not availability at all... It's pretty horrible, once you look into it.

Because at the end of the day, my real friends are a very select group of people I like, preferably former valedictorians, well-read, gentle, and damn clever.

This is only just starting to shift. And there is the catch. Jesus' harsh words are truly a gift because, no matter how many progressive books you've read, those crappy prejudices don't begin to shift until you get on with doing your works of mercy with thankfulness and humility. It doesn't even really matter what your motives are, they can be self-seeking as as all f***. Join any organisation you respect and do what it is they do with them. Just do it, zip it, and wait.

Incredible pride!

It's hard to put in words something which altogether is pretty wordless. I suppose I'm only trying to type it up because I want to keep a record, although that it precisely what I vowed not to do when I started this blog (hence the title of this blog: Do not freeze).

I hope my story is common. I stayed out of church for yonks, meaning years, a decade even, come to think of it... I was not good enough, I was not holy enough, I was failing miserably at being even the semblance of a Christian and I did not want to be a hypocrite.

It went on and on and on. It felt alright mind you... There is some serious grace in that sort of path and I do recommend it! And then I gave up. I just needed it too much. I decided to fail maybe but try my damnesdest. And I found my home.

The same with a cheesy little brown scapular I got in Paris a while ago. I'd always wanted to wear it, a permanent reminder of the yoke of Christ. But I was not holy enough so it stayed in a drawer, a reminder of the person I would have liked to be.

When I put it on for the first time a couple of days ago, I felt like a hypocrite and a fake. But I'd felt like that for a million years so that was nothing new and I guess I thought I could live with it. Leave it on and see. That stuff is not dependant on my personal qualities. Just submit, like an ox to a yoke, that was precisely what we were talking about.

After days of feeling hypocritical and uneasy as all f***, all that was left was incredible pride. Literally. Oh My God! I am forever a servant of Christ Jesus! What a privilege! My God what a privilege! I thought I might melt on the spot like a chunk of butter in the microwave from sheer thankfulness. All I wanted to do was fall to my knees and pray.

I don't disown my critical self. Indeed I doubt that my awareness of my hypocrisy will ever depart. It is so much of a baseline that I don't know what life feels like without it. But so far I just about manage to tolerate the incongruency of (hypocritically enough) wearing the image of my Lord on my chest and on my heart. Let's call this "creative tension" for now. I so much hope to be further liberated for His service that it hurts. Cor Jesu, miserere nobis!

Reblogging an an old article by Sarah Lynne

I've found myself scrolling down the archives of Jesus Manifesto for just that article time and time again. Despite the material being nothing new, I find that that article has had more influence on me than anything I've read online in the last year or so. So for my benefit and yours I'm adding a little link in here:

http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2009/10/repent-for-the-kingdom-of-god-is-near/

I'm always the parable's bad guy, part one.

A number of years ago, I was living in Lille. I may have blogged about it before, I can't remember, but it was one of the most challenging things that I have been part of.

I was living on the Parvis St Maurice, right next to a neo-gothic church in the centre of town. I was pretty pleased with myself for landing that great flat, which I was subletting for the summer from a couple of teachers. I thought they were nice to let me inhabit their things, and I liked the feel of their home. I was sharing the place with a delightful young woman who became a great friend, and whom I am still in touch with.

Outside the window was the St Maurice church, a fairly beautiful edifice, despite the fact that it is not really gothic at all. I loved the view from my window, although I was fairly disturbed by the stained glass windows depicting the crucifixion and never looked that way.

One evening, a homeless guy had settled under a door, about five metres from my door. I did not invite him in, but I felt horrible about it. What a universe-shattering failure.

I can't remember if we had any exchanges on that first night, but if we had it would have been along the lines of me enquiring whether he knew of the night shelters in the area, and him saying they would not let him in soiled clothes. I think I came back down with a list of the shelters and drawn maps about how to get there.

It was high summer and fairly warm, but I lay inside feeling completely horrible and not sleeping at all, sort of hoping it wouldn't rain. Mostly I racked my brains about what I could do, thinking my flatmate would kill me if I let him in, thinking I could not take responsibility for the future and that a punctual night inside my flat could be fairly destructive.

Morning came. The guy was still there. In worse shape than the evening before, his pants definitely soiled. I was working on a paper back then but I could not do any work. Mostly racking my brains further. I came back down, said hi, asked if he wanted some food, coffee, or water. He wanted none. He said "If I die here can I have candles in the Church, just for a while". I brought some food and drink down anyway in case he changed his mind.

All I could focus on now was the visible lice on his head. I felt downright Kafkaesque and wanted to drown myself in the river just to drown the reproaches in my head along with me. This is so wrong, this is so wrong, and this is happening literally ten fucking metres from the reserved sacrament.

Night came again. My flatmate and I were increasingly aware of the guy sleeping in his own excrements five metres from our doors and ten metres from Jesus. I was the one to obsess about it and drew her into my obsession. We racked our brains together this time. And then went to bed thinking conveniently that we had done what we could with all the addresses of shelters, the food and drink, that he did not want to be anywhere else.

The next morning the guy was still there. This is France we are talking about, for the record, and nobody else in the centre of Lille, either individual or institutional had done a thing. By now the guy was so badly off that some of his flesh was exposed and he was asleep, still under the same door and I remember thinking don't bother going to church ever again if you do not understand that this is the body of Christ or choose to ignore it. And good fucking luck explaining it to God if he dies five metres from your door.

I had a cup of some fancy French tea, and then decided that by the looks of it, the guy downstairs owned nothing in the world, or, at any rate, nothing he could access right now. So I went to the nearest shopping centre, wrote down a list of what I would like if I was sleeping on the street that night, and proceded to buy a whole kit.

From memory, this included a backpack, clean pants, clean t-shirts, socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a razor, shaving foam, a comb, some styling gel, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a phonecard, a writing pad, a pen, a big bottle of water, a big bottle of juice, a huge loaf of fancy corn bread, some salami, some cheese, a knife and wooden board. I went for the best quality of stuff I could think of, something that would have him look great. None of it was cheap, I went for the most impressive items. I included a whole list of social services that I'd googled up, all accessible on foot from the city centre.

Then I wasn't too sure how to proceed. The guy hated my gut, ever the concerned girl. He had eaten the stuff I'd brought down before, but never when I was around, and I thought he was just going to chuck my stuff in the next bin as an act of defiance.

Another homeless guy that I was friends with happened to be there too. So I asked him for advice. Asked him if he knew about the totally dishevelled guy on the parvis. I told him I didn't know what to do. I told him I'd bought some stuff for him but feared I was going to get told off.

My friend had seen him too. We went to see him together. I said, Hey it's Christmas! I know you didn't ask for it, but I went to the shops and got you some stuff. All that's in there is for you, I even bought cigarettes. When he recognised the other guy along with me he said thank you. Him and the other guy then literally broke the loaf of bread and tucked into the food.

That night, the guy was not sleeping under the door five metres from my flat's and ten metres from the sacrament.

It is my flatmate that noticed as she cheerfully walked in. I said yeah, I'm freaking Jean Valjean, France needs to recover some of its pride.

I've no idea where he went as I left Lille soon afterwards. Fairly likely, he went with the other guy to the garage where the other guy was staying with his girlfriend and newborn baby. The social services would have freaked out because of the lice just like I had.

I know a lot of middle-class Christians would think that what I did was a beautiful act of charity. I'm still ashamed. It's not bad what I did. Lame as it is, it shines right up to the door of Heaven. But I let a baptised man sleep in his own excrements for two nights right next to my flat. I was horribly condescending and only managed to do something positive by teaming up with someone who genuinely had compassion, but not purchasing power. I wish I'd done something more. Maybe just dealt with the lice, that would have helped. I wish I'd done what it takes to bring this guy to wholeness.

And I still walk past quite a number of guys shivering in the cold rain at 1am while I'm on my way to my warm bed after a night at the pub. I'm always the bad guy in the Good Samaritan's parable. But as my experience shows, the good guys are out there too, and they're not who you think. But if you enter into that story just a little bit, you will see bread being broken, love being extended and a baby in a garage. The gospel etched into the life of Lille.