Looking For Lepers

"I'm shallow?"

"Yeah. Sometimes." Pat said.

I stared at my friend and let her comment sink in. It was not a pleasant experience. We were sitting at the study table at Starbucks, and the hum of conversation filled the cafe. Yet for the moment I heard nothing but the clanging bells of dismay.

Pat and I had been friends for about four years. We'd met at the Starbucks, and though we didn't get together on a regular basis, we knew each other well enough for her comment to hit me in the stomach. She tossed her long hair to the side and bent back over her text book.

"I don't think I'm shallow." I said, still trying to register the weight of her words and the collapsing feeling within my solar plexus.

She smiled, as if it was no big deal.

"Like I said, you're not always shallow."

The value of friends is that unlike self-examination, explaining to her how spiritual I was or how I went to church or how I'd been a pastor or how I had a degree in Theology and read big books about God, meant nothing.

As I drove home that night, I started praying in the car. Even then, a part of me wanted to scream. See how spiritual I am! I bet you're not praying in the car! Instead, I asked God to forgive me, because I certainly had ignored this side of myself. And when she'd mentioned it, I realized it was true. I realized it from the way I went from confusion to "I am?" and by the sinking feeling in my stomach.

The Ottawa winter had finally come, and the car still hadn't warmed up by the time I pulled into my building. I'd forgotten my toque, and by the time I unlocked the doors my head felt like it had been wrapped in an ice pack for the past hour. One of the things about Jesus that made him such a compelling figure, and hero, was the way he continually looked for the people in his society who didn't belong. The lepers. The women. The sick. The un-righteous.

The lepers in particular, were a group of people who had been ostracized from society because of their debilitating, contagious disease that attacked the nervous system. Their bodies and limbs became deformed, and once you had leprosy, you were not allowed to return to your family or society. Jesus made a point of not only healing lepers, but hugging them and holding them as well.

In our society though, much as it was in Jesus' time, the beautiful received all of the attention. The beautiful and the charismatic and the successful. I suspected that it had always been that way. I left my coat on and walked through the living room and off onto my balcony. The air was crisp, and the cold wind whistled by the building, causing me to shiver. When I was a kid, and even through my adolescence, I was never that popular. Oh, I wasn't a true outcast, but I was a short, pudgy kid until I was 17 before the weight room and a developing sense of humour helped push me into the more popular part of the teenage hierarchy. Before that, however, was another story. I'd never even kissed a girl until I was 17. And as I stood there, I wondered if a part of me was still afraid to let it go. That if I still worried about being moved 'down' that same ladder.

My ears felt like two slabs of ice, but I pushed my hands in my pocket and forced myself to take it. I glanced up at the stars twinkling in the night sky. I let my gaze move down through the trees until I saw what I was really looking for, a blue lit cross from a downtown church that hovered in the horizon. I thought about how often I'd defended my faith with such vigour, political arguments and apologetic arguments and theological arguments. But there wasn't anything spiritual about that, especially if my friends noticed a capacity for being shallow. If I noticed the successful, good looking people before I noticed the lost, the lonely, the hurting.

At that moment, my heart ached. Maybe I'd remembered my past, or maybe I'd filled myself with so much pride that instead of allowing Jesus to work through me, I'd taken it upon myself to be more spiritual. And failed miserably.

I stared out at the blue cross, somehow radiant in the quiet stillness of the cold night, and with a quiet prayer asked God to help me with my eyesight. I needed his eyes. Eyes that would see the people who really needed my help, because from now on, I was looking for lepers.

-Steve

A Refusal to be Ordinary

Everything was blurry. I jerked my head from side to side desperately trying to be free from the cloud of images flashing in front of me like a frantic music video. A couple talking at a café, a group of crying children, two women fighting, a crowd rioting in the streets.

What was this? Where was I?

Suddenly the images stopped, and the picture faded to black. Slowly it began to clear, only this time the camera was still, and I was somewhere else.

A hockey arena?

The air was cold and I pulled my jacket in tight. The squeals and sounds of skates scraping over the ice mixed with the peppered sounds of cheering from the stands. The arena itself wasn’t big, it looked like the local arena you'd find in a small town, and I walked slowly to the bleachers where a small group of adults watching the little kids flop around the ice. It was hard not to smile, the way the youngsters would take two strides, whack at the puck, and fall over. There was no positioning either, the whole group of them flying after the puck like baby ducks following their mother. My gaze focused on one man standing apart from the others. He was tall and dressed in casual white slacks, but you could tell he had money. He held his coffee tightly in one hand. The other hand he’d cupped over his mouth and was yelling instructions to his son on the ice.

“C’mon, Billy! Skate! Don’t let them push you around!”

A couple of the other parents looked embarrassed by the man, but they remained silent.

“C’mon, Billy! Do you really think that you’ll make the pros if you keep flopping around like that!”

The man, who looked to be anywhere between thirty and forty, had a hardened, tired cast to his face. I imagined a smile would’ve taken great effort. I still didn’t know where I was or what I was doing there, but I figured there had to be a reason.

“Your son out there?” I asked him.

He pointed to a little boy wearing number five on the back of his sweater.

“Good skater. Needs to work on his shooting.”

I nodded and watched the kids play for a while. They were all so tiny. I watched the man’s son, too. How he could discern his boy's individual skills? They all looked the same to me.

“Start ‘em early, and maybe they can play in the NHL.” I said, laughing as a whole group of them fell down.

The man turned, his dark eyes blazing.

“Exactly.” He turned away, and fixed his gaze back on the boys. “I didn’t make it, and now I’m stuck in this life. But not him. He’s gonna play in the pros if I couldn’t. One of us is going to make it.”

My eyes widened, and suddenly the images started flashing again. I felt myself thrashing and suddenly everything was still. I looked around in puzzlement, and realized I was in my bed.

A dream? What a weird dream?

I got dressed and put the coffee on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the dream, especially after the long conversation I'd had with myself the night before. What had he said? I didn’t make it, and now I’m stuck in this life. When the coffee was ready I poured it, mixed in the cream and sweetener, and headed out to my balcony.

The skies were gray this morning, the air mild and damp. The one thing I couldn't get my head around was the timing of my dream. Last night had been the kicker, but the past five months I’d been thinking about how I needed to change things in my life. How maybe it was time to be a ‘grown-up.’ Maybe these dreams of being a writer, a speaker, an actor… maybe it was time to let those go and just settle down, find a good woman, settle down and have a family. Heaven knows that I wanted to be a husband and father. Especially on those lonely weekend nights, when I would sit at my table at Starbucks editing yet another of my unpublished books, watching couples and young families stroll through the door.

Let it go, Steve, it was just a stupid dream!

I sipped from my coffee, letting the sweet warmth linger in my mouth. But there was something… wrong about my dream that kept coming back. Like it was a warning of some kind. A warning about what though?

I took my time getting dressed and showered. School was out for the holidays, and it felt wonderful to relax and plan my day. About thirty minutes later I packed up my stuff and headed to Starbucks. Thankfully, the lineup was small and I was soon back at my table with a fresh coffee. I stared at the blank screen for a while before finally flipping my laptop down and fixing my gaze out through the huge window. I couldn't stop thinking about my dream. The rain had started to fall, and people in the parking lot scurried to their vehicles or bustled inside. What about them, I wondered. Did they feel stuck in their lives like the man in my dream?

What about me? Did I feel stuck in my life?

I took another sip from my freshly ordered coffee, idly wondering why I could not reproduce that taste at home. As I worked the dream around in my head, still watching the people as they passed in and out of the store, I realized why I hadn’t moved towards a less ‘artistic’ lifestyle. Every time I thought about taking a desk job or starting a family ‘because it was time’; I felt the sting of betrayal. A betrayal of self. No matter how often I longed for the ‘normal life’ or wished for a female companion simply because I was lonely, I could not bring myself to commit to it. And not because those weren’t good things.

I flipped up my laptop and began to write. The man in my dream had given up because he felt his life was over. That he was stuck. I realized that if I gave up my dreams, I would never be content. I didn’t want an ordinary life! It seemed that somewhere along the way we had taught ourselves to settle for 'good', instead of 'great'. I knew that some people thought I was a bit crazy, that I was a bit different, but as I sat there sipping my coffee, I wondered… would I want to be somewhere else? Because if all that could be said for my life today and my hopes tomorrow were that things were ‘steady’ and ‘secure’ and ‘smart’… I wasn’t that interested. I wanted a revolutionary life. I wanted to reach for all that God had for me.

I left my laptop lying open and strolled outside. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and I walked out onto the parking lot, letting it fall against my head and face. I thought about the man in my dream. I thought about the people I met every day who seemed resigned to their life. As if they’d been dealt a hand, and couldn’t do anything about it. I felt their sadness as the rain trickled down my face. So many people had bought the lie. The one that said 'ordinary' was okay. That security was more important than your dreams. That following Jesus was about proper behavior and being nice, not risk and adventure.

I walked back inside, my face wet, my mind decided. There’d be no going back, no consideration any more. I wasn’t sure what God had in store for me, but from now on I was going to pursue my dreams without holding back. Oh, I still hoped for a family, longed for it in fact. They were as much part of my dreams as being a writer, but in the meantime, I wouldn't settle. I wasn't the richest guy in the world, but I'd no longer be intimidated by men working only for money, guys making three times my salary. Yeah. i was crazy, but at least I was living my dream.

I moved to the counter.

“Lydia, I’m going to need another coffee.”

"Another one?"

"Yeah. I might be here a while."

I breathed in the freshly perked smells and the sounds of laughter and conversation. Pursuing my dreams was no fairytale, and I'd had to make some difficult choices, but I'd made my decision. God had given me my dreams for a reason, and an ordinary life was out of the question.

-Steve

P.S. May God grant all of you the courage to reach for your dreams, whatever they may be.

New Year's Doesn't Always Mean a New Year

The wind is cold as I trudge back to my car with my coffee. It’s been a mild winter so far, but as I glance up at the gray sky, it's obvious that the icy winter has finally returned. I shiver as I wait for the car to warm up, unable to stop myself from reflecting on this past year. New Year’s is, in many ways, my least favorite holiday of the year. Christmas has its own ghosts, but the enforced celebration of a new year inevitably turns me back to the year before, and like a company review, forces me to analyze the life that was, in this case, 2006.

Most writers are unavoidably self-analytical to the point of neurosis. It comes with the territory. To observe the world of humanity is also to observe one’s own role in that world. What we see is often not pleasant. And as a Christian, introspection seems to fit hand in hand with that same tendency. This year, when I look back, I see so many things I wish that I could change, accomplishments that didn’t happen, goals that were not met. Like most New Year’s, this will be one where I will once again rededicate myself to working harder, pushing farther to grow and learn and become all that I am supposed to be, all that I should achieve. At thirty-four, however, it is becoming increasingly difficult to convince myself that this year will be different from the next, that I will achieve any of the hopes and dreams I felt as a child.

My tires crunch over the snow crusted parking lot as I head home. The traffic is light still, but in a few hours I know that the streets will be packed with a swelling mass anxious to ring in the new year. Maybe that’s what worries me the most. Maybe that’s why I can’t seem to work up any enthusiasm for my gathering tonight with my friends. Will this year really be a new year? Or will it be an updated version of last year?

When I was young, I had so many dreams about what I would do when I was ‘grown up’. As a young Christian, I had dreams of a world wide ministry and marriage and family. By this time, I figured I would be well along that path. None of that has occurred, and while I have begun to step back towards the ministry at last, it has been with a shaking trepidation and little thought of my earlier expansiveness. New Year’s reminds me of all that has occurred this past year, and my failure to reach all that I envisioned.

As I park my car in the tiny lot that serves as reserved parking for my building, I still can not decide if I’ll even bother going out tonight. The truth is that I don’t want to celebrate a new year. I’m not ready. I don’t have a family. I haven’t accomplished enough. My books have not been published, and while my knowledge of the world has grown significantly, my influence over that world has not. Not enough, anyway. And I feel it, too. I feel it when I meet a woman. I feel it when I talk to ‘successful’ men my age making mounds of money or in line for the right promotion or about to have their third child in their happy family. And being a Christian sometimes doesn’t help. Sometimes it’s at the church, more than any other place, where I feel the shadow of my inadequacy.

The coffee is good, hot and sweet on my tongue. Thank goodness for the consistency of Starbucks. I take a few sips and finally push myself out of the car. The sparrows are singing up a storm in the bushes adjacent to the parking lot, and I wander over quietly, so as not to disturb their song.

And that’s when I start to pray.

As difficult as it is, I know that there are many positive things in my life. My job. My family. My friends. Beautiful people to which I would gladly entrust my life. And it is in the midst of my prayer of thanks that the revelation of New Year’s hits me. Every year really is a new year. Much like our lives, God wipes the slate clean for us, and asks us to join Him. He does not bully or rip me with guilt, but tenderly holds out his arms and asks me to consider Him, and to forget the past year’s mistakes and failures.

I sip from my coffee, and stare at the sparrows fluttering loudly in the bushes.

“I’m here, Lord.” I whisper, unwilling to break the hush over my soul.

For the next few minutes, I sense it. Sense my Father’s love for me and His desire for new beginnings. Oh, I know some of us like to shut up these moments and call it melodramatic nonsense, but over the years I’ve learned that it’s in these moments where my soul truly breathes. Still, it catches me by surprise. I can not say a word and my gaze fixates on a little gray sparrow fluttering and singing near the bottom of the bush. With all the sparrows comfortably nestled above her, she seems content down near the ground to sing and hop on her branch.

Within a culture that is so comparative and competitive, it can be difficult to think of ourselves as successful, especially when we compare our lives to our original dreams. And while it is good and necessary to dream, sometimes we forget that God is more interested in our character, in who we become, than what we have accumulated. Especially for men, I think.

I did not have a book published this year. My earnings did not increase. I do not have a world wide ministry. And yet, I became a better son this year. I have learned much about friendship and servanthood. And as a man, I am making strides at tearing down the poser who so often wants to assert himself in place of the real me. Maybe, just maybe, this past year was a good year, and maybe, just maybe, next year will truly be a new year.

I watch my sparrow near the bottom of the bush, still hopping on her branch. For a moment, she’s still, and I wonder if she will try to move up to a higher perch. I can see the gray stripes on her breast as she quivers, and suddenly, she starts singing again, content with her perch. With a smile, I finally head up to my apartment. Looking forward is always good, and without dreams we die. But contentment can often be found if we are willing to sit still, and start singing.

“Happy New Year.” I whisper as I pull out my keys… “Happy New Year.”


May God grant all your dreams this coming year...

-Steve