I am dedicating this post to the managers of my building. They are very kind people who seek to live out their Christian faith through their kind and dedicated service to the tenants who live in my building of subsidised apartments. And from time to time they offer pleasant little surprises. For example:
There is a sign in the lobby near the front door. It says "In a world where you can be anything, be kind."
I can not think of a time or an era where those words could be more timely and more important. I will not go into any detail mentioning some of the unusual and oh too usual challenges we are up against these days. But still, to be reminded that people are hurting, they are under all kinds of stress and pressure, and there is a lot of fear and anxiety in the air. A lot of sadness. A lot of worry.
When I returned here to Vancouver in March, following three dramatic weeks in Colombia, followed by two more weeks in Costa Rica to rest and chill a bit, it was with the understanding that I was coming home to a lot of frightened and anxious people. I was at first afraid of the fear itself, because like anyone who is naturally empathic, it is so easy to absorb whatever odours are circulating around me. During my final days in Costa Rica these words appeared in my head, and since haven't left "Fight fear with Love." This was also the gist of what I had just learned while in Colombia.
It all seemed to come together for me while I was watching on TV a film in Spanish with my host and friend, a movie by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar titled All About My Mother. It was made, I think, in 1998, featuring Cecilia Roth and Penelope Cruz, among others. Cecilia Roth played Manuela, a fortyish single mother who worked as a nurse in organ transplants. Her seventeen year old son is killed by a car, and she travels from Madrid to Barcelona to track down the boy's father, whom she hasn't seen since she was pregnant. She runs across a pantheon of characters, all of whom she ends up caring for or supporting in various capacities: She rescues a transgender sex worker from a violent date, who takes her under her wing, then she meets Rosa, played by Penelope Cruz, whom it turns out is pregnant by her son's father, also a trans woman sex worker. With AIDS, with which Rosa has been infected. Manuela takes Rosa into her home and her life and takes care of her till she dies in childbirth. Then, Manuela finally encounters the father of both children, hers and Rosa's at her funeral. He is by this time close to death. In the end, Manuela adopts her ex's and Rosas baby and raises him as her own.
I don't know how many times I have seen this film. I have lost count. It really motivated me to learn Spanish, among other things. But when I was watching it with my friend in Madrid Cundinamarca, which is a suburb of Bogotá, for the first time my fixation with the film finally began to make sense. In many ways, I am a male version of Manuela. Like her, I spent a lot of time fellowshipping with and supporting social outcasts, transpeople, sex workers, you name it, always seeking to find Christ in the other. Like her, I myself was at the time bearing some catastrophic losses, including the untimely deaths of more loved ones than I could possibly number, including my dear mother. I was also working and doing pastoral work in palliative care and with the dying.
In the character of Manuela I see a vision of Jesus, and of how he calls some of us to faithfully serve him. Like Manuela, I have often found myself caring for and serving others out of my own personal woundedness and loss. Of being summoned to love even when my own heart was breaking, and only to discover that that is the only really effective way of loving others. From our own lack and from our own woundedness. That is the way of Jesus. The way of the cross and it is also our path to the tomb and beyond the tomb into the new and glorious and resurrected life. This is God saying to each and every one of us, "I love you."
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