A Day with Spaces

     As I sit on the warm ceramic lounge chair, the dissonant yet soothing sounds of Indian flute in the background, and stare at the pea soup fog clipped only minimally in two by the bow of the ship, I thank God for a day with spaces.

      I did not realized how long it has been since I had an unscripted moment, much less several, much less a ‘sea day’ day.  Muscles knotted, mind in a twist, I have plugged through these last months on sheer determination.  The weekly trips to Stanford Medical, the tests, the clues, the partial answers combined with the daily-ness of congregational life program my every moment.  Not today.  Today is a day with spaces. And today the spa is running specials and I have signed up: a hot stone aromatherapy massage.  This is how angels spend their afternoons.  This is grace in a cubicle. 

     I have never been much of a chatter when getting a message.  I usually just vacate, evaporate, slowing dial back the notches until I find an old after hours test panel on the screen of my mind.  This is a rare thing.  I have always thought too much.

     I remember when I was living in Denver reading an article in the newspaper about the terrible time the Hmong refugees were having.  Churches all over the area sponsored families, built them small neat homes with sand colored wall-to-wall carpeting that the Hmong covered with real sand and upon which they lay their pallets in rows in the living rooms.  Bedrooms were clean swept and empty. Strangely, strong and apparently healthy young Hmong men where going to sleep at night and dying quietly.  No one could figure out the cause. Doctors from the University of Denver scratched their chins, in print, and encouraged the people to come in for check ups.  They came in, got clean bills of health and went home and died. When asked what they thought was happening, the Hmong women were quite sure of the cause.  Evil Spirits.  Processed food.  And thinking too much. Ah.  That will do it every time.

     When Ejuane ushered me into my little massage room, I willed myself to relax.  What does that feel like?  I wracked my brain and came up with nothing.  Ah yes, that’s it.  It feels like nothing, nothing left undone, nothing running rampant in my body or my congregation, just lovely for a limited and safe space, nothing.  It feels like a day with spaces.

     Ejuane is a quiet young woman, speaking only to ask a question about pressure or scent.  At one point, massage paused and my face wrapped in damp towels tucked with lavender, I asked her where she was from.  South Africa, an Afrikaner.  She told me that her parents had founded the Global Day of Prayer when she was a baby when South Africa was so in need of prayer.  I told her that everyone I had ever met from her country was a true beautiful spirit.

     “Who have you met?” she asked.

     “Well,” I said.  “Desmond Tutu.”  Several years ago when I was a pastor in Birmingham Alabama I was invited to a small private luncheon with Archbishop Tutu and the South African ambassador to the United States.  The Archbishop graciously answered questions for more than an hour.  I don’t remember the context but I remember asking him if he thought there was any hope.  He looked so startled.  “Of course.  We are Christians.  We have nothing but hope,” he replied.  Later the Ambassador turned to me over desert and said, “Tell me, pastor, about your struggle.”  She asked with such sincerity, such interest, as if there were no difference between her struggles and her country’s struggles and my own as a child of the segregated south and a woman in a man’s profession.  There was an exquisite genuineness in her, so I told her, memories, slights, humiliations and triumphs.

     “Oh yes,” Ejuane said.  “I have heard of him.”

     “There is another I have met,” I said.  “A beautiful bird of a woman name Muriel. She was a part of the struggle with apartheid. She is the most forgiving person I have ever known.”

     “South Africans have to be,” Ejuane said.

     Really?  Muriel once told the story of her father, bent and torn by apartheid’s horrors, telling her that if he got to heaven and there was even one white person there he would spit in God’s eye and go gladly to hell.  She told the story of her arrest at the seminary where she taught.  The Afrikaner policemen stormed up to the school while the faculty was sitting under a shade tree having tea, machine guns pointing, fingers itchy. 

     “We have a list of terrorists to arrest,” they said. 

     “Well, sir,” the seminary president said, “There is no need for guns.  Get me your list and I will get the people you want for you. Now please, sit down for tea while I find them.”  The soldier had the decency to look abashed as he handed the list to the president and a member of the faculty handed him tea and a biscuit on a china cup and saucer. 

     Muriel was one of those arrested that day for attending a peaceful protest rally the day before.  As she and her companions were loaded into the truck and driven away, she looked through the back window and saw her colleagues standing, holding hands and singing hymns: How Great Thou Art, Amazing Grace, I Greet Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art.

     Later, or maybe before, I can’t recall, Muriel and a friend were at the train station coming home from holiday.  They had a cart piled with all of their luggage and the gifts they were bringing home. Muriel saw a young Afrikaner soldier, barely more than a boy, struggling with heavy gear.  There were no more carts.  She went up to the young man, a chargeable offense in those days.  “You may share our cart if you like,” she said.  He could have hit her.  He could have arrested her.  He could have shot her with no repercussions.  But he just looked at her, threw his things on the cart and wheeled it to the curb.  Then he disappeared.  Did he say thank you?  Did he look the woman in the eye?  Did he see her?  I wonder.

     Her friend was aghast.  “Why did you do that?  Are you crazy?  Why do you help the oppressor?” 

     “Because he is a human being,” Muriel said.  “He is someone’s son.  Someone’s brother.  Maybe someone’s husband or father.  I have to decide everyday whether to hate or to forgive.  I choose to forgive.”

      Ejuane, my masseuse interrupted these memories and said,  “The troubles were a long time ago.  Soon the old ones will forget and everything will be ok.”

     “We may be forgotten,” I thought but did not say.  “But we will not forget.  If we forget, we will forget the best of us, whether in South Africa or south Alabama.  If we forget the struggle, then we do not know who we are and we can never be better than we are. Whether it is Mandela on Robin Island or James Meredith with a walking stick and a Bible his only possessions as he tried to prove a black man could walk the highways of Mississippi in the open in 1964, if we forget then forgiveness is hollow and has no meaning.

     But if we remember

             in those precious few days of our lives where there are spaces for all that is noble and fine and forgiving,

            in the moments of small triumph and fleeting loss

            in those moments of sweet clarity and breathtaking compassion

if we remember

            those who sang the songs of freedom and made a space for our today, then the spaces in our days will be filled with graceful dips and sways and we will be that crowning glorious thing that is a truly human being.

     As the hot stones glide along my ragged back, I give thanks for the young woman who touches me so expertly, for the fact that ‘the troubles’ are only history to her, and for the spaces of this day.