Rejection: Story at Ten

He was ten years old.

Thursday night, May 10, 1956. The night he would be rejected.

His mother was not well following the birth of his little sister three months prior. He had been dislocated out of his bedroom so a housekeeper could stay there in his place. He slept in the basement. On an old folded down chesterfield.

The sun was setting later now at that latitude in Canada, and there was that smell of spring in the air. A sky-blue-pink glow over the silhouetted Canadian Rockies, shadows in Calgary.

After supper, his mother gave him fifty cents for a haircut. The neighbor across the street, with his son Ricky, was going out to Bowness, an impoverished, orphaned community just to the west of Calgary, to a place where haircuts were cheap. He was to tag along.

His turn came to climb into that barber's chair. He did. And instinctively ducked when the shawl was thrown over him.

Not asked how he "wanted it." Too intimidated to tell how he did want it, which was just the same as it was, but only shorter. So the clipping proceeded. It didn't feel right. Something was not usual. Then the culminating swivel around in the chair to admire the tonsorial surgeon's sculpturing skill . . .

There was nothing there.

Nothing but a knob of stubbled wheat. Requisite clumps of straw on the floor.

The return trip home was dark and silent. He sat in the back seat of his neighbor's car, his back to the now long-gone sun. He knew this was bad. He would be laughed at by his peers. He just didn't know how bad it would be.

The backdoor of the house was unlocked. It always was. His Dad would never live in a place where you had to lock the doors. And so he entered as quietly as he could. Entered into the inside landing, and then, turned to make his way to the basement.

But the kitchen door on his right, three steps up from the landing, unexpectantly was opened. His mother stood there. Her bathrobe tightly clutched. Her head wound up in some kind of night scarf. She looked spectral to him. She took one look at him.

"You aren't my little boy anymore!"

The realization hit him with the searing pain of a stabbing, twisting knife. He fled to the basement. Collapsed on that old chesterfield. His broken heart being drenched in tears.

Pray.

Oh! God!

The desperate cry for a miracle. For hair. For restoration. For acceptance. To be his mother's little boy again.

He knew the stories. God could make a whole world . . . just say the word. He could feed millions of people with manna. Or thousands with a fish. Just say the word. He could keep Daniel's friends alive in a raging furnace. Just say the word. Oh! God! Please. Oh Please. It is nothing to you. Please. Just say the word. Put his hair back. Let him wake up with hair. Let him be whole again. Let him be his mother's little boy once again.

The pleading, the crying, the praying . . . fell away to fitful sleep.

Friday morning, May 11, 1956 inevitably arrived.

God doesn't listen to little boys with no hair.

There were no more tears . . . they had been exhausted hours ago.

The same fuzz on his head was still there. His eyes were the window into to his grief.

That Friday was the Friday before Mother's Day.

His little church school was having a Mother's Day Program that morning. He had previously been chosen by his classmate peers to be the leader of that program. A program planned by his church and implemented as part of the JMV (Junior Missionary Volunteer) curriculum. It consisted of poems, a song, an acrostic recitation, and the reading of little essays of love and appreciation to the mothers that would come to that program.

He had to face her.

He had to welcome the mothers.

He had to announce the events of the little program.

He had to read his previously written essay about the love for his mother. A mother who no longer wanted him. Because he had no hair.

He hardly dared.

He looked out over the chairs that they had set up for their quests. She was there. At the back. Wearing that gray cotton coat. Babushka tied tightly under her chin.

It is damn hard to talk when one's throat is having seizures. He was in pain that could be revealed to no one. Somebody had to have noticed that he was not himself. No matter. The program did proceed. As the class had planned.

It was his turn to read his essay.

He stood up. Looked up once. That mother's face was still there. Motionless. Wrapped in her headscarf. Expressionless. Even with his new glasses, the image he saw was without resolution.

That pain has been mollified in the passage of time.

His mother, he takes care of her now, remembers nothing of the incident. She was not well at that time.

His prayers were answered. In the way that prayers are always answered.

Mother Nature placed her healing hand on that knob of stubble. By summertime, it was ready for harvest again.

Over time, he learned more about rejection. What it was not.

He was still ten.

The Refectory Manager

Color Blind

There are some who are born with green eyes. And learned from an ancient book that green eyes are sin.

There are some who are born with blue eyes, or maybe brown eyes. And they too learned from an ancient book that green eyes are sin.

And from that book, a plethora of snippets about the abomination of green eyes. A curse. Despicable. Abhorrent. Unnatural.

And yet, in that same old ancient book, a promise, that the spiritual force of that ancient book would rid the green eyes of their green . . . that green eyes could be made blue, maybe even brown. And that the green eyes would not be tested beyond their strength . . . that there would be a way to escape it. To transform them. Rid them of their green.

And just before the ancient one told, in that 13th verse of 1 Cor. 10, of their ability to escape, the ancient one told what happens to people in that wilderness. Bad things happened to them. They. Were. Bad. They were an example to the blue eyes, to the brown eyes. You can read all about it in the first part of 1 Cor. 10. It does not bode well for the sin of being born with green eyes.

But in shame, green eyes enter into a wilderness.

But in the wilderness, green eyes pray. They pray to be changed. Changed to something, to anything, but green eyes.

For 10, 20, 30, 40 and more years of shame and shunning in the wilderness, green eyes prayed, and pleaded, and begged, and bargained, and cried and sobbed and at times, came within a step of the edge of the abyss. And yes, for some, green eyes will turn black in death.

But green remained green.

The shame continued. Continues. For an ancient book tells us so.

And some blue eyes and brown eyes pillory the green eyes for both being green . . . and for not changing them into the acceptable. . . because . . .

But green eyes can still see. And green eyes can read too. And read ancient texts.

Shame, scorn, ridicule, rejection, isolation has a way of filtering the rendering of ancient old texts.

And what makes it through the lens of experience, is that ancient old spiritual force is mean, vindictive, incompetent. It is simply a reaction of self-preservation.

Promises made. Bible promises made. Key-text promises made. Clobber promises made . . . and never kept. Either that ancient spiritual force will not, or cannot keep that snippet of the-1 Cor-Bible-tells-me-so.

Promises that are in the here. Now. In. This. Life.

Promises that green can and does go to blue. Green can and does go to brown. Sin is no more. THAT despicable sin IS. NO. MORE. Green is no more. The holder of the green eyes CAN and WILL be changed.

But.

Green is still green.

The green remains green.

Sin is sin. Still.

Maybe. After killing one's self, in heaven, there will be new eyes. No-sin eyes. Anything-but-green eyes.

But then. Killing one's self is yet another sin. Normally, one can kill, repent and be forgiven. But killing one's self leaves no opportunity for that.

And the blue eyes. And the brown eyes. They praise the ancient one for not being born with the abomination of green. Of course, they would never, ever do that out loud, in public. On a Spectrum forum no less. But heaping condemnation on the green is testimony in itself.

The blue. The brown. They never experience what it means to NOT have 1 Cor. 10:13 transform their green. For certain, all, greens included, are yielding to behaviors and practices and can and do claim this redemptive promise. . . but for blues and browns, their sin is not being their very existence.

Sadly, there are blue eyes that are incapable of realizing that.

Unfortunately , there are brown eyes that simple refuse.

And the tragedy, both curse the green with righteous anger.

For green IS SIN.

REAL Christians curse sin.

Thankfully, there are a few fellow sojourners who can and do apply healing salve to those green eyes, and see the tint of gold within them.

Perhaps that old spiritual force of an ancient book IS mean, vindictive, and incompetent. Just kill'em all in the wilderness. Even I, God Almighty, can't make them change. Fitting example of what love really is.

Perhaps.

That mean, vindictive, incompetent old spiritual force from an old ancient book . . . is truly color blind.

The Refectory Manager

Last night, when my frustration was bursting and I posted on another blog, I was experiencing that compelling need to scream out, in front of the Revelation Seminar SDA church, of its bigotry and ignorance . . .

I did not do that.

Rather.

A small non-denominational church in our community also advertised for a meeting last night.

They were showing the movie "Amish Grace," and welcomed the public to come and share that experience with them.

I did.