Becoming Human: My version

**Jean Vanier wrote a book called "Becoming Human" which I highly recommend. This was the first title that came to mind for this post, so I couldn't help myself. I encourage anyone who hasn't read this book to do so. But for now, here is my story. I hope it helps someone out there to feel a little less alone.**

The following is an excerpt from my (hopefully) up-and-coming novel.

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I am a tall girl. Forever. The word tall is such an intimate part of my life that my eyes find it automatically in print. The words Tall ship, Tall tale, Tall Glass of water have much more dimension to me than to most members of the population. When I was in sixth grade, I had passed my mother in height, although this is generally the norm for girls, my growth picked up momentum while my friends tapered off at comfortable, adolescent-friendly heights. To this day, the idea of being so consistent -even if only physically- for so long fascinates me. Upon reflection, I cannot think of a better girl than myself to soar the uncommon heights of six feet at fourteen years old.

To me, attending dances was like agreeing to wear underwear over my pants. Towering over the rest of my friends and dancing with boys who were shoulder-height (at best) was not exactly a preferred use of my time.

At 12, I remember coming up with a way to appear shorter. I would lock one knee and extend my other leg while standing this pose caused to lose about three inches in height. Even in this ridiculous stance, I was still a good 4 inches taller than most girls (and boys, for that matter) and I still missed out on the conversations meriting whispers (whispers didn’t travel up to such great heights and, for the record, they still don’t. Needless to say, I’ve never been much for gossiping).

“Jenna, I think you should suck it up. All of your friends go. What else would you do tonight?” With that I shrugged and rolled onto my stomach. It was a dead issue. I would go because I couldn’t think up a reason to do otherwise, one that my best friend Raggy would buy, anyways.

I get stuck on things that I hear people say and I agonize myself with playing them over and over in my head. I once heard a little boy tell a waiter that he did not want ice cubes in his drink: ‘Do you know what lives in those iceboxes?’ he said with a shudder. He was 13. I was 21. Since that day, it has been an interior battle for me to consume an iced drink. I am so quick to trust others but I will rarely step out onto my own reasoning. I am not a compulsive person, but I am consumed by global problems and obsessively aware of wastefulness-to the point that it causes me anxiety when I am idling in a car, or watching water go down a drain untouched by my hands or a dish.

“Your looks are changing," my father said one morning as I was pouring my cereal.

“Oh?...How so?,” I asked, nervous to hear my own observations articulated.

It had been a long time since I had felt pretty. I would spend time in the bathroom looking at myself in the mirror painstakingly analyzing which specific feature was responsible for the recent awkwardness.

My family spent weeks of our summer in the woods. We had a tent trailer before we got a ‘real trailer'. My dad would toil tirelessly in the dark to set that thing up while being ripped apart by ravenous maritime mosquitoes. I remember having sore muscles for weeks from mountain biking, kayaking, swimming, and hiking. Getting up early for once in our young lives was a true joy, and before I learned that non-biodegradable soaps hurt the wildlife I could be found in the glittering morning lake lathering up for another day with no schedule. One morning, we left the camp site to attend my cousin’s baptism in a city about 2 hours away. We scrubbed ourselves clean the best we could (hoping the rest was a tan), and piled into the van. On the way to Halifax, my mom informed me that she had scheduled me for an appointment with the geneticist at the children’s hospital in Halifax. I remember feeling wounded. I was thinking: “Wow. I am a genuine cause for concern, alarms must be going off and she is scared of making me feel like a freak.” By this time, it was too late for that.

After begrudgingly ordering blood work at my mother’s frantic request, the geneticist sheepishly called our home on a faultless blue-skied June morning:

“Mrs. Murphy, you were right. Jenna’s growth hormone came back 50 times out of range. We need to do some tests to verify the suspected presence of a tumor on her pituitary gland,” then she said not with false humility; “Mrs. Murphy, I am so sorry we didn’t listen to you sooner”.

For my mother, this was all she needed to enter into short-circuited nature that her life would inevitably assume. My mother went to bed only to lay awake; when sleep finally found her, so would dreams of illness. Her life was lived in a river of panic. I would be awakened early on Saturday morning to my mothers hasty fingers running along the lids of my (previously) closed eyes looking for puffiness. I'd open my eyes to see her own darting eyes, inches from mine, searching my face for "a coarsening of my features", attempting (unsuccessfully) to mask her concern with nearly- warm smile. For Mom, life was put on pause and she proceeded to live in purgatory.

For my part, I found it easier to believe in my own created happy endings. We all have a choice in hardship: we can look it square it the face and feign indifference or we can really become indifferent. I fell into the latter category. I distanced myself from myself so as to become immune from the increasing stares of children at the supermarket. “Mommy, that lady is sooo tallllll...”. These comments would be met by flustered, embarrassed glances my way and dismissive shushing. “Yes, darling now come over here and choose a cereal.” As I grew into other realms, my mind also dwelt in the higher regions; I smothered any discomfort in books and dreams. I told people that I had tall cousins when they inquired about my height's origins; I didn't bat an eye when inquiring about the biggest size at the shoe store. This horror show was not my concern, these weren't my problems; I am indifferent, after all. My face grew puffier and my mind grew more free because I did not live in my body. Embarrassment and shame belonged to an unnamed girl I vaguely knew while I, on the other hand, had nothing to think about but beach blankets, novels and blue skies. At least for now.



3

There is a very fine line between the lofty love of the world and its art forms, and the quickening desire for a detached way of life. I would leave the house in a pair of clicking "kitten" heels (it was the best I could do) and a high-collared jacket to go to Mass and while there I would feel a pull to leave everything behind. My heart is inclined almost equally towards the adornment of the body and the adornment of the heart. Maybe these thoughts are completely common, but to me it seems that my heart will always be a battleground where genuine sanctity tries to find solace amid a restless recognition of gifts I am tempted to call my own.

In my life, nothing has been constant. Maybe I have never felt comfortable and at home enough in my skin to set up camp. I feel that this is a major reason why I did not develop many hobbies besides the hobby of surviving. I always felt that because my physical appearance was exceptional, my life needed to be exceptional. If I wasn’t becoming better, more well-read, better acquainted with interesting people, I was wasting precious time. I still maintain some of these compulsive ideologies. I wanted to paint but I didn’t think I had the time to learn. I always felt like just around the corner, my life would be demanded of me so I needed to be ready to wrap things up at all times. Therefore, I had better not get too comfortable as a recluse knitter. Or maybe it’s not best to develop my love for writing too much. After all, learning to write well meant that one had to, well, write for long periods of time; and I thought that my time could be used doing other things. Moreover, how does one create art within art itself? At the thought of putting some of my experiences in writing, it almost felt like a cheapening. The people I encountered were art forms in and of themselves. By harnessing their beauty and trying to bottle it I didn’t feel like I was doing the world a service but, I had never allowed the world to take up anything more than a temporary residence within my heart. Up until this point, I had resorted to what Catholicism calls “the last things”. The things that, at the end of ones life, would still hold. I had no time for anything temporary. So with that, the only thing that has held my consistent attention over the years had been my faith in God. And if I were only concerned with this, I needed to read a few pages in His notebook.
I had somehow neglected the fact, however, that even God became human. He took the time to invest.

The Power of Alone

I think I'd do ok with solitary confinement. I heard about the artist Bon Iver spending blocks of time on end in a cabin by himself in the woods of Wisconsin. He says it was crucial for the artistic process. I can see that. Lately, my life has lended itself to spending a lot of time on my own. Only now do I realize how far I had journeyed from the 15 year-old version of myself who would seek out solitude like blood returns to the heart. I felt as though I would suffocate without some time to aerate; some time to "spread it all out" before me, rearrange it, meditate upon it and then carefully place it all back on shelves in my heart. Certainly, that time spent "doing nothing" was hardly that, it was crucial to my development and to my sanity (see Joseph Pieper's essay "Leisure: The basis of culture")

This is what led the 15-year-old me to climb the highest tree I could find at night. Only to find a moss-covered indication that someone had the same impulse at one time. There was a wooden plank nailed between two branches about three stories up in this gigantic tree. While there, I'd be still. I'd listen to the silence as if I were gleaning the first taste of sugar after Lent.

Today, with a three-year sojourn through Toronto's urban desert behind me and about 8 nomadic dwellings in 10 years, I've rediscovered the power of alone. It opens spaces in me that have become overgrown. The soil is perfect here, so let's see what I can grow...

Fireflies alight!

I thought you might like to hear about the field of fireflies to which I was subjected over the weekend. If this moment were an indication of the things awaiting me in small town Ontario, I am one HAPPY girl, already!

Enjoy, loves.

Context: leaving a wine and cheese gathering on a balmy summer evening in Long Sault, Ontario. The air was heavy with lushness and promise; a wealth only July can afford. The neighbouring field was alight with fireflies...we couldn't resist a trespassing wander....

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JM


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Fireflies, alight!

Field of fireflies, alight!
They speak of promises unknown
To hearts except my own,
They know not their own language.

They speak of futures bright with cadence
Of nights whose simple radiance
Provide for the blue of the next day's skies.

Whose flights bumble and leap like laden hammocks,
Beholders freed of all mind's panic,
Rendering summer's burdens fair and light.

Dreams cast forward with true purpose,
Life's desires, they now surface,
Amid the fireflies alight.

Toronto's Restaurant for the Poor: Over 1 million served

One friar, one cook, one Queen Street West storefront, a dozen or so daily volunteers and 1, 000, 000 meals served: this is the math behind St. Francis’ Table in Toronto.

It’s really as simple as that. The rest flows as naturally as stories from the heart of a Newfoundlander. And for our purposes, the Newfoundlander in question is Brother John Frampton.

Brother John is an unexpected hero of the Parkdale neighborhood. Having moved to Toronto six years ago from Newfoundland to take over the post at St. Francis’ Table, Br. John is a friend to all. He has all the time in the world for stories, whether he is telling a colourful tale or lending a supportive ear. In his line of work, it tends to be the latter.

“There’s a story waiting to be told in every face we see here,” Br. John told me during our visit yesterday at St. Francis Table. Our Salt + Light crew was too early for the millionth meal by 80 servings and 4 hours (the actual millionth meal was served at dinner that night) but decidedly, we knew the millionth meal would not change anything. It would be business as usual at St. Francis table; they would serve whoever came to them with cheerful hearts.

Our team caught wind of the upcoming “commemoration” a few weeks ago and I happily took on the story. When I first called Br. John, I betrayed my distance from the cause within the first two minutes of our conversation: “We’d like to come film as you celebrate your one millionth meal,” I had said. “We don’t celebrate hunger,” came Br. John’s solemn reply, “I wish we didn’t have to mark such a milestone”. It was a sobering (and humbling) moment, as you can imagine.

As I stood off to the side waiting for the doors to open for the lunch-time influx, I took a moment to examine the friar. After taking in his black and silver “skater” sneakers and the U2 earring dangling from his left ear, I arrived at the conclusion that without the conspicuous brown capuchin habit, he really was a regular guy; a regular guy doing God’s work.

The people at St. Francis’ Table have been in operation since 1987. At that time, it was decided that the establishment would be a “restaurant for the poor”; not a soup kitchen. The difference? The patrons pay a loonie for their meal.

“It’s all about dignity,” Br. John explains from behind his desk where he welcomes the incoming crowd each day, Br. Andre-style, “paying gives them the right to complain. Their waiters are volunteers and if there is something they don’t like, they tell us. It is rare that this happens, but they have the option.”

The patrons at St. Francis Table are bursting at the seams with life and experience. At one table, I sat listening as the philosophy of democracy was being discussed in earnest, at another Christmas purchases for loved ones were being appraised. Among those present were world travelers, Ph.D. students, writers, laid-off business executives, single dads with their kids and a contingent of Tibetan immigrants practicing their English, to boot. All in a day’s work!

As we were packing our equipment into the van on the street, a passerby approached Brother John as he was seeing us off. The man asked Br. John how he could make a contribution to his work. Brother went inside to get a brochure with donating information. While he was inside, the man told us about how one day not too long ago, the streets were gridlocked because a man was threatening to jump off of the overpass. He didn’t end up jumping. In the meantime, Brother John took it upon himself to go outside and help the police to direct traffic…in his Franciscan habit. “This is the kind of guy Br. John is,” the man said, remembering the scene with a smile “he shows us that helping people should just come naturally”.

"Write a book" she said to me

and so I answered "yes".

I am writing a book. Not so much a book as a chronicling of how a heart is formed.
I am writing about what my 26 short years on this earth has afforded me in the way of lessons so far.

I'm not even sure if anyone reads this anymore because I've been so lax. I haven't given up, though. I plan on writing into a vacuum if such is my lot!

Each one of us has to be faithful to the whispering voice we hear from the moment we rise until the sun sets. when we listen, the voice is no longer faint but instead it becomes integrated into our heart. The union of the Wills. So often, we already know what it is that we have to do.

Listen to the messengers He sends to you. He loves you and He is trying to speak. In everything. Love Him by listening. You will do well to do this.

Meanwhile, I am going to write what He tells me to write. And I will not be satisfied until it is finished- whatever it is.

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A sneak peek:
(I'm only several thousand words in):


5


I lived the life of a writer before I knew I was already slotted as a writer. I find myself thinking in novels and speaking in only single words. This makes for the loneliest of lives because one is able to dream up the most, romantic, intellectual, artistic relationships that have ever existed between two human persons but yet is incapable of building one such relationship, and thus, everything and everyone seems to fall short. I am continuously in utter stupor as I behold relationships that weave through time and eventually evolve into the very thing I have created in my mind but could not bring to flower in my life. I suspect that since there are many books in the world, there must be many equally lonely people. This is my attempt at vulnerability.

But, on with the story.

I had a roommate in university whom I align perpetually in my memory with lilacs. Emily spent her summers making soap with essential oils. And even though this might be completely inaccurate, I feel like she left a river of memory and smell wherever she went. It felt as though she was a girl “who was” and not “who is”. I remember a few such people crossing my path throughout the span of my life. It seemed as though she had given up on fully embracing life and was resigned to the fact that her dreams would not be realized. She seemed like an old soul, a memory. She had stopped setting goals, she had stopped seeing her own beauty and the mysticism of her story.

At one time, I remember coming into her room in residence and sitting on her bed. She was perched there without any kind of occupation keeping her there. She had no book, she was not listening to music or watching TV. Her room was bare and spotless, a black cotton comforter was spread over her bed. The window was open and a sharp fall breeze was terrorizing her room. My eyes were drawn to the pictures neatly lining the edge of her bulletin board. I couldn’t picture her putting them there. It seemed too delicate a way for Emily to expend her energy. I couldn’t picture her gingerly affixing them, her mind brimming with nostalgia. As I knocked and entered, I realized that for the first time in my life, I had interrupted nothing. She was ready for me. She merely shifted her gaze to me as if she had been waiting all along.

Maybe I should have been creeped out by Emily, but I wasn’t. The other people in our residence either didn’t get her or they were scared of her. Either way, I knew there had to be a reason because Emily was one of the most unique attractions in our building. She listened to the Smashing Pumpkins with her black finger nails and a rosary around her wrist.

I found myself drawn into Emily’s world.

“I’m scared my Dad is going to die,” I managed to stammer before breaking down.

In moments of high intensity, I was never that gifted with keeping composure and maintaining a steady flow of words with appropriate explanations and pauses for well, breathing. In grade 12, I caught wind that an undesirable date for the prom was mustering up the courage to approach me. I knew that something had to be done because saying “no” was not a valid option. So, without skipping a beat I took my best friend at the time and corner a guy I had been crushing on since my childhood. The moment that ensued still makes me feel nauseous when I call it to mind as an adult. I literally cornered him with my best friend staring in disbelief and proceeded to blurt out-“will you go to the prom with me?” No preface. No conclusion. Unflanked inappropriateness. I can imagine his mother (whom I knew well) sitting him down and saying: “now dear, think of all that she’s been through over the past few years.” In hindsight, if I wasn’t sure then, I’m positive now that it was out of pity. I was the textbook charity case. Tall, awkward and diseased. And my father had cancer. Good ol’ terrified Carter ended up listening to his solidly formed Catholic conscience and saying yes after a few days’ consideration.

But Emily, unlike Carter, was undaunted by my inarticulateness. I instantly saw warmth roll onto her face like a comforting fog and her features softened. She warmed the room.

Our relationship sprang into existence with force in our first year of university and burrowed deeper from there. In our first conversation, Emily told me that her mom had died of cancer when she was a little girl. She never told me anything about her mom. All I remember is that she was artistic like Emily and that one time, her father bought her mom a pant-suit with a matching skirt. She put on all three pieces; the skirt over the pants. She didn’t see a problem. People would stare at her because she was an eccentric brand of beautiful.

“Have you talked to your parents since moving here?” I asked her on the way out of the meal hall in an effort to make conversation with my newest friend.

“My mom died of cancer when I was a little girl…” Emily said with not a little disappointment. I was never one for details, even those details that were more than details.

The next time I saw Emily was a year after I had graduated, at my father’s funeral.

Good St. Joseph, pray for us!

“Joseph. He is the man on the outskirts, standing in the shadows, silently waiting, there when wanted and always ready to help. He is the man in whose life God is constantly intervening with warning and visions. Without complaining he allows his own plans to be set aside. His life is a succession of prophecies and dream-messages, of packing up and moving on. He is the man who dreams of setting up a quiet household , simply leading a decent home life and going about his everyday affairs, attending to his business and worshiping God and who, instead, is condemned to a life of wandering. Beset with doubts, heavy-hearted and uneasy in his mind, his whole life disrupted, he has to take to the open road, to make his way through an unfriendly country , finding no shelter but a miserable stable for those he holds most dear. He is the man who sets aside all thought of self and shoulders his responsibilities bravely-and obeys.

His message is willing obedience. He is the man who serves. It never enters his head to question God’s commands; he makes all the necessary preparations and is ready when God’s call comes. Willing, unquestioning service is the secret of his life. It is his message for us and his judgment of us. How proud and presumptuous and self-sufficient we are. We have crabbed and confined God within the pitiable limits of our obstinacy, our complacency, our opportunism, our mania for “self-expression”. We have given God- and with Him everything that is noble and spiritual and holy- only the minimum of recognition, just as much as would serve to flatter our self-esteem and further our self-will. Just how wrong this is, life itself has showed us. As a consequence of our attitude, we have come to abject bondage dominated by ruthless states which force the individual to sink his identity in the common mass and give his service whether he wishes or not. The prayer of St. Paul – do with me what you will- the quiet and willing readiness to serve of the man Joseph, could lead us to a truer and more genuine freedom.”

Another conversion

I received my hearing and my sight back again. My healer is a wise man who recently told me that if I “took those damned things out of my ears” I would hear the best soundtrack the world has to offer.

Since an early morning blood lab experience at St. Mike’s last month, my iPod has been laid to rest on my desk. And maybe it’ll be for good.

“Hello there dear, what’s wrong with you?” asked a tall, disheveled woman with a Russian accent as she ambled over to me (strangely confident that I would answer).

The one thing I really miss since moving to Toronto nearly two years ago from rural Nova Scotia are nosy (and unapologetic) inquiries into my personal life by strangers.

Telling people what you are doing at any point in the day “down home” is to be expected. “Now what brings you to these parts?” if you are recognized as a stranger in an antique store by the beach. Or, “didn’t your Pops have a heart attack last week? How’s he faring?”

Answers (and sometimes highly personal ones) are demanded of you constantly and they often tumble out of your mouth before you even notice the stage being set for such a transfer of information.

I took out my ear buds and smiled up at her politely. “My specialist has ordered some tests for me,” I spewed out far too naturally, “she thinks I may have a recurrence of a disease from my past”.

After telling her far too much (in true Maritime form), she smiled at me with sympathy, and then stared wordlessly for an inappropriate amount of time. Then, as if coming out of a trance, she shook her head and moved onto her next victim. “And you, what’s wrong with you?” I heard her ask the elderly man on my left.

A slow smile crept onto my face as my shock synchronized with my memory and then ceased being shock. And all of this because my senses had been freed from their playlist-dictated bondage; I was letting life happen around me again and it felt like home.

After almost 2 years in this city, I had come to believe that people were content on their independent daily trajectories and that no one really wanted to mingle with anyone else.

I learned that you shouldn’t say “good morning” to the person sitting next to you on the subway and that people don’t really need to know that you like their lapel pin.

Or do they?

After that morning at St. Mike’s, I felt a rebellion rising up within me. I wanted to be an unfiltered-brand-of-human to everyone with whom I came into contact.

“But you’re a young lady,” my Portuguese landlady countered when I told her my plan, “you will get followed home. People are far too desperate in this city and if you show them any attention…”

But all I heard was: people are far too desperate. Too desperate? Why are they desperate? Perhaps because these people see themselves becoming irrelevant at a disturbing speed because they see that people aren’t present when they are present. Maybe these “inappropriate” individuals as we deign to call them are longing for reality, grasping for some humanity, mourning normalcy. I can understand that.

We’ve all prayed that the rancid-smelling old lady who plopped down beside us on the bus won’t turn to us with her disconnected ramblings. Maybe we move to another seat before she even gets the chance. Maybe we plug into iWorld where the rancid old lady population is negligible.

I am realizing that strangers (even rambling ones) aren’t as scary as we’ve pegged them to be. Accept their candy, no, but their anecdotes? Their musings? Chances are their words aren’t poisoned.

“Engage. Take in your surroundings. People have things to say to you and you need to hear them.” This wise man’s words had found a permanent home in my heart.

So for me, this city has changed. It’s now been over a month without my iPod, its neon green body lifeless on my desk like a withered leaf from last season.

When I was still new to Toronto, I would constantly grieve the beauty of the Maritime landscape that I had left behind, but I’ve since realized that Toronto boasts of a landscape of souls. There are unwritten memoirs on every corner, a startling, uncomfortable yet highly-welcome brand of beauty. Decidedly, this substitute might just be enough for me.