January 27, 2016

“One never knows what joy one might find amongst the unwanted.”
Lola, Kinky Boots

Lola uttered these words to Charlie Price, the reluctant owner of a shoe manufacturing company, while he (Lola) was sitting in the storage room full of discarded and/or unwanted shoes.

Many years ago I used to ride the Greyhound bus from Seattle to various points in eastern Washington fairly regularly.  Buses seem to attract a lot of . . . characters.  On one trip I climbed aboard, found two empty seats, and hoped nobody would sit next to me.  I almost got my wish; until the last person to board came running up with her ticket and luggage.  As I looked out the window, I knew I was doomed.

Sure enough, she clunked her way into the bus, down the aisle, and right to my neighboring seat.  She was probably in her mid-forties.  Her clothes had seen better days.  She was generally unkempt.  And she had long, black hair that was matted together in spots, looking like it hadn't been combed in weeks.

I promptly settled in for a long nap.

Unable to feign sleep any longer, I woke up about halfway through the trip.  She greeted me, asked if I'd had a good nap, wanted to know where I was going, shared her chocolate bar with me, and we talked about the virtues of both PacMan and the Episcopal Church.  I sort of felt like I was living a version of Alice's Restaurant where I was nervous at first but then ended up having a groovy time with the people on the Group W bench, as this turned into one of the best bus rides I'd ever had.

It was during that bus ride that I had my first experience of what Lola was telling Charlie.  It seems that we all want to be part of the popular, the current, the new, the up-to-date, the hip, the “normal” part of groups.  We not only fear being irrelevant or unwanted, we fear the person who represents the unwanted, the different, the “not normal.”  So in the name of staying current and staying safe, we ignore (at best) or persecute (at worst) the unwanted and the uncomfortable.

You see this played out in stories such as Rudolph, Charlie Brown, The Elephant Man, Toy Story, The Breakfast Club, Edward Scissorhands, The Green Mile, Kinky Boots and so many more.  This doesn't even begin to touch on real life where we treat the unwanted either overtly or covertly as unwanted, thereby further cementing their status.

But it was amongst the unwanted where Jesus found some of his greatest joy and greatest love:  the sinful woman who anointed his feet; the blind beggar who received sight; the tax collector who was welcomed; the leper who was cured.  It was amongst the unwanted where Charlie began to see Lola not as a cast-off to be used for his own benefit, but as a real person.  It was with an unwanted seatmate that I had a lovely and joyful conversation.

We don't necessarily need to search out the Lola's of the world; but when we meet them, it might help to focus on the joy they can offer rather than focusing on the differences that make us uncomfortable.

Amen.