Naked Conversations

"I oughtn't to laugh at my father," I said.

"No," he said, touching his lips and rolling his eyes upward.

"I shouldn't! It's a sin." Sin, sin, I felt drenched and sick of it. "I used to pray to God to make me just like him. Smart and righteous and adequate to His will," I confessed. "Now I don't even know what to wish for. I wish I were more like everybody else."

He leaned forward and looked in my eyes. His finger moved from his lips toward my face and hovered, waiting for a place to plant its blessing. "Béene, if you were more like everybody else, you would not be so béene-béene." ("The Poisonwood Bible," Barbara Kingsolver)

Thus far I have cleverly been avoiding responsibilities on this holiday. It's the same story every time. Given an excess of free time, I resist productivity altogether and revel in a flurry of busy little nothings.

The other day I spoke with friends about doing some cooking, an excuse for both girl time and eating, two activities which always galvanize me, and I immediately offered to host. I did this knowing it would force me to organize my frighteningly messy apartment, a task I had been ardently avoiding to that point. And during the day spent reordering an apartment in size similar to that of a jail cell (a few paces this way, a few paces that way), I came across my cache of notebooks. Of course I could not resist reviewing them. What I found within was a paper trail cataloguing my scattered thoughts that dart from disparate idea to disparate idea. I've oft wondered at my propensity to switch notebooks like one might switch outfits, as though cleverly disguising this mind that can dwell with such repeated astonishment at the same reflections, the same events.

Turning pages slowly, slipping with a slight crinkling to hasten the records of a trapped time, I saw myself as who I once was, a younger version of an entirely different person altogether. A girl poised so precariously over the brink of what she knew, steadying herself before the abyss of an unforeseeable future.

Three things shocked me: (1) the total difference in who I was then to who I am now, (2) the utter sameness between me and this girl, our thoughts, our musings, and (3) the infancy of thoughts I now embrace that I assumed to be recent in their impregnation of my mind.

I journal frequently, sowing scattered thoughts across the pages of innocuous school-child notebooks. Writing brings an interim peace to this mind. And in some way, it is a private attempt to claim pieces of the past, to lend validity to life's progression. Yet as I relived a past that feels so distant, thought number two hovered closely, pointing out how little I have actually evolved, how frequently my mind dwells on the mundane.

Yet then an event or a conversation was recorded, something said by a friend that made me think. I defended my point of view. I considered theirs. And suddenly my own began to tilt dangerously, threatening me with a great crash, a shattering into fragments. This is the girl who I have become. So much the same, thoughts stretched out like highways through the course of my days and weeks, but so different, a stranger who stole this other girl's skin.

To consider one's change is a frightening thing. The considerations that were once planted so orderly, accompanied by facts and opinions supporting the conclusions, are suddenly ripped from their foundations and strewn about. It is an unnerving loneliness.

But in the past few weeks, since I have had too much free time and no work whatsoever, I have been blessed-- yes, I forcefully and intentionally use that word-- by people who spark in you thoughts with which you must struggle. And the same people who support you to be different from what you are expected to be, from what you once were. A number of these conversations have taken place in the sauna, a wonderfully warm retreat from the chilly winter air.

I have not yet spoken of Korea's saunas, likely because the concept seems so strange to the Western emphasis on privacy. They are Asia's public baths, where one goes, stripped bare, for cleansing. In a culture where physical appearance is so intensely important and people are examined with scientific scrutiny for their flaws, documented loudly in vociferous commentary, they, in the careful disregard of ticking time, lay aside their examinations. Entering into a swimming humidity, one strips of all garments: jacket, shirt, pants, socks, underwear. Passing completely naked in front of Koreans who no longer seem to notice the pale whiteness of your skin and the deeper whiteness of areas unaccustomed to the sun, one enters into the shower and bath area. The water that runs in timed spurts from the shower head is used to strip our final layers of protection. Colors run down one's face in dramatically thin lines, like the photographic negative of a tear-streaked face. Nakedness.

We venture cautiously into the hot pools, the cold pools, the temperate water, the steam rooms, using corners for our coffee shop conversations. It is only at this point that we as foreigners are truly noticed. We talk and laugh without great reserve; we are watched with dark eyes wondering at our strange yet familiar language. Koreans are strangely silent at the saunas, as if completely, albeit temporarily, renouncing their culture of staring and chatter.

Recently, I have taken part in a number of these naked conversations with Meaghan and Sacha. Coming together, we remove slowly those layers of the past, laying down the garments we use daily so as to appear the same as everyone else. Protecting our doubts, hiding our fears. But I am so thankful for these girls with whom I can be completely naked and fully without shame.

Above I quoted an excerpt from The Poisonwood Bible, which all three of us just finished reading. One of four children of a missionary in the Congo, Leah is plagued by the notions of her own sin, mired in it, suffocated by it. In her I saw the girl I once was, so desirous of perfection, yet so acutely aware of my own failings. Sin, sin, sin.

I now care so much less about the concept of sin.

At times I have considered whether I have stopped caring altogether for my faith, for my future, for the poor, the destitute, the broken in this world. Have I wrapped myself in excuses? Has my heart grown cold? But as I spoke with Sacha and Meaghan, saw their passion and care for others, their beliefs, their dreams, I felt the similar rising of my own. The beauty of a dialogue that requires no answers, that asks only for participation in the process. I am not faced with caring less; neither do I care more than I once did. It is merely that the palette of my world view has shifted from a dogmatic black and gray to a watercolor of more colors than I could name.

Sacha so poetically wrote, "These last couple of weeks have been precious to me, as I've held a lens up close to my heart and seen pieces of me that could only be poured out by the stimulation of another soul pouring it out of me. My friends, you know who you are." This is precisely what I feel.

To such friends of mine, I extend my thanks.