Eyeballs on Sticks
and the ability to (possibly) see around corners.
Snails fascinate me. Mostly because they have eyeballs on sticks, which inherently means, should they want to look around a corner before they bodily round said corner, they can do so by poking their eyes on sticks around the corner.
We do not necessarily have this same capacity. Yet, in a sense, our faith gives us a different way to see what is in the future. We have spiritual eyes on sticks, which can see around the corners of our reality through the things we believe: by faith.
So, back in 2021, late one night when I had trouble sleeping, I dictated a short story using the voice-to-text feature on my cell phone. It was really just an idle moment in the night. Or perhaps it was a moment in which the eyes of my soul saw around a corner just enough to begin a creative snowball a-rollin’.
Later that week (of the insomnia, speak-a-story-into-text night), I had a walk with my dear friend on the Grand River Trail. We talked about how the grids of our potential, our “things that are meant to be” fill in, sometimes quite by odd chance in the dark night of the soul (or just the dark night of insomnia). Quietly, I told her:
“I wrote a story last night. Well. I kindof wrote a story. I spoke it into my phone and it got written by the voice-to-text software.”
Then, having peeked around the corner of possibility with that opening line, I continued:
“Maybe it might form part of a series which we could use for Lent at church.”
And then, like most projects of this nature I take on, it all became a crazy, hectic, chaotic, last minute, scrambling here-it-is production. But for those six weeks of lock-down worship during Lent, we read stories I had written, or articles on housing, and we discussed them as part of our ZOOM worship. The congregation encouraged me.
The ideas for the stories came from actual stories told to me by actual people whom I encountered throughout my life. Identifying features (genders, names, locations, ages) were all vigorously changed to secure anonymity, and yes, some creative license was taken in expanding on some of the stories - in terms of the execution. But the facts of how people came to be precariously housed: all of those facts were deeply rooted in truths.
Truths told to me by people I met at bus stops, at shelters and feeding events, or people who I just got into conversation with as I journeyed through life. I am like a lint-roller for stories. People offer their stories to me. Perhaps there is something about me that says: tell me your stories. In a two-minute wait at a bus stop for example, a simple hello can evolve into a story being told. And I am always simply astounded at the lives people live. The diversity. The pain. The love. The grace. All of it is simply, stunningly, beautiful to me.
And why would we not share something that would be seen as beautiful and appreciated by the person who hears it? When we poke our spiritual eyes on sticks around the corner of someone else’s presence, and find receptivity, the encouragement is right there. Telling us: come on around the corner, sit for a while. I want to hear your stunning, beautiful story with all its ups and downs.
So, in 2024, these stories are being studied for Lent by the Wiarton Interfaith Group. We will do “Coming Home: Lite” around our Lenten Lunch tables. The booklet, in print form, has been shared, and in soft copy is available here.
We will study the booklet, one segment per week during Lent, beginning this coming Monday, February 19th, 1-2.30 pm, on ZOOM. If you would like to join us, with your spiritual eyeballs on sticks, to look around some unusual corners, please send me an email janaki.bandara@gmail.com and I will gladly send you the ZOOM link.
Snails are cool. They can see around corners. So too can the eyes of faith.
Photo by Rui Silva sj on Unsplash