Home alone (hands-on-cheeks emoji)! Well, not really. Though Father Roman is away for a conference this week, there are still housemates with which to share meals and conversation. So I have Sister Shoshana and Francesco to attend to for a few days, then the latter half of the week on my own with Shelleg.
With Father Roman gone, there were no worship meetings, so I was left simply to attend to the needs of the house and get caught up on some work back home. I had a few more lunches (the big meal of the day in these parts) with the amazing Sister Shoshana. She is part of the Little Sisters of Jesus, who serve nomadic people all over the world, often in very poor circumstances. Never afraid to get their hands dirty, they also began to include help for migrant families who had travelled to escape war and poverty in their home countries. I have a lot to learn about how to build bridges with Muslims, Arabs and Jews, and she was not short of instruction. I’m thankful for my few days under her tutelage.
Francesco is a Ph.D. math student who has lived at the parish house on and off for the last few years. He is finishing up his last week in Beersheva until returning here again in a few months to collect his stuff and move to a city just north of Jerusalem. He works hard, leaving the house just after morning prayers and not returning until late in the evening. He comes home, greets us with “Hi guys! It’s so hot outside,” and makes his big meal of the day: pasta.
He is very friendly and this week invited me to share a few of his suppers. Of course I was curious to confirm the way pasta should really be made, as I had an idea for what “al dente” was. Turns out Francesco cooks his pasta very al dente, like you really need to chew it. Better make sure your teeth are glued in solid!
For his final evening he treated me to a dish he called, unbelievably, “slutty pasta.” What? “Yes,” he said, “what is the English word you use to describe something whore-y, or whore-ish?” “Slutty,” I replied. “Okay, then this is slutty pasta.” I still didn’t quite get it, but we sat down to a dish of pasta with a bacon-tomato sauce. It might have had other stuff in it too which gave it a few other funky flavours. It was rich. I did not feel morally compromised after eating it, so don’t ask me to explain the true nature of it’s “sluttyness.” I will leave that to the experts.
As part of my Beersheva routine I always walk the dog before worship. I had been taking it very slow in regards to my relationship with Shelleg. I had her on a pretty short leash and learned that she loved to sniff everything. She did not much like other very loud or agressive-sounding dogs, so we stayed off of the streets where they lived. But we were getting along better and better, and her behaviour on the leash was becoming more and more trusting. It’s still a challenge some days to constantly remind her that I’m the lead dog, and she walks with me (and not the other way around). But there have been a few breakthrough days where she has kept her place next to me with very little tension on the leash for long stretches of time. “Kelev tov!” (Good dog!)
I have also discovered the bag of dog treats, which has furthered my efforts, and to give nice rewards for simple things like sit and stay and come. It’s obvious she has had some previous training, as she seems to quickly respond, even giving me her paw by surprise when I had my hand close in front of her. After our walk I give her a quick brush and then supper.
She is also responding better to my instructions to stop barking. I get it—she is guarding our compound and must notify Father Roman and I of any potential intrusion. But if that cat on the other side of the fence is in the mood to ignore Shelleg’s barking and simply stare contemptuously, Shelleg just might continue to sound the alarm as long as it takes. A word or two from me is now enough to silence the system and return our little haven to its desired place of rest.
By midweek I had a problem. Where in the world had I left the charger for my hair clipper? I thought I had taken such great care to always keep it in its bag with the other accessories. But I hadn’t seen it since I left Jerusalem. And I wasn’t sure how much longer the current charge on the clipper would last. And every millimetre of hair growth serves as additional heat insulation on an already over-insulated Canadian body in the desert. I had trimmed head and face last weekend, and was hearing the slowly slowing motor tell me its time was nearly done. “If I don’t shave I’ll look like a gorilla by the time I leave,” I told Father Roman. “No, you’ll just look like a man with a beard,” he replied. I wasn’t convinced.
And now my face was itching, and the head full of even somewhat thinning hair was getting hotter. I had never before wished for a hairline of increased recession. I looked in a couple of gadget shops at getting a new clipper. I only saw the fancy ones with way too many attachments and inflated prices to match. I could order on Amazon, but it would only arrive after I leave. It kills me to have to buy yet another one of these things; it’s like having ten remote controls on the coffee table, and only one of them still works with the new TV.
Finally I found a cheap but good Philips trimmer at Shechem Electric in the big mall. First I would ask them about a charger for my old one, which they didn’t have. But they gave me the address of the place that would have it. It was within walking distance. They didn’t have it. I walked back to Shechem (did I ever mention it’s hot in the desert?) and asked again about the Philips. “They couldn’t help you?” the sales rep asked regarding the charger at the other shop. “No, there were some communication difficulties (to put it mildly). And my face is getting crowded. I’ll take the Philips.” Upon returning home I nearly tore the box open with my teeth as I eviscerated its contents, discovered some residual charge in it, selected a very short hair guide and quickly relieved myself of a few precious grams of head insulation. Oh, the relief!
The weekend had our usual English and Hebrew worship sessions with the additional Indian Mass that happens twice a month on Fridays. The Indian priest Father Babu is humble and great, and his community always brings a supper for him and those of us that reside in the house. I had indicated that Father Roman and I were interested in the spicy stuff, so this week they included two additional small bowls, one of a predictably red paste, and the other of a mystery white paste (plenty of coconut smell) that was just blazingly hot. Careful how you mix that in!
I understand exactly zero of the language that these Indians speak in their worship, but I sat with them and understood roughly what parts of the service we were moving through, as there were some bits that were close to how the Western Catholics do their thing. There’s no mistaking the Lord’s Prayer in any language—you just know that’s what is being done. You can always tell an oriental place of worship by the number of shoes piled up outside the door. I was super happy to get no funny looks at my bare feet, because in this tradition they all worship with bare feet! My people!
Highlights: a great conversation with Francesco about how a single male could possibly live a very full, rich, integrated and rewarding life without girlfriends or wife and children. What do you do with all that energy? Turned inward it might melt your brain; turned outward it could radiate nearly endless light and hope.
Pray for: need I say it—Israel. It’s a startup country with many startup woes. Justice doesn’t balance itself, and the pendulum swings for a long time before coming to rest in the middle.
Photo: Not much adventuring this week aside from the mall, but I did manage to get in one game of the Stanley Cup finals. I know where to get bootleg replays of the game over the Internet, so the next day, without looking at the scores previously, I hooked up my laptop to the TV and stereo, and enjoyed the game and the surprising Oiler victory. Hockey Night in Beersheva!
