The Lost Ones

Geneva
Geneva cleans our office.  She's a short, middle aged black woman - as wide as she is tall.  She never married and lives alone.  Except on the weekends where for the last seven years she has cared for her mute, paralyzed mother.  Her siblings reason that since she has no husband or children, she won't miss her weekends.  Geneva has a big, broad smile and a ready laugh - she's always happy to see me:  I'll say "Hey darlin'!"  and she'll go "Whats up?  What's up?".  But for all her bonhomie Geneva is strangely closed.  "Where do you live?"  "I ain't goin' for that".  "Give me you phone number and I'll text you with the date."  "I ain't goin' for that".  I've known her for 18 months and I still don't know her last name.  It seems that Geneva has sealed herself from others to avoid the pain that people can bring.  She works, goes home alone and then spends the weekend with the silent, spent husk of her mother.

I asked her about Church - "Don't go".  "Would you come with me?"  "I ain't goin' for that".  I don't know her heart but Geneva is lost in this world.

Shaun
Shaun is a software developer in one of the businesses we've invested in.  I see him often - he's a big angry bear of a man with piercing black eyes, black hair, and beard.  He doesn't smile, hardly talks.  Once in a while he would  tell me things - about his Navy career or the great bargains to be had at Trader Joe's.  He would approach like he was going to hit me, pushing the words out of his mouth as if they were stuck, as if reaching out and communicating with humans was an ordeal.  One day he said:  "Here's a free ticket.  To a concert.  My friend is in a band that's playing.  Vote for him."  I told him I'd come but then, overcome by my own reality, I forgot.  He hasn't spoken to me since.

I've noticed that his interactions with other office mates have declined too, he's slowly but surely retreating into the symbolic world of software, away from frightening, incomprehensible human relationships.  I don't know his faith - I'm not sure he'd get the concept.  He is detached and day by day floating further away.  Lost in this world.

Genny
Genny is a short plain young woman that works at our production studio.  She does this and that for the business.  When she's not engaged in a task she sits at her desk and stares at the wall or her hands or the table top.  My partner took the office sailing on his yacht and Genny went along.  I have never seen a woman drink more alcohol than she did that day.  She was horribly, embarrassingly drunk in front of her work mates. "I did it on purpose", she said "I like to get fucked up".

She was a the Christmas Party yesterday - thankfully on the wagon.
"Hey Genny!  What do you want for Christmas?".  
"Nothing".
"What do you mean, nothing?"
She spread her arms wide, fingers splayed:  "We blew away, they're all gone.  There's nothing left.  So there is no one, no Christmas".
She crossed the room and sat down, visibly vibrating.  (I know what that is about).
"I'm getting tested for ADHD this week, my Mom would never let me do it but now I am.  I was always screwed up in school...can't pay attention.  I just lose track."
"I'm ADHD too", I said, "I'll tell you:  the meds really don't help in the end".
Wrong thing to say:  Her eyes flashed in anger.  She said nothing in return.  I realized instantly that to her, this diagnosis was a lifeline - a conclusion that could make all the pain, confusion and frustration she feels comprehensible. But all I could think was "Oh Genny, if you only knew."

She's a lost one too.

Naomi
Naomi waits tables at my favorite pub.  She's young, buxom and vivacious.  She is a kaleidoscope of changing hair styles, piercings, tattoos and outrageous clothes as if she can't figure out who she really is.  I often see her there in her off duty hours with a beer in hand prowling the bar - alone.

Bruce, Jim and I were in for lunch one day and Bruce struck up a conversation with her:
"How'd you get to Saint Louis?"
"My parents were youth pastors at a big church.  They went to Mars Hill's training.  I helped in the youth ministry."
"Where do you go to Church now?"
"I don't - I don't believe in Church, I don't think people there are real."
"Come with us"
She put on her best customer pleasing smile:  "maybe".
She seems to have rejected an identity that failed her - pastor's kid.  But instead of finding something real, something concrete to replace it, she appears trapped in a tumbling cascade of identity confabulation - red hair, blue hair, this piercing, that body art - always seeking some reality, something true about herself that is always just out of reach.  Never quite finding it, she jumps for the next identity just as her current one dissolves.

Lost in this world.

I think there are many lost ones all around us - these are simply the few who have washed over the immensely high walls of my self regard.  I am sure I walk by some every day - just as lost, just as alone - yet never see them.  But they are there, they are real.

Jesus said  ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’.  These are some of the the least of them that he was talking about - the lost ones.

Lord:  Help me see.