TRISTAN SHERWIN

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.” — Saint Antony the Great

WHO’S THE LOON?

I was told that her name was June, but I never questioned the truth of this.

For all I know, she could have been called Jennifer, Judy, Julie or Jane. She could have been married, or widowed. She may even have had two children, grandkids, great-grandchildren and been the owner of two cats, a Labrador, and a hamster called Augustine.

But, to be honest about the kind of teenager I was back then, I didn’t really care to know any of this. We didn’t care.

All we had was the name ‘June’. Even then, it wasn’t ‘June Smith’ or ‘June Jones’. We only knew her as ‘June the Loon’. Not only did we know this, but—for reasons that leave me baffled today—we also felt the need to remind her of her “name”.

‘Juuunnne… June the Loon…’ we’d holler whenever we spied her rumbling around the Concourse Shopping Centre, in my hometown of Skelmersdale. Occasionally, the chant would fall on deaf ears. More often than not, though, it would prompt what we interpreted as an acknowledging wave towards us. In hindsight, she was more likely shaking her fist at us.

Ashamedly, the taunting didn’t stop there, however. Along with her name, the only other “fact” we knew about June was her love of one and two pence pieces. It became a game to take whatever change you had and roll it, one coin at a time, along the tiled floor of the crowded shopping centre, in the knowledge that June would chase down every single penny. Apparently—our collective reasoning assured us—she enjoyed this game as much as we did.

A friend of mine once told me that a friend of a friend, of a friend of his, once knew somebody who had spoken to June, face to face, and asked her why she made a ‘fool of herself’ by chasing these coins. The answer, he reliably informed me, was that she was annoyed at people throwing away money; if they didn’t want it, she would have it and put it to better use. There was even a rumour going around (a rumour that was more likely inspired by Deacon Blue’s A Ship Called Dignity than reality) that she had collected enough pennies to emigrate to a sunny climate.

There’s a big part of me that would love for this to be true. When my mind wanders, I like to imagine ‘June’ sat on the deck of a yacht somewhere in the Med’, drinking daiquiris, laughing at the “idiots” who had financed her escape from ‘Good old Skem’.

Sadly, this isn’t the case. And like Briony, in Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, my imagination only writes such an ending in a limp attempt to appease my sense of guilt. Even though I never once rolled money at June, I have stood silently by, holding the coats of others who did. And, more to the point, I am certainly guilty of colluding with the horrible bullying and scapegoating of an innocent person.

I bought into the narrative I’d been given. Most of us did; never thinking to question it. None of us teenagers—with the exception of that mythical acquaintance of that friend of a friend, of a friend—had the sense to see beyond the delusion, nor the courage to actually befriend ‘June’ in order to help dispel the cloud that had taken up residence in our minds. ‘June the Loon’ wasn’t a name—it was a label; a persona that our society had plastered on to this lady; a caricature that her real identity had been entombed beneath.

We would like to believe that it was she who made a fool of herself, but those of us who are now older, wiser and less prone to peer pressure, know better. We have admitted the truth to ourselves long ago: We were the lunatics, not ‘June’. Behind this persona was a real person. Someone with a past, a family, a life of experiences, feelings, and dreams. But we didn’t see any of that. In our lunacy, we didn’t want to see any of that. We made a fool of her and showered her with pennies when we should have been showing her dignity and care.

I often recollect ‘June’ and, like many I guess, my heart breaks because of my/our blindness and the consequences of it. We deemed her sub-human and treated her as such. Worse than this; we were taught to see her as sub-human, and we taught others to do the same. Even writing about her some three decades later, it still pains me that I can only talk about her through the lens of a label.

LOOK AT THIS WOMAN

As crazy as it sounds, ‘June’ came racing into my head the other day as I recollected a story from the Gospel of Luke. There’s a famous scene in Luke 7, when Jesus is invited to eat at Simon the Pharisee’s home. In the midst of the food and conversation, a woman comes in and begins to bathe Jesus’ feet.

The act, understandably, doesn’t go unnoticed; the lady suddenly becomes the hot topic of conversation, and Simon, the host, is disgusted by what is going on. Simon turns to his friends, hollering, ‘This proves that Jesus is no prophet. If God had really sent him, he would know what kind of woman is touching him’ (Luke 7:39b, NLT. Italics mine).

Simon’s words betray him. You can almost hear the sneer in his voice as he says this. Not so much the snub towards Jesus, but his view of this woman. He describes her as a ‘kind of woman’—that’s not flattering in any way. Have you ever been described using the motif ‘they’re that kind of person’?

Such words lack empathy and regard to people’s circumstances or background. There’s a purposeful distancing when people adopt such language. It’s almost like you’re not being seen as human, but sub-human. Whoever this lady was, Simon sees her in the same way that we saw ‘June’.

We know nothing about her. The account in Luke refers to her notoriety, with some versions saying that she was immoral. Simon, in his retort, names her as a ‘notorious sinner’. Because of this ambiguity, there have been countless “educational” guesses about this lady’s character, crime or profession. Unsurprisingly, such guesses are about as informed as my friend’s knowledge of ‘June’s’ saving schemes. The fact is, Luke tells us nothing about this woman’s background. Note that! Simon, reflecting his community’s prejudice, wants the world to know about her scandalous character, but Luke gives us nothing.

All we know from Luke is that the community had given this woman a label—a label that Jesus pays no attention to.

Jesus, hearing the hollering of Simon, decides he’s not going to let such apathy claim the high ground. After responding to Simon’s sneer with a small parable (Luke 7:41-42), he then summons Simon to ‘Look at this woman…’ (Luke 7:42).

In purposeful contrast to Simon’s language, Jesus does not say ‘Look at this kind of woman’.

It may seem like a small detail in language, but it marks a huge difference in the perspectives of Jesus and Simon. Where there’s no empathy in Simon’s description of this woman, nor any sense of commonality with her, there’s dignity given to her in the way Jesus motions Simon to look at her. He highlighted her value, her humanity. She’s not sub-human in Jesus’ view.

More than this, when Jesus describes why she had just washed his feet, he elevates her to a role model of faith and love in practice. In other words, turning the tables back on Simon, Jesus is saying that if she is a ‘kind of person’, then she is the kind of person that Simon the Pharisee must become more like.

Eat that Simon!

IMAGINATION

There are plenty of examples, littered throughout the gospels, which indicate Jesus’ ability to see the people that others refused to notice. Jesus never imprisons these people into the mould that their societies have wrapped them in. There are no prejudices, no cultural blinkers, no demonic delusions that distort his vision.

We could say that Jesus had a better imagination than us.

I don’t mean that in any irreverent way. What I mean is that Jesus was able to perceive reality through the smokescreen. Jesus saw beyond the circumstances, categories and labels that obscured the humanity, value and intrinsic beauty of those around him. And when I dwell on this—especially when I consider my past—I desire this kind of imagination, too.

There’s too much in the world that we will label as ‘obvious’; things that we write-off as requiring no further investigation. But our world—even my own inner world—is full of blind prejudice. Not only the kind that rolls pennies or that snubs people in apathy, which is bad enough. But also in the kind that becomes a breeding ground for hatred, war, inequality, poverty and death in all its guises.

I’d like to pretend that I am immune to prejudice. I’d like to pretend that I can see clearly. But the nature of prejudices is just that, they are prejudices. Unless you are really prepared to wrestle against the cultural narratives you’ve either inherited or been taught, you’re never going to be able to uncover them. Yes, you can spot them when you find yourself on the receiving end—everyone does. But unless you’re prepared to dig, or unless some outside agent helps to clear your sight, you’ll just become an expert at pointing out the splinters in everyone else’s vision whilst remaining blind to the plank in your own.

Personally, I want to see. I need help to see. I don’t want to be led by nationalism, sexism, racism, toxic versions of religion (including toxic versions of Christianity), or communal stigmas of the ‘other’. When I recollect our communal treatment of ‘June’, the lesson I take away is this—I need my eyes to be opened and my imagination to be stoked.

‘June’—or Jennifer, Julie, Judy, or Jane—I know this is too late, I know that you’re not around anymore, but I am sincerely sorry, and I know that I’m not alone in this regret.