Lot's Wife

Toronto downtown, seen from Ryerson University (SLC). Eaton Centre is just a block away.

Whenever I hear the words "looking back," I can't help but remember Lot's wife who looked back as God brought destruction to Sodom by sulfur and fire. The cost of her disobedience from the instruction to not look back was so great: she perished and became a pillar of salt.

There's this never-ending cycle that continues to bug me at this time. This city named Toronto had been all too familiar already: the fast-paced life especially in downtown, the people who walk through its streets, the never-ending maintenance work in the TTC subway, the beauty of (not-so-clean) Lake Ontario. Even the mundane routines throughout the week have been too ingrained in my everyday life here: waking up at the earliest 11:00am, starting the day with an hour of biking (if it's bike workout day) and spending the rest of the day writing my thesis either at the Toronto Reference Library or the Student Learning Centre in Ryerson University. Sometimes, there would also be time for swimming at either Regent Park or Douglas Snow. Then come Sunday, it's a subway ride all the way to St. George station to attend the worship service at Every Nation GTA within the University of Toronto campus. If I'm part of the instrumentalist roster for the service, a necessary subway ride all the way west to Jane station will happen every Friday night rehearsal. Everything gets too familiar that it gets exhausting and bland as well.

Even seeing specific friends and people on a weekly basis can get very tiring too. In the course of building relationships with them, my unrealistic expectations tend to overrule my perceptions of what I want them to be and what I want them to do. It came to a point where my mentor Richard told me that too much of expectations create disappointment gaps when they intersect with reality. Having idealistic perceptions may be part of who I am and how I think, but I needed to remind myself that utopia doesn't exist, that past lessons need to be learned once again, that people are just as broken as I am.

And despite all of those things, lives intermingle. Spaces merge into invented shared spaces. These spaces, clutching memories and meanings, transform into places. Memories, made concrete by social media and technology, materialize into memorials. Networks of relationships, facilitated by good motivations and intentions, give rise to infrastructures. The result is a huge metropolis, an intricate and chaotic web of consciousness, a vibrant city skyline, a beacon of human existence.

That's why Lot's wife probably had that desire, that longing. Hence, she looked back. The heart attaches itself to spaces where it resonates the loudest. Its beating signals the presence of life, may it be a faint spark or a full robust overflow of it. And her heartbeat had been fixated to the doomed side of human reality, the illusion of an abundant and secure life emanated by the world of human flesh, the limited scope and breadth of sensory experience and human understanding. The life that wasn't meant to be. And there's a price for clinging on to it, for forgetting that there is that horizon far away where we would find true life, where God is. Lot's wife got a taste of being memorialized: the tasteless pillar of salt becomes our reminder of straying away from the life God wants us to live.

She got stuck at the crossroads, and she eventually remained permanent there, lifeless. And thinking about crossroads, I find myself once again in such a place. This time, there's no context such as God punishing the wicked. It's simply a matter of locating where I am at in God's timeline, in God's plan. In about 14 hours, I am to depart from this comfort haven and arrive at the place where God wants me to be in. Walking the streets of Toronto this evening, my heart got entangled in a tug-of-war between attachment and detachment. Detachment has always been a consistent friend of mine, and its opposite brother desperately pulls me back from looking ahead and moving forward. In the midst of the battle, I have to stand my ground. And it will be a hard thing, but given the circumstances, I should push through and press on forward. These words resonate very much right now: don't look back. Just like what the angels told Lot's family.

I've decided to "avoid Toronto" in the coming near future. It's hard to say such, but I have to think it that way for now. My best bro told me that the term "avoid" is very loaded. I agree. This doesn't mean that I would forget the connections I have here. This doesn't mean that I am burning bridges. Lots of things had taken place during the past months I've been here, and everybody here is coming up to terms with their own paths of seeking security, stability, maturity, and happiness (or "joy," if you want to put it that way) in God. I've been in the middle of some of those paths, and now I also wish to seek my own. I strongly feel that life awaits out there where Toronto is not a main character in the game. After all, there is that reason why God brought me in Montréal in the first place. I'm starting a job or two when I get back there, and that would require me being planted deeper in Montréal soil. I should live with it, own it, make it my mission.

Enough of longing for a home that isn't meant to be (yet). Enough of looking back.