Images of grace in a hair salon...

I believe that Christians have a very refined image of what grace looks like. And since I got my call I have been hypersensitive to what forms it has taken in my life. For me, grace is an expression of Christian charities and virtues that are, in that very moment, being lived. And such images ever recall my understanding of the radical love Jesus expressed to women, tax collectors, the poor, lepers, and "the least of these."

Grace is Kathy who cuts hair. I have occasionally been to the "posh" hair salon in town, but the cold hard edges of the place, and the overwhelmingly cold personalities of the women and men who work there make me feel ugly. I feel my hair shrink back onto my head like it is not worthy to be touched by their hands, brushed by their combs, or cut by their scissors. You know these types of places, the ones where the hairdresser assigned to you makes small talk and really does try to connect, but somehow just falls short of making you feel like you are really important.

I know that there are many people who go to this salon and feel taken care of and pampered. I also know that these are the people who can afford an expensive haircut and can still manage to leave a very substantial tip. These people get the warm smiles and the lavish reassurance that they are someone special. They are the ones that get water that is just the right temperature and who don't get the collars of their shirts wet while they are having their hair shampooed and conditioned with products that are the most expensive on the market. These shampoos and conditioners smell like they have come from exotic places that stress the value of plants and herbs. They have been refined into these products for this particular day, for this particular moment, for this particular person. Needless to say I am not one of the important ones who gets the water just the right temperature and who always manages to get the collar of her shirt wet just when she thinks she is free and clear. I am also the one that is only shampooed. I am not sure why I never get conditioner. But I don't.

So I started looking for another salon. Looking in the yellow pages I find Kathy. I walk into her place and see a 30ish woman with long stringy dirty yellow hair. She wears jeans and a t-shirt and has a huge mole on the side of her mouth. Her voice was loud and vulgar and friendly. She does not seem to notice the cuss words that occasionally slip out of her mouth while she is cutting someone's hair. And at her pitiful attempt to curb her rough manner in order not to offend a customer who carried pure judgment and righteousness in her purse along with her cell phone and wallet, I was caught. Here she was...my hairdresser. As I looked around I noticed that she did not keep the usual disinfecting liquids around that you normally see in hair salons. You know, the ones that they dip the combs and scissors into before moving on to the next person. And she did not keep her floor meticulously swept like other salons either. There were bits and pieces of hair here and there and there was a fish bowl with a dead fish in it and a water fountain that looked like it was all it could do to keep the water pushing up so it could spill out again.

But luckily for Kathy, my estimation of a hair dresser has nothing to do with how well her establishment is kept. It is instead based on her ability to cut hair WELL while running her mouth. And Kathy was a master at this. She would talk as if the last thing in the world she was thinking about was hair. And yet, when all was said and done, she would have cut my hair, yet again, the way that no one else could. And I would love it...and I would love her that she could do it while talking about anything and everything under the sun.

On this particular day, my birthday, I decided that I needed a hair cut desperately. I was attempting to let my hair grow out. I had done pretty well so far until I looked in the mirror one day and realized that my hair looked awful. I am not skinny you know. And long hair, even semi-long hair does not compliment the round moon of my face. So I decided that the good thing I would do for myself on my birthday would be to get a haircut. So I called Kathy and she told me to high tail it over. As I sat down in the chair I noticed a man sitting in the only other chair in the place. He had on yellow and orange checkered pants, a t-shirt, and was balding. He looked to be about 55 and kept his eyes closed when he talked so you got the impression that he was watching a TV show behind his eye lids. As he talked I got that he was gentle and kind hearted and tired. Very, very tired. He talked with some sort of speech impediment and sometimes his words were clear as bells and sometimes they were so garbled you had to pull them apart to figure out what he was saying. He was also, Kathy informed me when he got up to go to the bathroom, on a huge amount of medications. They had been friends for some time and when he got off work at the local Walgreen's he would walk up to her place and sit, talking to her with his eyes closed.

Apparently he would fall asleep there often on the couch that was in the salon and Kathy would call his wife to come and pick him up. And they would repeat the whole process again the next day. And this is what I got: that he needed to be there with Kathy. Just because. Because he was tired and lonely even though he had a wife. And this was the thing that really got me. She did not think twice about it. She did not have any conversation about running a business and what it might look like to have an older, slightly cracked, checkered pants wearing, Walgreen's employee sitting there talking to her and the customers with his eyes closed. She told him to go over and lay down on the couch and get some sleep. And he did. He curled up on the couch with his back turned to us and promptly fell asleep. And Kathy quietly finished cutting my hair, unwilling to talk in her loud and vulgar and friendly way for fear of waking him up...and I thought to myself, "now that is grace."