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22 September 2023

8 min read

From the barber’s chair: what makes a whole community

Cutting hair during COVID taught Californian barber Adrian and long-time client Neal some lessons about relationships. A new column.

Adrian Urquidez and Neal Presa

Adrian Urquidez is a Californian barber and theologian Neal Presa is a regular client.

A barber stands between two clients, a father and son, a neon sign shines behind.

Adrian and the Presas.

This monthly column features reflections from two Americans: Adrian Urquidez, owner/barber of Cutman & Co, a Barbershop in Solana Beach, California, and Neal Presa, a longtime client who is a Presbyterian minister. Both Adrian and Neal have been friends for almost a decade.

Adrian

From being behind the barber's chair for 15 years now, I've learned so much about myself and others. From their life experiences as well as my own, when you put the two together, you have so much input to bring to the table.

At the start of 2020 I just resurfaced back into my workspace after taking a leave of absence. I was struggling with some alcohol issues, and I needed to step away from the chair to figure myself out and get the clarity I need to move on with my life. At the start of COVID, three months sober at the time the world shut down, I could no longer go to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings, I had to shelter-in-place and figure out how I was going to take care of my family. I applied to numerous jobs and had no luck. Finally, long time clients of mine began to text me saying “they need cuts”. That’s when the house calls began! Work began to flow in and before you know it word started to spread.

Going to people’s houses, cutting hair outside, masked up, I began to realize that no matter what the circumstance, people want to feel good, they want to look good and that's where I came in the picture. Outside of my everyday work I started going to school for alcohol and drug counseling. I enjoyed every second of it; it kept me in the world of recovery. So, with school and Zoom meetings I was able to stay strong and continue to be sober. I learned so much in those two years as my clients, who became my friends, helped keep me afloat financially and ZOOM helped me attend those AA meetings.

Looking back now, I see how important it was for me to go through COVID. I spent more time than ever with my family, understanding what I valued most and learned how important community is. I realized that the people I saw monthly were more than just clients; they were pretty much family. They cared about me, my family and my well-being, which helped me strive to be the best version of myself.

Almost four years sober, I opened my first barbershop, grew my family by one and now get to do what I love every day in a shop of my own. I get to talk to people each of those days and listen to their life adventures. Barbering has evolved so much, when you step in, the vibes are welcoming. At the shop it is more than just “getting a haircut.” You get a beverage of your choice and sit back and relax and enjoy your experience. For 45 minutes or so my ears are theirs and whatever the case may be, my clients/friends get to share about whatever is going on: personal lives, sports talk and just everyday issues we all struggle with. I love what I do, as it opened so many doors and gave me the opportunity to meet so many people - corporate CEOs, professional athletes, doctors, military personnel, fathers, mothers and kids..

At the end of the day, barbering has changed my life, and I can honestly say that I helped change the lives of others and myself by being vulnerable, personable and just really being present in my everyday life.

Neal

The old saying “misery loves company” is true in so many ways. On the difficult journey of life, trying to figure out the twists and turns of what makes it both beautiful and gratifying – and the same time a source of frustration, anguish, and all the mixed emotions of what it means to be human, we need companions along the way. We are human and we can’t do life alone. It’s miserable to do so, and we need neighbors and strangers alike to share in our joys, to comfort and commiserate with when the going gets rough, and to learn from one another.

As with any company we keep - whether it be family, friendships, your neighborhood, or even the traffic on Highway 5, there’s bound to be some sort of conflict. Hopefully, the risk of being in relationship with others doesn’t discourage you and me from being a part of community, of joining new ones, and learning about other people.

COVID-19 was one of the biggest disruptors of such community. Remember the social isolation, the shelter-in-place directives? Recall everyone around us masking up, only seeing each other’s eyeballs, walking on sidewalks socially distanced from each other? Or trying to live and work with endless online meetings and only seeing a few inches of the other person’s existence?

And, in the midst of all of this upheaval, there was a wide swath of community here in the United States and around the world, who amplified their voices on the streets and social media refusing to get vaccinated or to listen to medical professionals. The herd mentality that overtook logic and healthy action to benefit everyone else was a community-response in itself, granted not a healthy and not a helpful one.

It’s good that this inaugural column of “From the Barber’s Chair” is starting on the subject of community. Adrian’s not just my barber, but a friend of mine and of our family. Adrian and I have come to know, respect, and love one another as I have sat in his chair for countless haircuts and conversations about all sorts of topics. He, like a pastor and a bartender, has heard it all. He, like so many artisans in his craft, has the comforting demeanor and listening posture that encourages you to share about your life, be vulnerable about your fears and celebrate your child’s achievements. You also find the joy of a reciprocal relationship in receiving his life’s story as he lives it out between each monthly appointment. Ours is not so much a vendor-client relationship - though of course there is still a fee and gratuity to pay and a service to be rendered - as it is about two erstwhile strangers who are friends, who are figuring out this thing called life. We have this give-and-take; a give-and-take not so much about goods and services, instead it’s about a mutuality of reflecting upon the craziness and wonders of being husbands, fathers, professionals, citizens of the world, trying to be good human beings to neighbor and stranger alike, and make what positive impact we can on the world in our slice of God’s creation.

So, when COVID-19 arrived, like a monster truck barrelling down a storefront, disorienting life as we all knew it, it was such a gift and a blessing for Adrian to have continued his business by making house calls. There we were, in the backyard of our home, every month, my two sons and I would meet Adrian as we all donned our masks. It was two years of those house calls that that helped bring our family and Adrian through COVID.

Adrian was part of another barber shop at the time and that shop was going through a management transition. I knew from years back that Adrian had dreamt of having his own barber shop one day. He had disappeared from the scene for a year. It was on one of these COVID-period house calls that Adrian shared of his ongoing journey towards sobriety. He shared of the strain that alcoholism took on him, his health, his marriage, and family, and how his slow walk to recovery was unfolding and that was life-giving for him and all those with whom he loved and who loved him.

The road to recovery came at a right time when the onset of COVID drove many people into addictions and depression because of social isolation. To receive Adrian’s story and to be invited into the sacred space of his life was a precious gift.

Adrian and our time with him were a source of community, a source of life.

During this period, I was working with church colleagues remotely as we tried to creatively figure out how to serve a large congregation when the name of the game ought to be face-to-face community. This was not to happen, and not anytime soon. Also, our sons who were, at the time, both in high school, grew weary physically and mentally having to take their classes via Google video. I could see their energy level waning and melting. My wife and I grew concerned about them and about their classmates. This was not a healthy situation at all, but this is the best we all could do at the time, to just manage the frustrations, the anxieties, and the stresses of it all.

Our haircut appointments with Adrian were monthly punctuations for human contact outside of our family unit, outside the Zoom contacts with church colleagues, outside the video classrooms. It was like those proverbial apocalyptic movies of emerging from the underground bunker to see who was alive, or like the mythical Noah’s flood surviving on the ark and sending off the dove to see if the bird would bring back evidence of land. Adrian and our times with him were a source of community, a source of life. Such was a powerful lesson in what community is and what community is about: it’s being there for each other, to express and evidence life, it’s helping others keep living and to keep going.

After each haircut, as I reflected upon our time with Adrian, and even now, two years after the fact, my family and I experienced the presence of Christ in our backyard, every month.

When Jesus, and the community with whom he interacted and which were inspired by his life and mission, said/wrote: “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus embodies it. Standing for the way to true life. Showing the way to live life and the way to truth. In whatever combination we understand and receive what he claims about himself, Jesus is very much interested in and in the business of engaging with us human beings truthfully and truly. It’s because he cares deeply that we live life truly in the presence of God and with one another. Jesus desires that to happen in community, where his spirit is moving in and through conversations, story-telling, prayer, laughter, tears, and all the things that make human relationships interesting and meaningful.

For our family and for Adrian – from the barber’s chair in a theologian’s backyard – as we all struggled with life and faith, we also discovered a bit more about being a holy community; not because there was a posted time announcing that there was a worship service or Bible study, not because there was a stained glass or a cross present. None of the familiar symbols and signs were present that indicated “church” was happening or “theology” was being articulated. All it was were the simple ingredients of honest conversations anchored in love for one another, for faith, for life itself and the bit that God had given us, not knowing whether we would live to see tomorrow but being grateful to God that we had that moment together.

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Wildness

7 November 2024

7 min read

It’s getting harder to be wild in this world

We’ve trapped and tamed wilderness into a commodity.

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

Against a night sky a lit up face is blurred by the camera movement.

Under a Dartmoor night sky.

Yousef Salhamoud on Unsplash.

Some while back, my husband rearranged the books in our house, making sure that they were grouped together by theme. We have a lot of books, and there are now themes and sub-themes. It was quite an operation. Within the nature-related books, he created a separate shelf for books that have ‘wild’ in the title. We joked about it, but it made me think about how I’d noticed ideas of ‘wild’ pop up in lots of places in recent years: on clothing and stationery (with leaves or words like ‘keep growing’ printed), in shop windows (furniture displays draped in plastic greenery and fake animal skins), on social media (there are accounts that have ‘wild’ in the title connected to farming, conservation, publishing, personal development, coaching, poetry, business, and more), and in book shops (of which we apparently have only half the stock).

A quick online search on the topic of wilderness quickly leads me to conservation initiatives and statistics on the state of nature, but it also leads me to nature connection experiences, wild swimming, wild camping, soul work, and more. Wilderness becomes a pliable and hard-to-define term. It can relate to the natural world, to wildlife and natural spaces that have avoided human domination. It can also relate to the inner world, to spiritual experiences or to isolating and challenging times. But however you approach it, wilderness – inner, outer – seems to be having a hard time.

In recent months, wild camping has come under the spotlight. Dartmoor is the only place in England where wild camping is legal, and this this access helped to form me: as a teenager I hiked and camped with friends, encountered Dartmoor ponies trying to steal our food in the night, stomped through bogs and wolfed down boil-in-the-bag meals as the sun set. As an adult I’ve camped alone in a bivvy bag, my soul singing back to the Milky Way shining above me. Now, these experiences feel as much in need of protection as the nature they depend on, since a wealthy landowner decided to try and prevent people from undertaking this ancient practice of sleeping under the stars. The court case is ongoing, but it has highlighted the fragility of our access to nature here in England. Just 8 per cent of English countryside is accessible, and 3 per cent of rivers have an uncontested right to swim. Now, the last remaining right to sleep under the stars is under threat.

It is hard to know what we’re losing when it becomes harder and harder to see and touch the real thing.

We live in a time of crisis not just of the state of nature, but also of how we experience the natural world. In a recent study of nature connectedness, Britain was ranked lowest of all the countries surveyed. Our biodiversity is in crisis and so is our ability to encounter the natural world. This feels heightened by a way of being in the western world that sees us all living in our individual houses, working hard to pay for them, shuttling children and selves through schedules, spending fewer and fewer hours outside and with each other.

And this is not just a problem ‘out there’, because inner and outer landscapes are linked. It is unsurprising to me that in the UK at least, levels of good mental health, biodiversity, and access to nature have all been in decline. Disintegration of one is, I think, deeply connected to disintegration of the other.

These linked crises feel further threatened by the trapping and taming of ideas of wilderness, wrapping it into trends and materialism, commodifying it. There are some brilliant and essential initiatives helping to re-wild our inner and outer worlds. But there are also offerings that use wilderness imagery and the freedom and adventure associated with it to sell products and services, or as backdrop to human endeavour, or as a destination or resource for our consumption. I think a commodified wild can get in the way of the actual wilderness we need both externally and internally. This commodification is, I think, affecting our understanding of what the wild is and why it matters. It is hard to know what we’re losing when it becomes harder and harder to see and touch the real thing.

If real wilderness is everywhere but where we need it right now, how might we re-find it – in the natural world, but also within ourselves and our communities? Answering that question is work that many people are focused on now in all kinds of ways, and a short essay cannot begin to offer a full response. I will write more on this topic. But the question I have in mind at the moment is, how do we invoke wildness and wonder in the landscape of the modern world? – a physical landscape that is being stripped of nature, but also a social landscape that can often diminish our humanity. Perhaps a simpler way to ask the same question is, how do we not just survive life but get excited about it? – How do we love ourselves, our neighbours, and creation enough to deeply and truly care for these things?

Time stops, something says: here, look at this, it is everything.

There are of course structures, systems, and powers that need to change so that people can move out of mere survival, and so that the wild world is restored. I am not exploring those things here. Here, I want to simply share three things that lately, have energised my ability to feel the love, the excitement, and the desire to cherish and protect our hearts, our relationships, and the generous world that hosts us all. Perhaps by reawakening these things, we might find motivation and sustenance for tackling structures and systems.

First, I have been noticing what my young daughter notices. The light shining off a puddle; the way an ant crawls on her hand; the bright silver moon in the sky. I have never struggled to access the exhilaration of the natural world, but seeing through her eyes, I am doing so again. Time stops, something says: here, look at this, it is everything. The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich saw the wonder of the world, and God’s love for it, in a single hazelnut. She recounts her visions in her book Revelations of Divine Love. Sometimes connecting with the specific can help us see and face the global.

Second, there are authors who help me summon wildness and wonder in the landscape of the modern world, and in a future Seen & Unseen piece I’ll take us on a tour of some of those I love the most. Some of the authors are ancient. In Psalm 78, I read “…they forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them”, and “…they kept on sinning; in spite of his wonders, they did not believe.” If sin is a kind of disconnection, perhaps our disconnection from creation might lead our gaze to turn inward, and to land on things that do not call forth the best of humanity, rather than the wonder of each other and the world around us. That we are able to forget wonder is something we must remember and work to counter.

Third, I have been thinking through the encounters that have most exposed me to wilderness of the world and of my soul and of relationship – both the uplifting and the challenging. Encountering the vastness of that shining and vertigo-inducing Dartmoor night sky; encountering others in relationships that have helped me slip my skin and enter their unknowability and fragility and beauty; encountering contexts that seem too broken for repair and yet still light enters in. It is in these encounters that I first found God dwelling, and when I followed his trail, I noticed that throughout the Bible there are many people who experience the challenges, joy, and lessons of the wilderness. Wilderness is not just beauty – it can also be unknowable, disorienting, scary. For 40 days in the wilderness, but also in the beauty of the lily of the field and birds of the air, Jesus is right there with us, showing that God can meet us in beauty and barrenness, in wonder and in despair. Again and again in the Bible I see how God loves the world, how he calls it constantly to life through resurrection, through re-creation, through that three-in-oneness of father/son/holy spirit, of self/other/world, of body/encounter/mystery.

Now, I think our souls and societies might benefit from investing in relationships first conjured in Eden: with a garden, with a human, with God and the mystery he points us to. These things feed each other; when one suffers so do the others. As we face a disintegrating and increasingly commodified natural world, a mental health crisis, and an epidemic of loneliness, I think we are being called back to that garden, and to the kinds of wildness it made possible. I’ll look forward to exploring these themes more.