The best set of nails in all of Leon

Today’s Gospel reading brought us back to our time together this past summer at the Jesuit-sponsored nursing home in Leon, Nicaragua. The image of encountering the challenges of a desert environment took us back to the moment of arriving on-site with a group of four faculty and thirteen students, unaware of the social landscape that would greet us. The nursing home, with its inadequate supplies, cold floor, uninviting exterior, and lack of staff, became our “desert home” for two days of social justice formation and community service engagement. Although the goal of the program is student faith and justice formation, we found ourselves experiencing many of the same emotions simultaneously alongside our students. This Lenten season, as we reflect on theme of journeying with Christ in desolation and suffering, the desert experience is a helpful image. Encouraging each other to embrace a desert atmosphere of lack, want, need, and loneliness may be one of the most effective ways of arriving at the intersection of faith and justice and to make our spiritual journey increasingly more tangible and enriching.

There are many accounts of women and men finding themselves in the midst of a physical desert and, after several days without the necessary provisions for nutrition, hydration, health and survival, they come upon a mirage. The definition of mirage (according to a google search) is an optical illusion caused by atmospheric conditions, especially the appearance of a sheet of water in a desert or on a hot road caused by the refraction of light from the sky by heated air. A mirage, by its very definition, is that which is untrue. Perhaps it is what we need or crave, but nonetheless, it is a false reality.

On our second day working in the nursing home, we opened a “nail and beauty salon” for the residents. Students cleaned and massaged weathered hands, painted nails, listened to the stories of their elders, and provided the warmth of a much needed hug or the holding of a hand. Standing back, we allowed the students to fully engage and take responsibility for administering the program. About an hour into the opening of our new “salon,” we thought that we were exhausted enough (physically, mentally, and spiritually) that we were indeed envisioning a mirage: a man of 99 years was sitting in the salon area asking our students if his nails could be painted the colors of the Nicaraguan flag. Most shocking of all, this was a man who recently had begun to eat only on rare occasions. And, even more so, here was a man parading past the social barrier and asking to have his nails painted too. The students gladly obliged. As we watched with joy, other elders who were also previously disengaged, both men and women, arrived to have their nails painted.

What we thought was a mirage, was a reality. Hope in the midst of lack. Visitors arriving with gifts. The elderly, all formerly homeless, feeling at home with our students. Was their principal desire to have the best set of nails in all of Leon, Nicaragua? Or to be fashion-forward? Perhaps. But this desert experience taught us what all of the residents wanted. It is something that we may, fundamentally, all need: someone to hold our hand.

Author(s): Rich Perry, Director of Community Service
Ellen Bruce, Computer Science Department