the Clean Bathroom Society

We've all been there.

That roadside gas station potty break somewhere along a trip. Or maybe just an impromptu jaunt to the bathroom at a restaurant during a meal.

Just as unpredictable as our bladders is the state of the bathroom.

The first senses that perk upon entering are usually sight and smell.

Are stray paper towels on the ground? What about random pieces of toilet paper?

Check. None or minimal.

Good.

How does it smell in here? Maybe an auto-timed refresher goes off every x number of minutes. Maybe it smells like bathroom cleaner or disinfectant. Or maybe our concern is just the absence of the smell we hope is NOT in there...

Check.

Whew. All good signs, or at least the absence of bad signs in this place.

We edge to the bathroom stall door, which though unoccupied is almost shut.

And then...we see it.

The sight that repels us as humans more than most others.

It might even induce the gag reflex among some of us.

The sight that makes us gasp "Oh my God"...if we aren't dry heaving, that is.

It's the proverbial Holy Shit bathroom stall. Literally.

There is no water in the toilet. All that is 'down in there' is a mass of feces and toilet paper.

It's so bad it makes your heart cringe for whoever's going to have to right the wrong.

Some are worse than others.

Sometimes the dung is not restricted to the toilet itself.

(I can't speak for you ladies' restrooms. Maybe the uncool in a ladies' room never reaches this level.)

I bring this up because I walked into the worst one I've ever walked into about a month or so ago.

I'll spare any more details. Save it to say it was horrible. I don't get grossed out at all, and even I was saying "wow".

The first thing I did upon seeing it was hope that the other remaining stall in that bathroom was not in similar shape.

It wasn't.

That same day the thought struck me about what happened.

It is human nature to turn up the nose, to shout "oh my God!", to curl the nose and think rottenly and nauseatingly of the scene.

Yes, we are a Clean Restroom Society.

We like things clean. We like them tidy. We like things to smell good and be comely.

We don't like filth. We don't like stench.


Thinking through that reinforced something.

Made me think of something that is not clean and dainty and pleasant, as human beings would prefer it.

Something that stinks, filled with rotten filth.

It doesn't fit within the confines of what people are willing to tolerate, what we're comfortable seeing or enduring.


And so what do we do?

One of several things.

The first thing is immediately seek a different bathroom stall. Outta there, man--pihChhooon!! (or whatever Looney Tunes noise you'd like to insert)

We don't like dysfunction. We don't like disgusting. We don't like icky.

It's natural for us to walk the other way.

Quickly.

And that's what I've run into. Largely treated like a leper by most folks.

Works for me. They've got a real high chance of being a Clean Bathroomer anyway.

If they can't immediately excuse themselves, they do their best not to let the lip curl while talking right there.

If by chance they can suppress the lip curl, though, they usually can't contain the look-over-the-shoulder, the dumb stare or the head shake as they walk away.

Second way of dealing with it: find another bathroom.

Not only do they look immediately for another stall or bathroom, they wish me to find another one too.

"Find another stall. Surely it can't be God's will that THIS be your stall in life. Jesus has a nice, shiny spotless stall right over here, see?"

"Did you know Jesus died so that you could have a clean stall?"

"God has a wonderful stall for your bowel movement." (aka, "God has a wonderful plan for your life")

(sidebar: next time someone feeds you the 'wonderful plan' gunk, reply back with the 'wonderful stall/BM' line)

"You just tell the devil to go back to his stall. This is not your stall."

"You just claim a clean stall, and God will give you one."

To mention that if I'll pray more, God will provide me a clean(er) stall.

If I'll plug into a church, God will give me a clean(er) stall.

Perhaps worse than this, which royally pisses me off to no end, is having people tell me to mentally imagine the shitty stall is not real.

"You just need to rise above this stall."

"Don't focus on this stall."

"When I think of you, brother, I think of the nice, sanitized stall God is going to give to you."

"Let Jesus lift you up to another stall."

"Think about the good stalls."

"Whatever stall is clean, whatever stall is pure...think on these stalls."

"God give you clean stall." (aka "God bless you", aka "God be nice to you")

These comments, I think, are the worst of all, because they bid me to pretend. They bid me to a world of make-believe. They bid me to ignore my heart. They bid me to be an actor.


I mentioned a few weeks ago about just puking my way through life. A friend came on and commented that though they hate to see my puking, it is so easy for them to stay beside me, handing me a glass of water or a wet towel for my forehead.

That's friendship.

That's Jesus, folks.

To follow, I think, is entering shitty stalls.

Not being fake. Just being there.

There are friends who are in here with me in mine. Not because they have to. Not because their own stalls are stenchy or oh-my-Goddish. But because they look beyond their own circumstances to the heart of a friend.

Jesus reaches a point with his disciples when he says "I no longer call you servants...now I call you friends."

How many of us have ever said to a friend "you can be in my foxhole any time".

I have.

And yet how many of us hesitate, or turn back, when that friend's foxhole reeks of dung.

And yet that dung is their current lot, their test, their hardship, their wilderness for a season, or longer.

I've done this. To my shame. To friends, to strangers, to the robbed man on the side of the road...

To angels.

To Jesus.

It's human nature to turn away.

It's of Jesus to jump down in.

If we would quit talking about being an "oasis of love" on our church websites, and actually get in the shit trenches with people, wow.

It is these nasty, unbecoming circumstances Jesus talks about when he says he is with us and won't forsake us.

And, it's been my experience, these crappy places (by human standards and appearance) are where He shows up, where He does blow the mind, supernatural stuff. The unexplainable. The miracles. The drop your jaw stuff.

He does things opposite the world.

Where pomp and order and cleanliness and showmanship and pizzazz and glitz and sizzle are? Jesus isn't...or at least not in the way he's Wizard of Ozzed to be there.

I was in a restaurant tonight and saw the name of a tv show flash on the screen. The name of the show: "The Most Beautiful Ugly".

Yeah, that's what following Jesus is...the ugly beautiful.

That's why He's not a member of the Clean Bathroom Society.