While at university, a woman called Jody joined our Wednesday evening Bible-study-pot-luck. She quickly made friends with the circle, introducing herself as a missionary-kid from South Africa who had been to boarding school in Southern Germany and was studying criminal justice at a near-by college.
Over the next few months Jody became part of the church group, and told us that she was particularly interested in working with gang-related issues in New York city - and that she was often on the streets, working with gang members in negotiations, as well as working with prostitutes and street children.
After some time she also told me that she was HIV positive - and that it had happened during an emergency operation while she was in Africa - and that her parents had disowned her because of her status.
I had good friends who had gone to her boarding school in Germany and asked one of them about her. He did not seem to recognise her. When I asked Jody about my friend, she said she did not really know him.
In the middle of all of this, she applied to Yale Law School for her higher studies. Unsurprisingly, she did not make it in and was crushed. Various people counselled and encouraged her. But then came the good news. Somehow, she had been admitted over the summer. There had been a second list and she was in. Congratulations flowed.
Just before the term began, one of my flat mates - who was a professor in International Relations at Yale - wanted to contact Jody. He called up the Law School to get her number. No record of her. He followed up and contacted the professor in charge of admissions. No record. She was not admitted at all.
When confronted, she fled. Jody dropped out of our lives. It had all been a set of fabrications. I saw her once or twice in the distance after that - and she crossed the street and went in the other direction. Other church members had the same experience.
How much of what Jody said was true?
Behind every good fabrication are nuggets of truth. Jody clearly knew something about missionary kids - Black Forest Academy in Germany is hardly the most famous school in the world (word of pardon to any BFA grads out there...). Her statements about gang warfare and negotiation may have come from an interest in the area - and then more.
One semi-truth leads to another - and then another. A relentless cycle of wanting to be accepted, wanting to believe. I would imagine that Jody started believing much of what she spun out - and finally cracked when the falsehood was called. Where is she today? Where are the many whose lives are built on fabrications? Probably nestled into a new web of stories.
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The last week I have been meeting 'Bill' - the Canadian man who was picked up off the street in South Mumbai in a terrible condition. He has been recuperating in a local hospital, and finds it hard to remember things. Yesterday when I met him, he told me that we had gone to a restaurant the previous day. Bill has been lying emaciated in his hospital bed for the past 5 days - waiting for his papers to be processed for Canada.
Bill has told me about his being a dentist in a small town in western Canada. As we have talked over the last week, he told me about his estranged parents, about his fathers' dental practice, about the high life he used to live, about his search for meaning and the substance and alcohol abuse that he used to dull his pain. Bill talked about taking friends on his boat and the ways that he tried to be loved by preparing hand-made pizza for them, and the disappointment at their lack of true friendship when things became tough for him. Bill told me about the loneliness of being admitted for an overdose at the hospital and how his friends had cheated him of his money. He narrated how he lived for the thank-you notes from grateful patients and how his approach to dentistry had grated with his father's more straight-laced approach.
All these stories - and so many more - while looping back to certain themes. That he was going to make a change in his life. That he was feeling paranoid. That those who were looking after him may have been doing something without him knowing.
How much was true?
I did a google search of his name and town - and found that a business partner of his was sent to jail for bilking him of $70,000. His father's name as a prominent dentist also pops up on line.
The pain seems real. Many of the details are probably true too - though the sequence of events may not fully line up.
Jody is lost. Wherever she is today - if she still is that is.
Bill is lost too - but with all the confusion of his mind - there is still hope that he can rebuild his life. It won't be soon - seeing the damage that has been done to his body, mind and spirit. It isn't a guarantee - there are no little pills that can be popped to make everything all right. But real healing and real recovery is possible.
Bill doesn't really want to go back to Canada. "I don't want to 'face the music'" he repeatedly says. His rambling comments hint at a person who desperately wants to belong, to be appreciated, to be good.
Isn't that like each one of us? The more I meet Bill, the more I see him as an everyman - and see facets of myself in his story.
Bill has been running away from truth for a long time. He has - hopefully - hit rock bottom. But how he goes forward will depend on how much truth Bill is ready to take on board.
What Bill needs most of all is to follow someone who really counts - and to hold onto a truth that is more than running away from his problems. A truth that can look the muck of reality square in the eye - and yet have to gritty hope of redemption and transcendence.
Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8.31b-34)
