"It is a Remington Hand Portable, and I am crazy about it."

Yesterday, while revisiting the oral history that Grandma and I compiled about her life a few years ago, I stumbled back across the following letter she'd kept from my late grandfather, Willard Hemphill, written to family on the Kansas farm during World War II:

"You mentioned in your letter of 29 June, which arrived yesterday, about this rain. Come over to Normandy and I’ll show you some real rain. We have certainly had our share since arrived. Today has been an exception, though, and it has really been nice all day.

"You would enjoy watching these French farmers making hay, with their little one-horse, two-wheeled carts and their big awkward wooden forks. They seem to manage quite nicely, however. Often their orchards and their hay fields are combined.

"I just got a new typewriter. It is a Remington Hand Portable, and I am crazy about it. I have worked for a long time to get a decent one. My old one was really beat up. I can no longer blame my mistakes on the machine.

"Jean [Grandma] seems to be very happy in her new work in the Employment Office. It seems to me that they are keeping her mighty busy though. I was so glad to hear of her promotion. She certainly deserves. She is meeting an awfully lot of people she knows there in Wash. I am so glad. It will help her keep from becoming too lonesome.

"If you are worrying about the part that you are playing in this war, Dad, you can stop right now. You folks back there are doing a big job and doing it very well. You are seeing to it that we, over here are getting good food and lots of it. We can’t ask more. Love to all."

We miss you, Grandpa.

The infinite space

Even in my most committed stages, I never experienced what is called "assurance of salvation" in Calvinist circles. I was never sure I was eternally saved. So to hear others speak of their own assurance of my salvation is intriguing. How can they know this?

"I believe that God is sovereign, and I know that whatever you are doing, whatever journey you are on, God is at work in it." The older woman, a member at a church where I no longer attend, cried as she told me this over lunch four years ago.

"I know you are one of His, and He will draw you to Himself."

When I first confessed to a close friend that I thought I was losing my faith, she wrote back saying that it was not possible, for Jesus had me "etched on the palms of his hands," and he would never leave me or forsake me. She knew this, offering for my comfort her certainty of it.

Perhaps certainty is not the best word to describe this assurance to which she attested. She is more content with, maybe more enraptured by, spiritual mystery than me. 

"Evie, you say—and I agree—that Christ did NOT die to give us epistemological certainty," she wrote. "You also say that mystery is greater than certitude. You clearly know this—and yet I feel like you are still seeking certitude in the territory of mystery. You recognize the mystery but do not accept it."

This was accurately and excellently put by my friend. But it didn't enable me to say "I know" or "I believe" with an iota more of the necessary conviction. I wouldn't have really meant it. My inner metaphysics were increasingly agnostic, akin to those surprisingly espoused, at least at times, by the author of Ecclesiastes. God "has also set eternity in the hearts of men," Solomon (purportedly) concludes halfway through his ramblings, "yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that nothing is better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God."

The basics are intact, in a statement of faith like that. I still believe, or know, or trust, that loving mercy and doing justice and savoring life are worthwhile. Most of the rest remains a mystery indeed.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines mystery in a wide variety of ways, but the first definition given is not what I'd expect: "Mystical presence or nature; mystical significance." Much further down I find the things that I typically associate with mystery—hiddenness, secrets, conundrums, obscurity.

"You recognize the mystery but do not accept it."

I am not so sure I even recognize this presence. Is it that which occupies the infinite space between knowing and not knowing, filling the dark expanse of Kierkegaard‘s leap with light enough to see by?

Mystery has to do with something or someone "evoking awe or wonder but not well known or understood." But the idea itself is a mystery to me, a label attached to things cloudy and foggy and charmed.

When we recognize mystery is with us, is the next step to identify it? To declare Immanuel, that God is with us? To claim it, to name it, to pin it down?

"You recognize the mystery but do not accept it."

What if, in accepting mysteries, the point is to leave them be? What if, in naming God, as Lia Purpura suggests in her book On Looking, we are "refus[ing] to be speechless in the face of occurrences, shapes, gestures happening daily, and daily reconstituting sight"?

"'God,' the very attitude of the word—for the lives of words were also palpable to me—was pushy. Impatient. Quantifiable," Purpura says. "A call to jettison the issue, the only issue as I understood it: the unknowable certainty of being alive, of being a body untethered from origin, untethered from end, but also so terribly here."

For the love of bikes

Tuesday's bike commute was maybe my rainiest yet. I typically opt for the bus when it's precipitating, but this time I just put on an extra layer and decided to give it a shot. Not only did I somehow get to and from work faster than usual, but I really had fun. I lifted my feet up from the pedals to ford the deeper puddles in deserted Forest Park, squinted into the chilly raindrops pelting my face, and even acknowledged good drivers (and there really are a lot them out there--sometimes I forget) with the occasional smile or wave.

In the Grove, across from Sweetie Pie's, one not-so-awesome driver a good 30 yards behind me accelerated quickly after I signaled and took the lane to avoid a line of parked cars on the right. Pulling into the opposing-traffic lane to zoom ahead of me as we neared the stopped traffic at Manchester, she just barely beat me to the red light. As we waited for the light to change, I scooted up beside her sedan, waving and motioning for her to roll down her window. I wanted to remind her that cyclists are permitted to take the full lane as needed. She pretended not to see me. I tried again, but still nothing.

At Earn-a-Bike class a couple weeks ago, one of the students told us about his dream bike. Among other fabulous features, it would include flotation tires (for biking on water, duh) and a force field. The force field would be better than a helmet, this little guy explained, because "it protects more than just your melon." :-) He had a point, and sometimes I wish my bike had one. Then again, not being enclosed in a metal moving house on wheels--or a super-protective force field--is part of the appeal. You experience the road, the neighborhoods, the wind, and your fellow creatures, instead of blasting through somewhat removed from it all.

Last weekend, I watched as a helmeted tricyclist stopped at the stop sign near our apartment. A car on the cross street approached the quiet intersection at about the same time. The driver smiled at the little fellow and his dad (presumably) perched on the bicycle behind him and waved them across. The tricyclist placed his feet back on the pedals, lifted one arm up off his handlebars, and waved sweetly at the patient driver, as he slowly wheeled his way across.

"When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking." -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

In defense of things staid, slow, stitched

Lately, whether it's a growth-focused state-of-the-union address or a bandwidth-obsessed commercial or a line of got-important-places-to-be customers in line for this or that, the messages are blurring together into a monolithic one that leaves me somewhere between weary and panicked. I often feel disillusioned about the increasing emphasis on things like multitasking, perception, innovation, and efficiency, and a general disgust for our economic system as I learn more about its associated inequalities and indignities.

Probably I am quite late to the party on all of this. Coming to grips with "the way the world works" seems like a life lesson that hits many in their teens or early twenties. But as I watch my third decade rapidly draw to a close, I know I have a ways yet to go as far as accepting and working within (and against) various disturbing realities and constraints. I've struggled to write, and I think that has something to do with this. It can all be a bit paralyzing.

But if Mother Theresa was right about anything, it's the idea that we can do no great things--only small things, with great love--and whenever a frustrating combination of powerlessness, sadness, and anger is present, I think I'd do well to remember that thought of hers. Try to do small things, with love--and, if I may add an addendum to her wise advice--without thinking so much. Thich Nhat Hanh's words have helped me, too, when I feel overwhelmed with things to do or full of dread:

"To my mind, the idea that doing the dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you are not doing them. Once you are standing in front of the sink with your sleeves rolled up and your hands in warm water, it really is not so bad. I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands. I know that if I hurry in order to go and have a cup of tea, the time will be unpleasant and not worth living. That would be a pity, for each minute, each second of life is a miracle ... If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of drinking the tea joyfully. With the cup in my hands I will be thinking about what to do next, and the fragrance and the flavor of the tea, together with the pleasure of drinking it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment."

Looking back through the photos on my phone today, I realized that, along with walking and biking a lot, I've done much more crocheting (and some tatting) this past year than I have in a very long time. On a day when my to-do list would appear to be growing far longer than any possible list of accomplishments, I'm taking some comfort in these images of completed projects, however small or ornamental they may be in the grand scheme of things. Part of their value, in my mind, is their blatant inefficiency and time-consuming quality. They are a quiet protest against the impatient spin of this mad world, a small departure from the grid that helps me to simply be.