It’s curious, of the whole candidates’ group, all of us
returned either this year or last year. There are no third-year candidates. Of
course, a lot of people do finish their candidacies in only a year or two, but
three and four-year candidacies aren’t uncommon. I could end up having one—I already
know that I’m not earning my green ring this year, and I wouldn’t want to. And
the two who earned their rings this past Brigid, Yves and Wren, were both
third-years.
But the Brigid before that, no one came back to start a
candidacy. And Yves and Wren were the only two who came back before then. So,
no third or fourth years, now.
All this must seem pretty dry and random. Like, who cares,
right? And it’s almost that. I mean, I was just thinking about things the other
day and it popped into my head—huh, no third-years. But we’re a very small
group, we candidates, and small groups are prone to weird fluctuations
according to chance. That’s one of the things I learned in grad school. The
laws of probability, the type of reasoning that flows from them, it’s a way of
thinking as unusual, as magical, as any kind of mysticism. Maybe more so,
because the magic, for all its power, hides in plain sight.
Half the magic and mysticism here is, in fact, scientific
reason. Charlie has scientific training, as do both Allen and Joy, in slightly
different ways. Logic, quite specifically, was the teaching my friend, Jim
received here, and reason was a big part of Ollie’s training as a novice. And
of course, Charlie sent me off to grad school and a degree in environmental
science quite deliberately.
And then there is Andy.
Andy, the one-time bicycle thief, the recovering heroin
addict, the born-again devotee of Jesus Christ. He’s not so entertaining as he
was when he first arrived here, blithering with chronic hypothermia and
religious fire, but he remains the real deal, dedicated to tripartite monotheism
in a proudly polytheistic enclave, and happily oblivious to any kind of thought
that moves in a straight line.
I dropped in at his bicycle shop the other day. He doesn’t
own it yet—his credit is not yet repaired to the point where he can get the
loans a business owner is likely to need—but the owner has essentially retired.
In most ways that matter, it is Andy’s shop. And you can tell.
When you come in, there is the normal bike shop smell of
rubber and grease, but also something else—the scent of coffee and, sometimes,
baked goods. Andy’s set up a sort of bar where people can come in and sit and
chat and drink coffee as long as they like, while he works and chats back, or
rings up customers. The coffee’s free, though there’s a donation jar marked
COFFEE FUND on the counter. Sometimes there’s fruit, or chocolate, or
doughnuts, or baked goods on the counter, also free.
The rack of cycling
magazines doubles as a library—you can read as long as you like, without
buying, and stuck in among the cycling mags are copies of National Geographic,
the Christian Science Monitor, and The Watchtower. There’s always a couple of
people hanging out, and Andy asks them for a hand, or delivers random lessons
in bicycle maintenance, when he gets the urge.
There are bulletin boards all along the back wall, some for
community notices, some for cycling-specific messages, some for photographs of
customers having adventures on their bicycles. The boards are all framed by
rows of Christian bumper-stickers, and Christian rock often spouts from an old
boom-box in a corner. He’s still only here part-time, since he’s mostly on campus.
Two shop assistants make up the difference. But the place comes alive when he
enters it.
This shop is Andy’s ministry, as he puts it. He’s set up a
place for people to chat for the express purpose of getting to know his
customers and providing a space for them to reveal any problems they might
have, which he then solves, if he can. He teaches courses in bicycle repair,
often to various underprivileged groups and sometimes for free. He rents out
the warehouse space to AA and NA meetings. He organizes races, small concerts,
and guess-the-number-of-jelly beans raffles to raise money for various, mostly
local causes. There is a second donation jar labeled “Buy a Kid a Bike,” and he
periodically uses its contents to give free bikes to people in need—often children,
but sometimes adults. He never draws attention to the program, though, and
never identifies the recipients of the bikes.
All of the service he offers is practical. Despite the
literature and the bumper stickers and the music, he never talks about Jesus
with his “parishioners,” unless they bring Him up. Even then, his religious
talk is minimal. He offers a friendly ear, information, money, and free
bicycles to anyone who needs it.
“No preaching?” I asked, teasing him a little.
“Did Jesus preach
to the lepers,” he responded, “or did He heal them?”
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