Mastery Year 1: Part 6: Post 3: Andy's Ministry

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?”

Year 3: Part 6: Post 2: Looking Foreward

I said a few days ago that it’s felt like fall for a while. And that’s true. But it didn’t look like fall. 

Only a few of the trees were just starting to turn. But last night a storm blew through campus and this morning, for whatever reason, the trees had turned. I don’t mean all of them, or that any turned completely overnight, but a lot more trees have a lot more yellow and orange in them now. It looks like fall.

It looks like Fall inside, too. We’ve got the whole campus pretty much decorated for the season, now—displays of pumpkins and corn stalks in doorways, little winter squashes on the tables in the Dining Hall, vines twine up the walls and across the ceiling of the Great Hall…we’ve worked hard to get it all set up over the last few weeks. The place looks good.

What we haven’t had to do is rake leaves on campus. Charlie says the best mulch for a tree is what it grows itself. All around here, where we have trees we have ground covered in leaves and broken twigs, all year round. The difference in the fall is the ground gets a fresh and more brightly colored coat. We do rake leaves off campus, though. Charlie has a deal worked with our neighbors where we come and take away their fallen leaves and compost them and use them to mulch our garden beds and farm fields. That will probably start next week. It’s fun—I remember last year how we hitched a cart to one of Joy’s horses and took that cart out along the main road picking up leaf piles….

But the advancing season is making me think of other things, too—all the people graduating. Graduation itself isn’t until February, of course, but after the school year ends at Samhain we won’t see the graduating students very much. I won’t even be on campus very much, though I’ll be here more than I was last year in order to keep my commitment to sleep outside an average of once per week. So it’s like Samhain is the beginning of the end or something.

38 people are graduating this year, including four mastery candidates. I’m not honestly all that concerned about most of them leaving—other than being happy for them, of course. I’m not really friends with most of them and some are people I hardly know. And some aren’t really going anywhere—Arthur, for example, is earning his Green Ring at Brigid, but he’s not leaving. His whole reason for coming here was to get involved in this community, so he’s probably going to stay on as an ally—as long as there’s room he can live on campus for a fee and help out.

But other people—this year’s graduating class includes Rick, Willa, Ham, Jim, three more of the Ravens, and Ebony. And both Rick and Ebony want to come back and get their rings, so they’ll be going into Absence. No offense to any of my friends who are staying on, of course, but right now I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty lonely around here next year.

In the meantime, I’ve started doing my outside thing. This past weekend I spent Saturday night out in my spot—I would have spent Sunday night out also, but that storm was coming in and I turned chicken. My plan is to do two nights a week when I can, so I’ll have the leeway to skip a week when I have to. My parents think I’m crazy, of course. Specifically, my mother is angry that Charlie is “making” me do this. She’s grumbled some about what am I paying room and board for if I’m not allowed to sleep inside. Which is all very strange because my mother loves camping—she and Dad go camping for a few days at a time at least once or twice a year and says she wishes she could afford to do it more often. And she knows I used to love going camping with them. So why is she complaining about Charlie “making” me do something she knows I enjoy and that she wishes she could do herself?

But I’ve long since learned not to worry about my parents’ reactions to this place. It’s just because they love me.

Year 3: Third Interlude

Hi, all,  it's Daniel, 2015, here.

Last post was, I think, the first I've mentioned Jim. Because it's the first time, I had to introduce him to readers, and I think I made it sound as if I'd hardly interacted with him before, but that's not quite right.

It's true that I hadn't spent a lot of time with him until summer of 2002, in part because we were in different social circles because I was friends with Ollie and he was not. It's also true that sometime over that summer that changed and that by the time he graduated we were pretty good friends. But it's not like we had never hung out before, because campus just wasn't big enough to avoid somebody by accident for three years running.

I do remember staying up late with him one night watching "heat lighting," as he called it, and him showing me how to play the tin whistle. I don't remember if that was the first time I deliberately sought his company and I don't remember if that started because I couldn't sleep--though, that summer I did have trouble sleeping sometimes. I've asked, and he remembers even less than I do. He does remember my "amazing" ability to move in the dark. I didn't think it was amazing then, and I don't honestly think it's amazing now. Anyone could do it, with a little practice.

But that was the summer people started saying they were surprised by me and what I could do. Or they said I reminded them of Charlie, which I took as a compliment but found bizarre, because I didn't think of us as similar at all. I don't growl at people, I mean, and I'm nowhere near as smart.

I had changed, but I didn't know it.

What Charlie's various crazy assignments had done was to encourage me to treat certain things as important and to notice certain details, like sounds, scents, and animal tracks. Knowledge went with that noticing, because I learned from my explorations and because I was interested enough to remember readings or classroom activities that were relevant, but I wasn't the most knowledgeable naturalist on campus. If I stood out, and other people said I did, it was because I was starting to feel at home outside--and less at home anywhere else.

Would I have become a naturalist without Charlie's influence? I think I might have, I was always kind of interested in natural science, but I wouldn't have gotten there that quickly or as deeply. Anyway, there's no way I can ever know.

There were things of Charlie's that didn't rub off on me--his growling, for example.

It's not just that I like people more than Charlie does, it's that I like them in much the same way that I like other living things. I see an ant carrying a pupa and I want to know where it's going and why--not for any reason, I just want to know. Getting to know people feels exactly the same way.

Reading my previous post--it sounds kind of romantic, actually, the way I described spending the night out in the field playing music with Jim. That bothers me--it shouldn't. It shouldn't bother me that a reader might wonder if perhaps I am gay or bi, but it kinda does. Anyway, there was never anything sexual between me and Jim--but I was pursuing him. I wanted to know more about him, the same way I might want to know more about an ant. So, as I might give over an afternoon to an ant, I gave that night to Jim.

I think, perhaps, that kind of fascination, that desire to know, is restricted, for most people, to romantic or sexual interest. I don't know why, nor do I know why I am different. I do know that I was always curious about people, that I always got along with others, and that I've always preferred to listen rather than to speak. But starting that third summer there was a kind of shift. It's hard to describe, and saying that people started to seem like bugs to me does not really help....

The thing is, I guess, that I don't need anything from a bug. An ant can't hurt me, and, individually, it can't help me, either. I'm not drawn to it for any reason, other than that it's alive. And--I can be as selfish and self-centered as the next person, sometimes, I definitely need and want things from some people, but beyond that, and through it, there is an interest that has nothing to do with getting anything. And that interest kind of expanded and deepened for me over the years I was on campus.

For me, the existence of a story, whether it belonged to an ant or to a human being, became reason enough for me to pursue.

I think the first person I approached in that spirit was Charlie. He always fascinated me and I never quite knew why, only that whatever he could teach me I was willing to learn. And yet I never asked him about himself, not in any depth. If he were an ant, I let him carry his burden without ever trying to find out what it was or where he was going with it. Maybe that's why, in the end, he gave his story to me.

But I'm not going to tell it right now.

Year 3: Part 3: Post 13: A Little Night Music

I couldn't sleep last night, not for a long time.

It was out first really hot night, and although we keep the windows open at night in the summer so it's not so bad, I'm really not used to it. It seems like just last week I was wearing my long johns and hat to bed and here I was lying on top of the covers in my boxers. I'd have taken those off, too, but I wanted the door open for more of a breeze. Everything was just too sticky.

Finally I got up and stood out on my balcony for a while and watched the lightening bugs out on the lawn. It was pretty dark out there, I could hardly even see the Enchanted Forest because the clouds covered the moon, but every few minutes I saw a flash of distant lightening. There was no thunder.

After a bit I heard a tin whistle from below me on the porch. I assumed it was Charlie, but thought it odd for him to go out to the porch to play, instead of from his balcony. I threw on some actual shorts over my boxers and went downstairs to find out what was going on.

But it wasn't Charlie playing on the porch, it was Jim.

Jim started the same year I did, but he's graduating this year. I know him to say hi to, and we've had a couple classes together, but we've never really hung out much. He's one of Allen's students, and, like Ollie, has been studying reason as part of a personal growth path. But he and Ollie don't get along very well--in part because they have that in common. They both seem to think that reason is a process that, properly applied, should always result in the same, correct answer, the same way one plus two is always three. That Ollie's reason has confirmed his faith as a Baptist and Jim's reason has lead him to almost militant atheism seems to irritate both of them.

I never meant to avoid Jim, I've always liked and respected him, but I've spent a lot of time hanging out with Ollie and that meant not hanging out with Jim--simply because the two were rarely together.

Not that I could recognize Jim in the dark, but he was wearing a glow-in-the-dark wristwatch, which Charlie would never do. I waited until he got to a convenient stopping-place and spoke to me and then I recognized his voice.

"Who's there?" he asked, in a friendly way.

"Daniel," I told him.

"Did I wake you? Here, sit down, if you want."

"I couldn't sleep. I didn't know you could play. You're good." I sat down near him.

"Thanks. Yeah, Kit's been teaching me. It's my art, you know."

"No, I didn't know. And I didn't know Kit could play tin whistle, either. I thought only Charlie did."

"Kit can play anything," he said, which is true, as far as I can tell. She can learn a new instrument in just a couple of minutes by playing around with it and seeing how it relates to the instruments she knows. I've seen her do it. "I got the idea from Charlie," Jim continued, "but I asked Kit to teach me. Charlie's not a master in music."

"That's true, he's not."

"Hey, heat-lighting! It's been going every couple of minutes."

"I know. I was watching it from my balcony. Except did you know there's no such thing as heat-lighting?"

"There isn't? Then what's that?"

"Regular lightening," I told him. "It's just too far away to hear."

He thought about that for a moment.

"Oh, ok, duh," he concluded. "That explains a lot."

"Didn't you get a degree in physics?" I asked, giving him a hard time. It's true, by the way, but unlike a lot of people with a prior degree he couldn't get out of most of his classes here. I guess there isn't a lot of material in common between a liberal arts degree (which this is, technically) and a BS in physics. And, evidently, he hadn't studied the physics of weather much.

"I just hadn't thought about it," he admitted, embarrassed. "Man is not a reasoning beast by nature, we have to work at it. And I am a man."

"Hey, will you teach me to play a little?" I asked. "I've tried, but I can't even get notes to come out."

"Sure. You just need a little more breath-control. I could show you the basics now, but I'm afraid we'll wake everybody up."

"Let's go out to the Edge of the World," I suggested.

"Sure, but it's dark. I have to go upstairs and get my flashlight."

"No, you don't. I'll guide you."

"You have your flashlight?"

"No. I don't need one. Neither do you. Come on!"

And so we went out to the Edge of the World and I made sure he didn't get lost or fall over anything on the way. Then he taught me how to control my breath so the whistle didn't squeak or squeal and he showed me how to play the instrument's sixteen-note scale. I practiced that a few times and then we watched the lightening for a while and then I think we must both have fallen asleep because I don't remember anything else until morning.

"Dude, you're barefoot?" were the first words I heard upon waking and it took me a few seconds to work out where I was and why. I looked down at my feet. My toes wiggled. I was itchy all over from lying in the grass without my shirt.

"Yeah, so?" I asked.

"You can walk around in the dark without flashlight or even shoes? That's pretty impressive."

"Not really. I just use my feet to feel my way. I've been out here a million times before, I'm used to it. And there's nothing sharp to step on this year." Last year there were a couple of exotic thistle rosettes until Charlie rooted them out. They were nasty to step on.

"Were you so blase about those skills when you first saw Charlie use them?"

"How did you know I learned it from him? I didn't think you knew him well enough to know what he can do."

"Men are capable of learning reason: I am a man."

Year 2: Part 3: Post 9: Father's Day

My Dad came up for a visit.

My parents have been on campus before, but only for a few hours and only to visit me. This time I got permission for my Dad to stay two nights and really explore the school a bit. It was his idea. I can't say what this means to me--my Dad's always been a little suspicious of the school, so it really does mean a lot that he wanted to come check out the place himself.

It was also a sort of a Father's Day thing, since he's doing something with my brother and sister-in-law for actual Father's Day and I don't think I'll be able to make it.

He came on campus Monday evening--that was my suggestion, since I wanted him to be able to come to some campus activities and there really isn't much going on over the weekend, most of the time. Also I didn't want him here Wednesday or Thursday night because those nights are for Dead Poet's Society and Paleolithic Dinner and both are invitation only and I didn't want to choose between those events and Dad.

In any case, when I got finished my afternoon horticulture shift, there was Dad, waiting for me on the porch, reading a newspaper. He joined me for dinner, then I showed him some of the trails I've been working on, then he poked around in the library while I did homework. Tuesday he joined me for breakfast (he didn't get up with me at five for trail work) and then helped out with horticulture for the morning. He's a pretty good gardener, so he really was helpful. I'd thought about trying to get permission for him to join me for classes, even though visiting family usually don't, but Tuesday afternoon I have Martial Arts and he wasn't interested in that. I think he went for a walk.

That evening, he joined me for Philosopher's Stone Soup.

As you might remember, that's Allen's weekly dinner party. It's sort of like a potluck, except that instead of finished dishes you're supposed to bring ingredients. We cook together, and then, over dinner, Allen practices a rather maddening form of Socratic Method on anyone foolish enough to reply to his question "does anyone have anything they'd like to talk about?" Of course, he's completely charming about it, so we keep coming back again and again.

Dad and I got out to the picnic tables a little early. Only Allen and Kit and Allen's son, David were there yet, and Allen was sitting on one of the tables, strumming his guitar while talking about something. They'd started the grill and were waiting for the coals to develop. As we walked up, the two of them seemed to come to a decision and launched into Unchained Melody, Kit singing and Allen accompanying.

Now, Dad pretty clearly thinks Kit is incredibly hot, which she is, and watching her sing, especially that song, he was just beside himself. It was really quite funny. Kit must have known he was struggling not to oggle her, but she ignored him. When the song was over, Dad and I and David all clapped. Allen and Kit looked at each other and shrugged and clearly decided to go ahead and give a concert. Next, they did "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow." I've always thought of that as a woman's song--it was first recorded by a woman--but Allen sang it. Kit played her cello, but did not sing. I think they did it that way to muddle up my Dad (since the song is about sex and he clearly hoped to be flustered by her singing it). But Allen did a fantastic job.

He doesn't have the voice to do the song really well. His singing voice is ok, but not more than that, but the thing is he brought out all the vulnerability of the lyrics, like I could hear the song as if I'd never heard it before. Maybe it was hearing it in a man's voice that did it. I could identify better, or something.

I'd like to know that your love
is love I can be sure of.
So tell me now, and I won't ask again;
will you still love me tomorrow?

He is a therapist, after all.

Then Kit asked David if he could sing.

"I know Uncle John's Band," he volunteered. "And I can drum. I'm pretty good at drumming."

"Well, then," said Kit, and they all launched right in, the three of them, David singing to his father's guitar, Kit's cello, and his own drumming with his hands on the table-top, all three singing in harmony for the chorus. David's voice hasn't changed yet and he sings quite well.

By the time they were done there were a dozen of us in the audience and more on the way, so the concert stopped. David left because he said he was having dinner with his sisters and mom and then going home. I introduced my Dad all around (of course Allen and Kit had known he was coming) and we started taking out our ingredients. Dad brought a box of Quaker oatmeal. I brought a quart of cleaned dandelion petals (I cleaned them over lunch and yes, it took forever to do that many. It's the end of the season, so I  wanted to go all-out). Allen had a bottle of red wine and Kit had a dozen eggs. Nora,of course, brought honey and also four scented taper candled she'd made. And so on.

A lot of people showed up, so we had a lot of ingredients. Jeff, the ally who teaches physics, saved his offering for last; an insulated bag filled with a couple of lumps of dry ice. Allen's eye's widened excitedly and he looked towards the wine. I could see a wine cooler taking shape.

Allen is almost always the one who comes up with a plan for all our disparate ingredients and he did it again that night. Under his direction, some of my dandelion petals, four of the eggs, the flour Oak brought, Nora's honey, and some ginger from Andy all went into these little cookie things that we fried on a griddle over the fire in walnut oil brought by Jim, another of Allen's students.

We hard-boiled the rest of the eggs and put them in a salad with the rest of my petals, the dandelion greens Veery brought (we'd harvested the dandelion parts together right before breakfast), Dillon's spinach, DZ's garlic, Veronica's onion grass, and Echo's goat cheese. Ollie'd brought apple cider vinegar, so that, with the oil, plus ginger and a spoonful of raspberry jam made a dressing.

And the dry ice. Rick had brought woodsorrel, a wild plant that looks a little like clover and tastes like rhubarb. He boiled the ginger in a little hot water, added the woodsorrel, strained the liquid into a big bowl, and added honey and raspberry jam. Then, Allen poured in his bottle of wine. The whole thing was steaming and didn't look like much fun in hot weather. That's when Jeff added his dry ice. Instant cold carbonated beverage!

To get all of this done we were all chopping and peeling and flipping griddle cookies and whatever else, while Kit kept stealing spoonfuls of honey and various hijinks ensued.

My Dad was especially impressed by the juggling. After the eggs were boiled, of course Allen couldn't resist juggling all eight of them at once. But they had to be peeled, so Jeff, who is also a juggler, snagged one of the eggs out of the air. Allen kept juggling as though nothing had changed. Then, whenever Jeff needed a new egg to peel he'd snag it out of the air as casually as if he were grabbing it out of a bowl and Allen would keep going. When Jeff finally took the third-to-the-last egg, Allen switched to juggling the last two eggs one-handed for a moment, then threw first one, then the other, very high and walked away. Jeff caught both eggs as though nothing special were happening and the rest of us did not overtly react at all. The next minute, Allen was teaching Veery how to mix oil and vinegar for the dressing.

"Does he ever stop moving?" my Dad asked me. He isn't much of a cook, except for grilling, so aside from flipping cookies Dad mostly just watched. "This is amazing," he said, a moment later, to no one in particular. "Thank you. You don't normally let outsiders join you, do you?"

"Rules are for people," Andy explained, simple. "People aren't for rules." Dad looked surprised and impressed by the Biblical allusion.

But when we finally sat down to dinner and Allen asked his question "does anyone have anything you want to talk about?" my Dad spoke up.

"Yes, I do," he said, a little tensely. "Honestly now, are you trying to convert my son?"

I think I turned beat red. Some of the others looked uncomfortable. Allen grinned and looked at me for just a moment, as though asking me for permission to do what he was about to do. My Dad couldn't see me, since I was a little behind him, so I nodded.

"Me, personally, or some larger group collectively?" Allen asked.

"Both."

"What do you mean by convert?"

"You know, trying to make him stop being Christian."

"I am not trying to make Daniel stop being Christian. No larger entity on campus has formulated that intention either, so far as I know. If you want to know whether any other individuals have, you will have to ask them. Why? Has something concerned you of late?"

"I mean no disrespect," my Dad said, a little uncertain. I half expected Kit to say something--I'm sure she found my Dad's ideas of respect and disrespect deeply ironic--but she held her tongue in order to give Allen room to work. He smiled and indicated he'd taken no offense. "It's just that lately he's been getting...ideas. His preoccupations, well, frankly they seem pretty pagan to me."

"Alright. Let's approach this reasonably," Allen suggested. "We want to know if Daniel is showing pagan tendencies. So what is pagan? What does pagan mean?"

"Not Christian."

"Alright. What does Christian mean?"

"Knowing and loving Jesus."

"Who is Jesus?"

"Oh, come on!" Dad raised his voice a little. "You have to know who Jesus is!"

"Well, since you have just implied that you think I am pagan, perhaps I don't? Why don't you tell me who Jesus us, so that we can both be clear?"

"Jesus is the Son of God," my Dad explained. "God sent His only son to be born as a human so he could die on the cross and pay for all our sins. Through Jesus, and only Jesus, can we get to Heaven."

"Alright. So, you think your son, Daniel, has preoccupations that indicate he might not know or love Jesus?"

"Correct."

"What does knowing and loving mean? How could you tell?"

"Someone who loves Jesus follows His teachings."

"Which are?"

"To love God, to love your neighbor as yourself, and to do unto others as you would have done unto you."

"You're defining Jesus as part of the Godhead, right?"

"Right."

"So, to love God one must follow a rule that says to love God?"

"Um..." My Dad is smart enough to know when he's been caught in circular logic.

"So, again, how do you love God?"

"You just do."

"That doesn't sound very definite."

"Um..."

"Do you actually know how to love God?"

"Yes! Of course!"

"Then tell me how."

"I already told you."

"No, you didn't. You provided an example of circular reasoning. If you can't tell me how you, individually, love God, I'm not sure I believe that you do."

"I'm searching, ok?" My Dad suddenly let most of his guard down. I'd expected him to get angry and instead he got vulnerable and honest. "I do the best I can. I go to church, I read my Bible, I talk to other people in the faith. I do the best I can and I just hope that's good enough. I don't think anyone can do more." Allen nodded.

"How is that different from what you've seen Daniel do?" He asked. I grinned.

"He's doing moon rituals and studying magic and reading all these books about goddesses and fairies and whatever else. There's nothing Christian in that."

"How do you know?"

"Excuse me?"

"You define 'Christian' as knowing and loving Jesus, who is God. But you just admitted to me that you don't actually know what loving God consists of. So how can you say what it doesn't consist of?"

"I, I can't."

"Mr. Kretzman," Allen addressed my father, "I've heard it said that the beginning of wisdom is ignorance. If so, than congratulations." There was no sarcasm in his voice at all. He meant it.

We moved on to other topics, and other people joined in the conversation. We ate our dinner and drank our wine cooler, which was excellent, and the sun gradually went down. Tiki torches burning citronella oil kept the mosquitoes at bay, and we were surrounded by the season's first fireflies. Allen reduced several other people to ignorance, and some fought a lot harder than my father had. And we had reason to know and trust Allen already. Dad didn't.

But my Dad is, at bottom, a good guy. He gets uncomfortable with some of the things I do because he doesn't understand it and he's concerned for me, but he's not arrogant or narrow-minded about it. It takes a big person to let Allen do his thing, to really engage with him, and my Dad did it.

Why did he do it? I keep thinking about it. I do it because I trust Allen. I think well of him. But my Dad doesn't know Allen, so how could he know the man wasn't just messing with him? The answer poked up into my consciousness just as I was going to sleep the other night and it made me smile, alone there in the dark.

My Dad trusted Allen because he trusts me.


[Next Post: Monday, June 16th: Interlude]

Part 8: Post 9: A Winter's Conversation

“Well, it’s National White People Think About Race Day,” said Jahred, cynically. He is white, by the way.

“What?” I asked, startled. A group of us were sitting around the Great Hall. It was snowing outside, hard but very pretty, and I had been reading while the others played cards or talked. Joanna was telling one of the Ravens about her tarot deck while Willa looked on. This was just the other day.

“It’s Martin Luther King Day,” explained Jahred.

“Is it?” asked Ollie. “It’s what comes of not watching TV, I suppose. Not knowing.”

“And not being in high school,” I added. “No day off, and no thematically related lessons.”

“Exactly,” said Jahred, leaning forward, engaged. “No teachers to tell you to think about race, this day, as if they really thought it was important. But they don’t talk about it the rest of the year.”

“Martin Luther King Jr. has always been a relatively safe black man,” commented Greg, dryly. “Since he died.”

“Like Jesus,” said Andy.

“Huh?” said I. “Jesus wasn’t black, was he?”

“You’re talking like a pagan now!” crowed Joanna. “You said ‘was,’ not ‘is’!” I ignored her. The others ignored me. Ollie put down his cards.

“You’re right,” he told Andy. “Jesus was a radical, as was Martin Luther King, His follower. Neither of them were easy to deal with or "safe" politically. They weren’t domesticated. We forget that about them. I didn’t know you thought about that sort of thing.”

“I didn’t used to,” Andy replied.

"Tarot of the Cat People" Card

“Not thinking about race is a privilege of white people,” put in Greg, maybe steering the conversation back, trying to deny us that privilege. Or maybe he was just saying whatever came into his head. He didn’t look like he was in teaching mode. He looked casual, almost sleepy, with his feet curled up into his robes, his head leaning against his pale brown fist. I could see the falling snow reflected in his glasses when I looked at him.

“We are all white here,” said Jim, looking around. “Why?”

“Hey!” objected Oak, who looks, maybe, Indian. I mean, from India. I’ve never asked, though.

“You don’t count. You’re adopted,” Jim declared. Oak looked dumbfounded. “I mean, why don’t non-white people come here? As students, I mean.” He nodded at Greg, who never was a student, acknowledging him. “What about this place doesn’t attract people of color?”

“We do, in fact, have some black students,” pointed out Ollie. “Not many, but there aren’t very many black people in college, right? Maybe we just aren’t any different, in that respect, than any other school?”

Jim shook his head.

“Nationally, almost 12 percent of college students are black. Our student body is 102 people, and we have four black students. That’s low. Plus Hispanics, Asians...I haven't counted it all up.”

“Well, most of us are Wiccan,” volunteered Raven. “Are there any black Wiccans?”

“Of course there are black Wiccans!” declared Willa. “Two of them go here!”

“I didn’t mean are there any, I meant there aren’t very many. Aren’t most black pagans into Vodou  or Santeria?”

“I thought Santeria was a form of Christianity? They worship the saints.” Joanna frowned a little as she said it.

“What is Santeria?” asked Andy.

“It is not Christianity,” asserted Ollie. “Even the Catholics don’t worship saints. They venerate them.”

“’Venerate’ from ‘Venus,’ same as ‘venereal,’” giggled Willa. “The original sacredness!”

“Whatever you say,” said Ollie. Will stopped giggling and frowned.

“In any case,” added Willa, “no, not all black pagans are in the African diaspora religions. Religion isn’t about skin color. You can be in whatever religion you want to be, however the gods call you.”

“You can’t always tell, anyway,” said Oak. “I’m mostly Pakistani, but my great-grandfather was British, or maybe Scottish. I’ve always thought that’s why Celtic Wicca appealed to me.” Raven was nodding.

“You can’t tell,” she affirmed. “And anyway, the color you are now might not be the color you were in a past life. I’m mostly Scandinavian, but I have strong past-life memories of being Greek. Even when I was being raised Christian, I was always fascinated by the Greek gods and goddesses. And, you know, there are people here who feel Celtic, or who feel Native American, no matter what their color. It’s probably all past-life stuff.”

“Does that even make sense?” questioned Ollie. “You’re supposing that race is directly linked to religious affiliation, and if it doesn’t seem to be, you must have a distant ancestor or a past life!”

“That isn’t what I meant!”

“Why can’t we all just focus on finding the truth,” asked Andy. “The truth is color-blind.” But everyone ignored him.

“Do you think religious affiliation should be color-blind?” Greg asked. “Should everyone be able to adopt Native American traditions, for example?”

“Why not?” said Raven. “You teach Buddhism to people whose ancestry isn’t Japanese.”

“Buddhism wanders. The Japanese do not own it. Anyway, I don’t think Japan has anything to worry about from imperialism.” Greg smiled a little as he said it. That smile the only time I've ever seen him express any hint of pride in Japan as a world power. It seemed odd, coming from him.

“I think it’s ok for a white person to become a…"Joanna paused for a moment, thinking, "--whatever you call someone with Native American beliefs, or a Vodouisant, or whatever else, but you’ve got to really do it. Join the tribe, or whatever else, whatever that tradition demands that you do. Hanging a dream catcher on your rear-view mirror isn’t a religion.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Ollie. “I wouldn’t like it if someone were running around saying

Rose Hips in Snow

they were Christian and they’d never been baptized.”

“Or didn’t really believe,” added Andy. “Except that’s all you have to do, is believe. Christianity isn’t for saints. Not particularly.”

“You know whose birthday is on the same day as King’s?” asked Jim. “Dian Fossey. Now there is another subsequently domesticated martyr.”

I looked out the window. The snow was piling up on the porch railing, covering the rose bushes, making them soft, white humps. I was drinking white cedar tea. It smelled good.