The Kindness of Strangers: Adventures with One Wild Engine

I am late for my bus. About eight months late. 

I'm also a little late with this blog. But I promised myself I wouldn't write about this experience until I accomplished two successful trips without incident. It's taken longer than one might imagine.

Sometime toward the close of last year I conceived the idea of riding the city bus to work. The reasons vary: I'm a little worried about the rain forests; it's cheaper; and there's always that whole simplicity thing. (Would Jesus own a car if the Father had set the incarnation in twenty-first century America? The one time he rode anywhere he used Hertz Rent-A-Burro.)

But mostly it's easier to give the reasons I didn't take the bus - not for a long time, at any rate. There's convenience, for one. I live three-quarters of a mile or so from the stop I need. But that's sort of a ruse. I own a serviceable bicycle, and every City of Corpus Christi bus mounts a bike rack. I couldn't hide behind scheduling. These reliable diesel conestogas set off at half-hour intervals all day long. Arrival at the South Texas School of Christian Studies, where I teach, does not require a transfer; they set me down on the campus of Texas A&M University of Corpus Christi, hardly a PGA par-five tee-shot from my office.

No, the real reason was the haunting fear of looking foolish, of not knowing what I was doing, and note knowing it in front of an audience. "Now I know,"says the Green Lady of Venus to Elwin Ransom in C. S. Lewis' Perelandra, "that people in your world do not like to be laughed at." Well, at any rate I don't care for it. And, like Lewis' hero, I'm an academic. I saw riding the bus as one more way to demonstrate the ineptitude of someone with a terminal degree when he attempts to do what folks who didn't finish high school do on a daily basis without a second thought.

So I hesitated - straight through the start of the spring term, telling myself that I'd figure it out during Spring Break. But I let the second target go by as well, temporizing that when summer came I'd have more chances to experiment without running the risk of getting to work late. So, of course, I found myself hull-down on August with another academic year ready to roll by. So it was that one morning, a fortnight or so before classes began, I asked Becky to deposit me at the little shelter at the corner of Texan Trail and Alameda, there to await my fate. I'd like to share a few lessons I've learned so far.

First of all, there is the ability to laugh at oneself. Here is a brief chronicle of my misadventures on that first day:

• Arrived late: Bus #1.
• Got on the next bus that happened along, only to discover that it was the #19, not the #5, and was going the opposite direction I desired. The kindly driver deposited me at the nearest stop and I hiked double-time back to the original station: Bus #2.
• About a hundred feet from my stop, I looked up to see the vehicle I wanted roll majestically into traffic: Bus #3.
• Waited a half-hour for the next one, carefully read the scrolling sign above its front windshield, like the mark of the beast, saw it was indeed the #5, climbed on board, payed the seventy-five cent fare, and sat down: Bus #4.

Let me just say that when I hove up at work, nearly an hour behind my usual time, my coworkers displayed none of the civility of the Green Lady of Perelandra. 

Second, there is the humility of needing help. Like Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, I quickly found myself depending on the kindness of strangers. When I finally thumped down on board the correct bus that first day, I found myself seated by a friend, a former pupil, in fact, on his way home from working the night shift at a temp job he's taken until going abroad on mission work. As we chatted, I suddenly realized I had left out a key calculation in my new mode of transport. "John," I half-whispered (I don't know why the soto-voce; no one appeared interested), "how do you get them to stop when you need off?" My student replied with the hesitant and embarrassed tone of one who wants to answer a stupid question without making the questioner feel stupid. "Uh, you pull this little cord here." 

Then there was the next day when, as originally planned, I biked to the stop. It was indeed true that each bus sported a bike rack, but I had no idea how the device worked. The driver unshipped herself and demonstrated - it involves pulling a handle to lower the device, then raising a bar to secure the bike's front wheel. She waved aside my apologies in the kindest possible way. 

Best of all was the time I boarded for the homeward voyage only to find the driver absent. (My school sits at the end of the route and the drivers regularly disembark there, perhaps for some sort of union-mandated bathroom break.) I slid my cash in the slot, watched it disappear, and heard a strangled cry from the bowels of the device. When the charioteer returned and I confessed my dilemma, he gently explained that the driver turns off the meter upon leaving, and one should not use it until he returns. Meanwhile, it seems I'd jammed the device and it wouldn't accept fares, so everyone for the remainder of the route got a free ride. If you caught the #5 that afternoon, you're welcome. 

Finally, there is the loss of control. If I take the bus, I don't decide when I leave and when I arrive. Well, I do, but within a window. For some thirty-eight years now I have had pretty much sovereign control over my departure and arrival times. On bus days (I ride about three times per week), I have to hit the target named by another. And this has its compensations: I can read, talk on the phone, stare at the beautiful scenery along Ocean Drive, and let someone else worry about minor irritations like steering and braking. 

Most of all, though, has been a renewed sense, not just of gratitude, but of wonder. I too seldom stop to contemplate the goodness of God, who built a reliable world that operates on a consistent basis. We talk about natural "laws," but the medievals spoke of the "kindly inclining" of inanimate objects, an equally metaphorical but far more gracious turn of speech. Similarly, I could speak of the drivers and dispatchers of the Corpus Christi public transportation system as doing their jobs or following their orders. But I have come to prefer thinking of them as showing a kindly inclining to give me a lift, get me where I need to go, put me back on track when I stray, help me with my bike, and forgive me my blunders. "Route" and "routine" come from the same root, and I have learned a new appreciation for those who routinely run their routes in order to free me from worry. Sure, just as God's consistent physical universe means that sometimes hurricanes happen as well as spring showers, so keeping a consistent schedule means that sometimes the drivers leave me behind when I run late, but the alternative is to ask for chaos.

In short, I have learned to appreciate the miracle described by G. K. Chesterton in his novel The Man Who Was Thursday. 

The rare, the strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street, or to Baghdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! It is Victoria.

And so I give thanks for those two consecutive days when I looked up and behold, the bus said "TAMU-CC," and lo! It was TAMU-CC.

TOLE LEGE: A Review of "Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God" by Ralph Wood

Of all the many good things I could think of to say about The Company They Keep, Diana Glyer's magisterial study of the Oxford writer's group The Inklings, the best would be that it made me want to put down Glyer and pick up Tolkien. The best criticism directs the reader away from the critique and toward the critiqued. 

I can say the same thing about Ralph Wood's Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God. Wood, University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University, offers a book of literary criticism that actually brings the reader closer to the subject. His writing illuminates both the writer and the writing in ways that invites new readers in and old readers back. I finished Chesterton with my paperback copy of The Man Who Was Thursday at my elbow so that I could begin it as soon as I read Wood's last page.

Not that Wood indulges in hagiography. He takes Chesterton to task for his simplistic rejection of the theory of evolution, his jingoistic support of the First World War, and other errors. None of this, however, is done with glee, nor does Wood make it his main theme. In his "Tale of a Tub," Jonathan Swift sarcastically scoffs at critics who point out a work's flaws "with the Caution of a Man that walks thro' Edenborough Streets in a Morning, who is indeed as careful as he can, to watch diligently, and spy out the Filth in his Way, not that he is curious to observe the Colour and Complexion of the Ordure, or take its Dimensions, much less to be paddling in, or tasting it: but only with a Design to come out as cleanly as he may." Wood is this kind of "failed" critic: If he warns us of what he sees as GKC's weaknesses, it is to help the reader "come out as cleanly as he may."

Wood deals in turn with a selection of Chesterton's works: Orthodoxy, Christendom in Dublin, Lepanto, The New Jerusalem, The Flying Inn, the Ball and the Cross, The Ballad of the White Horse, and The Man Who Was Thursday. He unpacks each book with skill and enthusiasm. His voice reveals his relish of Chesterton, and his notes and bibliography reveal the depth of his scholarship. (Another similarity between Glyer and Wood: Both write incredibly readable and valuable notes. I urge the reader not to skip them! I could wish that Wood's publisher, Baylor Press, had seen fit to use footnotes instead of endnotes. The constant turning back and forth becomes tedious; I repeat, however, that it is well worth the effort.) I hasten to add that this is not a set of discrete essays, though a reader wishing to approach a given book or poem could not do better than to read the chapter that lays it under examination. Wood has written a homogenous book, one that, in peering into Chesterton's thought in a given work or passage, does not lose sight of the whole man and his complete, and very consistent, thought.

We need - or at least I need - this kind of help with the Great Paradoxist. In dealing with The Man Who Was Thursday Wood quotes the famous lines from Walt Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

He quotes it as an idea equally applicable to Chesterton (who admired Whitman) and makes a good case. I, however, seem to see the contrast more than the comparison, and hear GKC say,

Do I repeat myself?
Very well, then, I repeat myself.
(I am large, I contain consistency.)

Chesterton was a large man, both physically and intellectually. A story tells that when a woman berated him for preaching up the Great War while not himself being at the Western Front, he replied, "Madam, if you will step around to the other side of me, you will see that I am!" I have the same experience of Chesterton the writer. He seems to embrace the entirety of any issue and occasionally, when I believe he has chosen only one side of an argument and ignored the other, I turn the next page and find that he is on that side as well. But Wood masterfully demonstrates that what can appear as inconsistency is in fact comprehensiveness. Chesterton, while never afraid to take a stand, is too large a man to entrench himself in a simplistic reading that ignores the complexities of the debate.

Ralph Wood has given us a very good and very necessary book on one of the great minds of the twentieth century. That his was a Christian mind is perhaps not, as C. S. Lewis learned, incidental. As Chesterton's prophecies of a new barbarism come true all around us, it is more important than ever for Christians to hear and heed his words. Chesterton provides a vital aid in that task.

Apache Cicada - A Poem for Late Summer

Yesterday I sat alone in the car for a few moments while Becky ran into the house to retrieve some overlooked item. I had the windows down (it's August in South Texas, after all), and could hear the cicadas singing their road drill song in the oak trees. It reminded me of this little poem I wrote some time back and I thought I would re-post it.

In the Sonoran Desert of the Southwest United States the Apache Cicada appears every summer around the solstice and leaves, clinging to tree branches, it's shed skin, crackly little chitinous exoskeletons that make a very satisfying crunch between thumb and forefinger. The Apache Cicada are sometimes called "rain bugs" because they seem to emerge just prior to the summer showers.

In Greek mythology, Eunomos (Good Name) was a great cithara player who entered a competition only to have a string snap at a crucial point. The myth tells us that a nearby cicada leapt onto the lyre and sustained the note, allowing Eunomos to win the prize. Because of its annual emergence from the earth, the Greeks and Romans associated the cicada with eternal life. They considered the insect's wild, droning song an expression of religious ecstasy and held the bugs sacred to Apollo.

Apache Cicada: A Desert Sonnet

Dry tymbal-click grits song on slate-hard heat

And rends the weft and woof of warmth-warped air.

Sound pounds, rebounds, resounds, redounds, repeats

Staccato scrape that whets spines sharp and spare.

My soul's string snaps short, twangs, and silence stills

Sweet praise I sought to render to my Lord,

Frustrates the proffered offering of my skills.

Dry, chitinous crackling chokes the sundered chord.

The locust leaps upon my wounded lyre,

Sustains the stifled note to swelling praise.

Rain-bringer, singer, you who never tire:

Draw out the strangled chord of my brief days.

O God, let desert sever self-sought fame,
And sing through me instead the one Good Name.