Nameless Acts of Kindness

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. - William Wordsworth in the Zen Calendar (August 26, 2002).

Day 295. As I count down the blog days to the Big Three-Oh-Oh, a torrential downpour of OCD rain is gushing through my brain. I am aware of hand-written blogs I have not yet transferred to the screen, quotes not yet attached to the content they inspired, and a heaping stack of "favorites" from several Zen Calendars that have yet to be coupled with a deserving blog. This, in addition to innumerable inconsequential administrative tasks that only a Monkey mind like mine could produce. The sound of this fury is superimposed upon an emerging cacophony of ideas for the novel I will start when my blog year is complete. A couple of neophyte characters from that future masterpiece have begun to chatter louder than my Monkeys, which makes a vociferous roar indeed.

A couple of weeks ago, I erroneously received one of those ridiculous articles circulated in cyberspace by the Propaganda Machine of the Fearful and Ignorant. Perhaps this prolific gathering of compost composers is a heterogeneous and diverse group; however, I suspect a common denominator of the Membership is large American truck ownership and a tendency to hurl obscenities (and beer cans) at cyclists. The gist of the article was a lengthy tirade about the failure of the Chilean government, mass media, and most of the world's population to acknowledge the contributions of American technology, American engineering, American financing, the American military, and all other red-white-and-blue contributions, known and unknown, to the rescue of the Chilean mine workers. The article was grammatically sound, and its author(s) obviously had extensive knowledge about the complex machinery and intricate equipment involved in the rescue. That said, it still elucidated a farcical premise.

The successful rescue of the mine workers in Chili was indisputably a complex enterprise involving multiple layers of collaboration, negotiation, cooperation, improvising, and risk taking. To be certain, many feasible ideas and methods were examined and cast aside. Concessions were made, modifications accepted, and compromises agreed upon. There are many ways to skin a cat, or in this case, raise a miner. It is probably safe to conclude that, among the hundreds of individuals directly and indirectly contributing to the rescue, it was a multinational affair. The same conclusion likely applies to the multiplicity of elaborate and sophisticated equipment utilized by the rescuers. Hard to imagine that in the midst of all that machinery there wasn't a cog or socket that was produced in a country outside the good ole U.S. of A.

It seems morbidly redundant to state this, but here goes: The point is that the miners were brought out alive. Through a triumphant, intricate interplay of knowledge, skill, and luck, they survived. They were brought to the surface to be united with their vigilant, relieved loved ones! Praise be! Hallelujah and pour the coffee!

It is startling and alarming to me that anyone could rain on this particular parade. That someone would detract from the miracle of the rescue to whine about a lack of recognition of America's contributions to it. That there are actually people with so much ego and so little sense that they could criticize Chili in the service of bragging about our country's "generosity." That someone smart enough to write with polysyllabic words has not grasped that mature giving occurs in the context of anonymity and humbleness. The article made me think of my dad, who is the antithesis of all these things. He is the best giver of little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness I have ever known.

My father is not known for his sophisticated conversational skills. To begin with, he is deaf as a post. To end with, he is mysteriously impervious to his abysmal lack of social graces, so his etiquette learning curve is about as flat as I40 east of Amarillo. If he happens to be on the periphery of a discussion, he remains silent and oblivious until some cue recognizable only to him triggers an abrupt interruption to the ongoing repartee. At that point, he bludgeons his way into the discourse in one of two ways: an off-color joke representing four simultaneous violations of political correctness and/or the repetition of an inappropriate one-liner he first heard in 1953. Responses by the interrupted vary, but most family members have learned to seamlessly resume the conversation with nary a hiccup, sort of like how I used to reflexively press the channel button on the remote when a tampon commercial came on in mixed company.

What my father lacks in verbal fluency, he more than makes up for through kind actions. Quietly. Unobtrusively. Sometimes almost secretly. But I know. Because I watch him. I watched him for years on frigid winter mornings as he started three cold cars that weren't even his, scraping the ice off of three windshields while the heaters ran inside so that me and my brother and mom could trot out to a toasty warm vehicle and drive off to school and work without even wearing gloves. On freezing mornings that included ice or snow or the horrible combination I call "snice," I also watched him go up and down the street, picking up newspapers haphazardly tossed into yards and carefully placing them directly outside the front doors of our elderly neighbors. In the fall he walks around his neighborhood clearing leaves from the sewer grates so that heavy rains can drain efficiently rather than flood over curbs and wash out lawns. I can't imagine how many new members to my dad's AA group, the ones usually just a pebble above rock bottom, have been slipped a twenty dollar bill, or asked to come to his house to perform some trivial chore for an outlandishly high wage.

Just about every time we visit, my dad slips a twenty into my son's hand (secretly, when grandma isn't looking) "for gas." He believes in the power of duct tape, electrical tape, and chamois cloths for the car, so all three of his kids have enough of these supplies to carry us through the next two to five nuclear holocausts. Since his retirement, I am certain my dad spends more weekdays than most physicians work in their lifetimes lending his extensive handyman skills to maintaining the century old building housing his Methodist church. He has repaired pipe, painted concrete in damp, cramped quarters where only holy spiders dared to tread, sanded floors, stripped linoleum, and meandered so deeply into the bowels of that ancient edifice it is a wonder he didn't stumble upon God Himself. He probably did, and just failed to mention it in his haste to tighten the organ pipes.

I didn't show my dad the Whiner About the Miners article, because it would have pissed him off. Besides, he probably would have busted out an inappropriate one-liner about the whole ordeal. I wouldn't have minded though, because despite the fact that he is the personification of my most embarrassing moments, I am deeply proud of my father. He is a Boddhisatva, though he wouldn't have a clue what the word means. I bet he would make a joke about it. Something involving the Russians. That's okay. I, for one, will remember the little, nameless acts of kindness and love that make up a good portion of his life.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc