Lines and Infinite Detail

I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of high school as a part-time student at a local college taking calculus II and a linear algebra course. I had recently turned seventeen, but did not yet have a driver’s license and had only had my learner’s permit a short time. I could have easily gotten my permit a year before and should have had my license, but like so many things in my life, I kept putting it off. So my mother dropped me off for my classes and picked me up when they were over.

When signing up for these classes I had not realized how much calculus I actually knew and was bored to find that calculus II was a rehash of things I had already learned. This led me to skip classes (which ultimately resulted in my receiving a “B”). Since I couldn’t ask my mother to help me skip a class by picking me up early, I would often spend the time after my algebra class, when I should have been in calculus, sitting on one of the benches in the courtyard between the Wallace Building and the student center.

When I say it was a courtyard, I mean that it was an open space, with benches. It was mostly bland concrete and brick and was no more beautiful than a parking lot, but it was peaceful and there was a little bit of green--a few scattered trees, some shrubs—and there were robins and blackbirds and sparrows hopping about collecting stray French fries. Compared to calculus class, it was a pleasant place to simply be.

One day, as I was sitting alone on a bench in the courtyard watching the birds pick at the French fries, someone spoke to me. I looked up and over to my left. There on the park bench next to mine sat an old man with a weathered face. Maybe he wasn’t even old, but time had worn down this man’s body. Even his voice was rough, but unlike his body it was strong and clear. He was to a frightening image. Most disturbing of all was his hand only three fingers.

I do not remember which hand it was, left or right. But two fingers were completely missing. Not just the ends of the fingers: both fingers were entirely gone, leaving two peculiar gaps between the remaining three twisted digits.

“Hello, sir,” I said, not knowing if he thought he knew me, not know what the stranger would say next.

“Do you believe in God?” he said after a short pause. The question seemed so strange—not because it’s a bad question: it is, perhaps, the only question. It did not seem strange because it is so seldom asked. It was strange because the strange man had asked it.

He didn’t seem to belong there. He wasn’t a student or a professor, or at least, it seemed unlikely. His twisted hand, his old body, his weathered face made of lines of infinite detail seemed at odds with the flat, straight lines of the courtyard. It would have seemed have seemed less strange if one of the robins or even the blackbirds had asked me if I believed in God.

I wasn’t there to learn a bible lesson. I was there, ostensibly, to learn mathematics, a subject that I have loved for its purity and perfection. In mathematics nothing is partially true: everything is true, false, or unprovable. Math is a subset of the universe in which we throw out all uncertainties, ambiguities, and painful truths of the universe and proceed from there. It’s easy to find truth in a math book: all you have to do is look.

“Yes,” I said, and he invited me to sit with him. I moved to his bench, and we talked. I don’t remember about what. I remember he did most of the talking—about God, religion, people.

His hand frequently distracted me. When I looked, I felt it offended him; when I looked away, I felt I offended him. Yet, if he noticed my staring (or my not-staring), he didn’t seem to mind. I don’t think he cared about the missing fingers or the eight crooked ones or the lines on his face.

I remember he asked me if I had been baptized. I had been, when I was very young. I was eight, and when the preacher was giving the invitation, I told my mother that I wanted to be baptized. My father wasn’t there, so my Uncle Tib helped me get changed. I wore a huge white shirt and an old pair of jeans which were much to large for me, but no one in the audience could see them for the baptistery. I remember closing my eyes when the water washed over my face; I regretted that for years. I always thought that I might have missed something, that if I had kept my eyes open, I might have caught a glimpse of what I was look for.

Years later, after my encounter with the strange man, I was baptized again. I had come to realize that I had been too young the first time and that I had not appreciated the significance of what I did. This time I was eighteen, wiser, more mature, and perhaps colder, at least more physically minded. I knew there was nothing to see, but I kep my eyes open this time to satisfy the little boy in me who always wondered what you see if you look up through the water. I saw the light above me twisted and refracted.

My father was displeased that I was baptized. He was upset the first time as well though I have never known why. My father is not religious, I am, and we are almost exactly alike. He sees things in practical physical terms and so do I. He is not a spiritual man and neither am I. I mostly comprehend the universe in terms of what I can feel, touch, and hear. I rigorously apply the scientific method to all questions. But when you devote your mind to cold contemplation, when you are unable to ponder the greater glory outside the physical universe, you often find yourself empty, with no more real faith than an atheist. Still, I know that there is more to the universe than what I can see. A finite universe cannot be its own origin. And the same cold logic that prevents me from being spiritual leads me to be religious. Sometimes, I need someone who isn’t distracted by the physical to remind me that there is more to living than flesh, and more to life than the things we can build with our hands.

Somehow, this strange man did this. It must have been something he said or perhaps did. I wish I knew now what it was. But there was a spiritual quality to this man that was at odds with his disturbing appearance. His face sharp, creased, and brown; his eyes dark, hard, and red; and his hand—that terrible hand; all were repellant, yet I drew near. Was there more to him than my eyes could see? Was there more to him than I could see in that broken hand?

I look at my hands now—young and smooth. But there are lines and red blemishes and white scars, and tomorrow there will be more. As a product of Western thought, I cannot see time as moving in a circular motion. Time marches forward and progressively downward: the earth will someday be destroyed by its own sun, the sun will expand its fuel and die, and the entropy of this universe will bring everything to a halt, in time.

Time had taken a lot from this man--his youth, his smooth voice, and two of his fingers--yet he didn’t care. He had something that time couldn’t take away, and he shared it with me for a moment on a park bench.

Before I turned to leave that day, I extended my right hand to the stranger to say good-bye. He shook my hand with his three-fingered hand—it must have been his right hand. It was a strong hand.

I remember the Sunday after I met the strange man. I was at church trying to articulate the experience to my Sunday school teacher. I had tried the best I could saying it was like I had met an angel. But it seemed to me the notion struck him as foolish. Sometimes I feel like I’m a little bird with no soul—one of those you find unnested, no bigger than a thumb, all pink flesh and white blank eyes—just waiting to be tossed by a chaotic universe. Then I remember those three crooked fingers. My physical side says he was just a nice old man; my cynical side says he was a fool; but my religious side, who keeps to himself most of the time, is sure he was an angel.