What we truly believe will show
By Dorcas
Smucker
For The Register-Guard
AUG. 13,
2017
I envy my
dad: He gets letters in the mail.
Paul and I get bills, Fabric Depot fliers and seed-germination
results.
The college kids get credit card offers and updates on financial aid or grades.
Dad gets letters. They come from Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and
elsewhere, with stamps canceled in small towns, handwritten addresses on the
front and often a few fun stickers on the back. Last week, he got three letters
in a single day’s mail.
He pulls out his yellow pocketknife and carefully slices open the
short end of the envelope, just as he has for probably 90 years. He blows a
quick puff at the sliced opening to separate the sides, then reaches in and
pulls out greeting cards, newspaper clippings, photocopied articles and, of
course, letters: pages of ink and words and love and connection, folded in
thirds.
Settled on the living room loveseat with his glasses on his nose,
he peruses these missives from friends, former students, his many nieces and
nephews, his children and his brother Johnny. Then, as he stomps through the
kitchen on his way outside to work on my apple trees, he leaves the envelopes
on the kitchen counter with a note — “Read if you want to.”
I want to, so I do.
Johnny irrigated his fourth planting of corn and hopes the cows don’t get into
it. Cousin Barbara says the mice are eating her cucumbers in the garden — she
didn’t know they did that. My brother Marcus and his wife are headed to Canada
to visit their daughter and hopefully find some hungry fish as well. A historian
cousin sends the shocking news that a long-ago acquaintance’s death may have
been murder rather than an accident.
In this era of text-message communication, where even emails are
becoming outdated, I have a nostalgic fascination with letters.
Colorful stationery waits in one of my desk drawers; envelopes
and address labels in another. I have just the right fine-tipped black pens, an
old recipe tin full of addresses on file cards, and pretty stamps from the post
office.
I even follow letter-writing sites on Instagram. Full of shots of
elegantly addressed envelopes, hand-decorated paper and inspiration, they turn
an old-fashioned art into modern creativity.
Sadly, though, I seldom get letters in the mail. Because, to be
harshly honest, I seldom actually write them.
Hosting my dad forces me to think about the things I say, the
decisions I make, and the results I get. He is 100 years old, and this is his
fourth consecutive summer with us in Oregon.
Thanks to his deliberate personality, his Amish theology and the
reality of growing up in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, Dad has an unusual clarity
about choices and results, sowing and reaping, and the huge difference between
thinking about doing something as opposed to actually doing it.
Like most of us, he knows about nutrition and exercise. Unlike
many of us, he deliberately eats small, nutritious portions and goes for a walk
every day, forcing himself to go outside even though it’s hot, he’s sleepy, and
his legs are stiff and unsteady at times. Knowing, by itself, doesn’t keep him
healthy and limber; only heaving off the couch and thumping outside with cane
in hand, drinking mugs of hot water, and eating piles of lettuce and broccoli
does.
“Faith without works is dead,” the Bible’s Book of James says. We
Amish and Mennonites, sisters under the Anabaptist theological umbrella,
quote it a lot. We are skeptical of talk, opinion, pretension and insistence
until we see how a person lives. “Show me, don’t tell me,” the writers’ mantra,
could be our denomination’s as well.
We live in a strange era in which beliefs and opinions seem to
count as much as action, and an emphatic Facebook post about prison reform or
preserving our forests qualifies as having done something about it.
Our daughter Emily went to Oregon State University every day with
a mug and tea bags in her backpack. She knew where all the hot-water dispensers
were located and often arrived in class with a comforting cup of hot black tea.
She didn’t have an ideological agenda. It just seemed like the
right and responsible thing to do instead of spending money on daily doses of
tea in throwaway cups.
Emily had one young professor who, she said, didn’t try terribly
hard to hide his political preferences. “How does that work, you bringing a mug
to class?” he asked Emily one day, bewildered and amused, as she settled into
her desk.
She explained. He listened kindly but still seemed confused. Then
he took a swig of coffee from his daily disposable Starbucks cup and went on
with the class.
For a Mennonite student, it was an eye-opening moment.
“I realized then,” Emily said, “that everyone who believes in
human-caused climate change is living exactly like everyone who doesn’t.”
My dad would be utterly bewildered by my Instagram feed with the
pretty calligraphy on white envelopes and the butterflies cut out and glued
on lined paper. He sees the clear line connecting decision and effect, and the
worthlessness of opinion without action.
You aren’t into letter writing if you don’t write letters, and you
won’t get any letters in the mail if you don’t send them. I’m sure that would
be his philosophy, should he choose to put it into words.
Dad doesn’t talk about writing letters. He writes letters.
When he comes in from his walk, he sits on the loveseat, places a
lap desk on his thin legs, and taps a piece of lined notebook paper into the
correct angle.
He clicks his ballpoint pen, an invention that is still a marvel
to him.
“Dear Truman,” he writes. “Dear Lydia Mae; Dear Marcus; Dear
Johnny.”
Slowly, with perfect penmanship, he fills the page with ink and
words, weather and news and stories, harvest and apples and family history.
Soon, he and his cane thump to the mailbox. He sets the envelope in the little
groove, closes the flap and raises the little flag. That afternoon the letter
is on its way, full of paper, promise and connection.
He comes inside, knowing that Truman, Johnny and all the others
will, most likely, soon write back.
That is how it works.
I know better than to pontificate to Dad about my interests and
passions — Jesus, justice, responsibility, orphans, stewardship, creativity and
many more. For one thing, Dad has a hard time hearing me. Much more
importantly, he is sharply observing my life. He knows what I really believe,
because he sees what I do. Emphatic opinions are like the dandelion fluff
blowing in the hot wind and ignored as he heads to the mailbox, letter in hand.
It’s the
doing that tells the truth about what you believe. Do I really want to get letters
in the mail, and am I truly interested in renewing the art and skill of
letter-writing? If so, I will, before long, be following Dad’s footsteps to
the mailbox in the early afternoons, envelope in hand, sending ink and paper on
its way, sure of a soon reply.
