Darkness

I was slowly sipping a pearl-less Mango Milk Tea reading Danticat's Krik? Krak! in a February morning so sunny that, without my sunglasses, the whiteness of the page physically hurt as I struggled simultaneously to squint and read my text. I was wearing a black shirt, so the warmth of the sun seemed to diffuse throughout my entire torso. It being "winter," I was not sweating in the usual summer fashion, but dampness slowly leaked its way into my perceptions.

In the unusual warmth of this early-February morning, I received an unexpected surprise. A man slowly approached me, and as a result, advanced an arc of shadows over my page. The eclipse of light tore me away from Port-au-Prince, and within the length of a paragraph, I was reading the man more than my book.

He sat down next to me and smiled. "Korean?" He asked. And like all encounters that are birthed in such a rapid and unwarranted manner, I did not comprehend his question. He repeated his inquiry. I replied that I was another type of Asian. It was then that I noticed the leather-bound book about the size of a travel book neatly resting beneath his two palms. A Bible. I now understood the affront. What arrogance to sit down next to a complete stranger and interrupt someone obviously reading!

After some banal questioning about my major and some unsolicited information about his Church, he asked me to read a few passages out of the Bible. I know enough about the Bible to be competitive in a game of Trivial Pursuit, and while the passages he selected sounded familiar in tone and style, the words were new. I'm not sure why I humored him. Maybe it was because he looked like my late grandfather.

The hospital bed did not seem to accommodate nor suit a man of his stature. The radiation on his prostate left him noticeably skinnier than in his pre-cancer days, but no amount of cell-destroying medical treatments would flatten his square jaw, perfect for a chin strap of a samurai's helmet; he was a honorable warrior born in the 20th Century. His head, usually shiny from sweat earned while working in the garden, now looked more dull as if a make-up artist applied powder to his balding forehead. The tubes in his arms and nose and penis did not make him look any less round, short, or strong. These last images were such a small percentage of how I knew him, but the contrast of darkness and cancer encroaching on the light and life has been etched into my brain.

I do not remember the passage I read. Something from John and something from Genesis about the light of Jesus and the darkness of Satan. Whenever I interact with someone from a Christian faith, I am often uncomfortable by the frequent and often spoken word "Christ." Like many people I use the word "Jesus!" as an exclamation, but the word "Christ" has a much harsher sound, a much stronger K sound, and a much stranger connotation. Being raised in Agnosticism, and reading more books about Atheism than Deism, the simple fact that this conversation even occurred was out of the ordinary for me.

I was losing interest. My mind wandered to certain excuses I could use to leave and find a new bench: one equally sunny but farther away from evangelism. I inserted my post-it bookmark, the sticky side now smooth from use, and I closed my book ready to leave. I think he sensed my departure, and he quickly grabbed my hand, asking for one more minute to pray with me.

I lost most of his words in a flash of my other memories of pastors and priests Gatling-gunning God and Light and Dark phrases into the air. But one section stood out. I can't quite remember the wording, but he said that there is a lot of darkness in the world, and if we can live our lives in a better way than yesterday, our lives will always be better than the day before.

My arm tingled a little as my muscles were flexed from the awkward physical contact with a man most likely triple my age. Those people on TV who faint from the touch of God perhaps were just too nervous and too clenched from being filmed. Or perhaps there was, as the pastor said, "a small miracle between the two of us."

I stood up and left, thanking him for the conversation and he returning his gratitude for my willingness to read from the Bible. I walked away thinking that if all evangelism and missionary work were so open-minded, I might not be so angry about the attempted spread of religions to other countries. I don't necessarily agree with the scripture part of his talk, but I do agree that there is a lot of darkness in the world.

I swear. I'm angry. I'm sad. I use the Internet for less than noble purposes. I'm insecure about myself. These are my absences of light. These are my contributions to the void in society.

I do want to live my life better each day. He had good intentions just trying to make people happier and brighter; perhaps it was a form of Mills' Utilitarianism. Maybe the pastor wasn't as open-minded as I give him credit for now, but I still like to think I could try to remove some of my darkness even if I don't name it "sin."

I draw the line in the sand when people start trying to define darkness for each person. One person's darkness is very different from another person's. My life is my own; I have my own shadows and flares.

I want to be happy. I want to be brighter than yesterday. The pastor might call it Jesus Christ, and I might call it a chance meeting between two people, but either way, I feel slightly happier than I did yesterday. That's a start.