I had not seen my old friend Jim since my early years of
college. Jim was a bit of an odd
bird, which is frankly why I liked him.
He came from one of those childhoods where the parents didn’t have a TV
so he didn’t understand any cultural references made by his peers. I think his parents met on a commune in
Vermont. He was vegetarian when
that blew people’s minds. He was
always into Eastern mysticism and weird religious off shoots. I remember him being fascinated by the
Rastafarians, and for three months straight I heard nothing but Marley and
Peter Tosh coming from his room.
He always seemed to be just about ready to come apart at the seams. I fell out of touch with him after
awhile, our lives taking divergent paths.
It was a surprise to see him this week. Not just for the gap in time in which we had not seen each other
either.
I saw him in a hotel lobby downtown. It was odd because I didn’t recognize
him at first. What caught my
attention was a man in business attire pushing a wheelbarrow filled with large
rocks across the marble lobby. He
didn’t appear to be involved with construction, so I stared to try and figure
it out. Why does that guy in the executive slacks have a wheelbarrow? Noticing
that I knew the guy with the wheelbarrow was an afterthought. "Jim?"
Indeed it was Jim.
We exchanged pleasantries and “so, where you working now?”s. We exchanged the obligatory “East or
Westside?” question. He was
working for a doomed educational group focused on underprivileged kids with a name I
immediately forgot. Then I asked
him “What’s with the wheelbarrow?”.
He gave a little laugh and said “Oh, I’m a Steiner. You know about that, right?”. No Jim. No, I don’t know about that. I almost wished I hadn’t asked.
Gustav Steiner led a puritanical off shoot of Lutheranism
sometime in the mid 1800s. Steiner
had this idea that man needed to cleanse himself of all of his mortal sins and
mistakes while on earth to prepare for the afterlife. One needed to take responsibility and atone for mistakes in
the eyes of the Lord. When a
person made a mistake of some kind, they were then required to carry the weight
of the size of that error as a burden.
Large mistakes equaled large weights while smaller, yet still noteworthy
mistakes, required smaller stones to match up with the scale of the
mistake. Only when that person had
somehow righted their mistake could they remove that weight from their
load. The goal was to reach no
weight at the time of death, thus insuring entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jim had met some people at some “retreat” that were
investigating Steinerism. He said that weekend “totally changed my life. You should look into it.” He said there was a small congregation
in Northeast Ohio, and in fact, most large sized cities had groups of some
kind. That seemed impossible I
hadn’t noticed this, but then again how often do you pay attention to someone
pushing a wheelbarrow? He said
that different factions differed in the specifics of the stone carrying, but he
was part of a sect that was very strict.
“I wanted to be pure.” Of
course he did. He was a white kid
that grew dreads, so I have no doubt the most extreme form of Steinerism
attracted him.
I looked down at this wheelbarrow and saw a couple of stones
the size of small bowling balls.
In addition to those were a variety of decent sized rocks all arranged
around the larger pair. It had to
be about 60 pounds of rocks. “So
let me get this right Jim. You
push this wheelbarrow of rocks with you everywhere you go. Like if you go to a restaurant, you
bring the wheelbarrow?” He seemed
oddly serene, almost drugged.
“That’s right. It’s my
burden. If I can right those two
biggest wrongs, I could probably get by with a backpack. That is why I am trying to right those
as fast as I can.”
The wheelbarrow was set down in the middle of the lobby. We both looked at it. I really wanted to know what the big rocks represented. I knew he saw me staring at those rocks and
wondering. “One of those big ones
is how I failed with my daughter. She
lives with my ex-wife in Oregon now.
The other was a failure of character. I failed someone who loved me.” He looked at me and smiled. I broke his glance. We both stared at the rocks like when one guy is explaining an unseen issue with a car to another.
Let me be honest. I felt very uncomfortable like I was
talking to someone that had left Scientology only to double down with
the Manson Family. I don’t know if
this guy was technically crazy, but hauling around 60 pounds of rocks while
going to eat “endless appetizers” at TGIFridays didn’t seem sane. Did he go to Indians games with that
thing? Did he have to drive a truck? Who decided the size of the rock? Who decided when he could drop the
rock? Where did it go then? To
someone else? Could you dispute
the size of the rock? I was
fascinated but didn’t want to get in too deep. If I seemed too
interested he would probably knock me out with a chloroform rag and I would
wake up chained to an enormous wheelbarrow of stones somewhere on the Eastside. The last thing I need is to have to haul 176 pounds of rocks everywhere I go. No, I needed to get out of this…
Hey man, it was great to see you! We should get a drink sometime! “I would love that.”
I will call you at work… Or just message me on Facebook or something. (Nice and vague… That was the way to go here.) I turned to walk towards my meeting. I heard him give a small grunt and
begin to push the wheelbarrow towards the elevator. He was still sort of the same guy I guess. It was me that had probably
changed. I hoped he was able to
figure a way out to stop carrying those rocks. Well, the big ones at least. It seemed like quite a burden.
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