August 29 , 2005

Dear Colleague,

         RLS (restless leg syndrome) makes me sleepless at night. One respite is to stand up and walk about. Another is to kneel and bow my head low so that it rests on the seat of a chair. I have been using this technique rather than standing up because, in the upright position, I can fall asleep and collapse on the floor. That happened a year ago, hurting my back. My back still hurts and I've been taking a mild narcotic, hydrocodone, to help with the pain as well as with symptoms of RLS.

         Why am I telling you this? Well, hang on there. This is actually a letter about religion. I thought hydrocodone will produce a pleasant floating sensation. It doesn't do that for me. What it does do is more unexpected and interesting. It calls up images (Platonic ideas) of the Good. These are not the grand ideas of Justice, Wisdom, Beauty, Truth, and so on, which by their nature tend to be vague, but rather small, homely, images of the sort that can happen to you and me any day and that we read about in the back pages of a newspaper. As I kneel to alleviate RLS and as the effect of the narcotic kicks in, my mind may drift to a newspaper story about a school teacher, Jane Smith, who gave her kidney to a student to help him recover from his kidney disease. The teacher happened to be white, the middle-school student happened to be black, and I think that was one of the reasons the story got into The New York Times (December 18, 1999). But that's neither here nor there. What struck me was that the teacher seemed totally unaware that she did anything remarkable. What also struck me was the overwhelming gratitude of the mother, Mrs. Carter, who prayed God to rain all sorts of blessings on the teacher until she ran out of blessings she could think of, ending with, "And please God, may Ms. Smith never run out of Kleenex!"

         And here is another image—another Platonic idea—far more modest than the one I have just given. (As you see, I do not hesitate to repeat that Platonic ideas need not be grand). The image I come up with is of a pleasant lunch I had with a student on the terrace of the University Club. I ordered a cup of corn chowder and half a BLT sandwich. They looked delicious on the sparkling porcelain plate. They tasted even better. As for the student sitting opposite me, he looked good enough to eat. Too bad cannibalism is still disallowed on our politically correct campus! As we ate and talked, I thought gratefully of the student's parents, who toiled and spent a fortune to raise him to adulthood so that he could be handed over to me for enjoyment. Think of it this way. What parent won't want to be in my shoes that day on the terrace, conversing leisurely one-on-one with a grown child on matters of intellectual interest? But parents—poor things!—lack the opportunity that I, a stranger, have.

         I don't go to church and, so far as I know, I don't pray. Yet what am I doing on my knees every night, full of gratitude for images of the good that the Good (or God) sends me if it is not praying? Well, skeptics say, RLS forced me on my knees and hydrocodone gave me the images. Right. But an alternative reading is possible, namely, God is so loving that he is willing to stoop to the level of RLS and hydocodone to trick me into acknowledging his presence.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu