Life is a Mystery

Putting the pieces back together

I had just arrived back in Kampala from Nairobi. The day was hot and muggy, I felt like taking a shower and going to read some newspapers in one of my favorite outdoor restaurants. I glanced down at my newly acquired puzzle ring.

It surely was a piece of beauty and I like it. Buying it had been a rather unique event. Meeting Babu, the gold merchant with his gym bag, driving off to a secluded place, selecting the right size and design from hundreds of others of rings, weighing it on a portable scale and then finally the ancient bargaining ritual.

As I pulled it off in order to take my shower, I admired the craftsmanship, the fact that someone could take six individual rings and fit them together as one. Babu had told me that African Craftsmen had locally made it with special 18 karat gold from Zaire (meaning it was smuggled).

When I came back out of the shower, something happened to my puzzle ring as I attempted put it on and dropped it and from that moment on it lived up to its name. It was now truly a puzzle. Instead of going and reading the newspaper I spent the afternoon trying make six linked pieces to become one again.

No wonder this ring was used in Indian culture to make sure that the parties remained true in marriage and did not take off their rings since it would show by the puzzle being broken.

Patience is something that I have developed over the years as I aged, but not enough to put this mystery back as one. I asked my son Ryan, who is very logical and patient, if he could try doing it. Emmeline was next, after all she graduated from Cambridge and surely that meant something. She had it for three days. My African friends tried their luck, some suggesting that I melt it down and have a new solid ring made.

Ryan spent the day going from Jewelry Shop to Shop, to no avail. No one knew the secret and he touched shops reflecting many nationalities from Indian to Lebanese, from Muslim to Hindu.

It did cause me to reflect, think and realize that life is just like that. It is a puzzle at times, we have all the pieces in our hand, it looks as one piece, together and then we drop it and all we have is pieces. We try to no avail, we engage others in our search for what once was, but there come times, when nothing fits, when the puzzle does not come together.

As a child I hated puzzles, and at times, made them fit, only to have other pieces not fit in, which made me give up in disgust. I have tried to make things work, at times circumventing safety devices like on my steam engine, the result was that it blew up.

In my search of getting my ring put back together, I realized that so often we look for help outside of ourselves, we look for the Messiah, who can take the six rings and make them as one.

In Africa, everything is fixable, something that may surprise you reading this. I never feared breaking down in my car, since someone would always show up who could take a VW part and make it work on a Toyota. If something broke in the house, there was always that friend someone had who knew what to do.

If you had an accident, you simply paid some money, and everyone went away smiling. If the Police arrested you for a traffic violation, well then there was a little something and you were on your way.

Yes, in Africa if you had some money most anything was fixable, but then there come events in life that drive us to the realization that we are not in control, that there is not a human messiah who can come and rescue us, that a work of the soul is taking place.

As a boy in Germany I had memorize a verse from the Bible for my confirmation classes, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." This goes along with German work ethic and the American can do mentality. It is also part of the religious mentality found in most of the world. One of my favorite movies illustrating this is "The Mission." In it Robert DeNiro murders someone close to him. He has lived the life of Macho Man, fighting his way through life, capturing Indians in the jungle of South America as slaves. Now he is in the repentant mode. The scene that has been imprinted in my mind is him pulling his suite of armor up a mountainside. This is the human struggle, the fear and trembling, the desire to earn it. As he climbs this mountain, the rope and armor dragging behind him, holding him down, an Indian shows true spirituality and cuts the rope. The armor falls down and Robert DeNiro is freed. No longer boot strap religion, but Grace.

There is a part in that verse I had to memorize for confirmation class, (paraphrase) "Work out your own life with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work within you, to do and work according to his own good pleasure."

My grandmother was a gentle natured woman, full of grace. She used to comb her long hair, graying as it was as I sat there, talking with her. When I asked her about this verse. She turned to me and said. "It means to let go of some things, you cannot fix it all."

I took my puzzle ring back to Babu and he fixed it for good. It is still six pieces, but now they have been soldered as one. My ring is no longer a puzzle, but life still is...jon

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Last updated: 04 July 2010