00007 · Adiaphora

My father and my Uncle Oneil were digging out a trench at our lake cabin, filthy work done clumsily by two amateurs on their knees. In a moment of intense digging by hand, Oneil asked my dad to hold his rings. Oneil had two or three rings on his hand that were precious to him, and it seemed like my dad had a better history of keeping a ring on his hand than Oneil.

My dad jammed the rings on his fingers, and back to work they went. At the end of the job, all the earth replaced and tamped down, my dad turned to give Oneil the rings, only to find they were gone. Somewhere in that 40-foot line of dirt they’d buried those rings good and proper. As my dad turned to grab a shovel and find the rings, Oneil delivered the line you’d hear from him at least once a day in his presence: “It don’t matter.”

In the deep connection of brothers, dad knew Oneil truly had let it go, in the moment, and for life.

Throughout his time on earth, Oneil said It don’t matter about the small stuff and the big stuff. I looked up to him as an uncle and was in awe of his easygoing ways and Johnny Cash lifestyle. He had fun on a level I’d never know, and he experienced a rough life that would have broken me and most others. Oneil had a level of detachment and acceptance that would put most Hindu and Buddhist monks to shame.

There is an idea from Lutheran theology about the things that don’t matter— adiaphora—which is Greek for “indifferent things.” I think about this phrase a lot, and use it to filter whether I should give a damn or not about the things that everyone else is all frothed up over.

Technically, adiaphora are all the matters that aren’t essential to faith, and are therefore neither good nor bad. This opens up most beliefs and practices to the realm of adiaphora. Let folks do this or don’t do that, think about that idea or be ignorant, say their peace or be silent. It don’t matter.

We live in times when a weird mania has taken hold of us, where we all feel the need to give an up or down vote on every aspect of each other’s lives. I yearn for a benevolent upturned hands shrug button instead of the binary thumbs up and down. I yearn for adiaphoric neutrality as our default response.

My dad and his brother used to not get along at all. My father was the golden child who could do no wrong, and Oneil was the hellcat always in trouble. That changed when my dad wrecked Oneil’s car in high school, and to dad’s great surprise, Oneil forgave him truly and unconditionally. Thus began a lifetime of showing up for each other with everything they had, and an acknowledgment that they were equally saints and sinners.

The essential thing was the preservation of the relationship: showing up and giving all when needed. Everything else that wasn’t about the brotherly love—what other people thought, the amount of time and space since their last talk, their fortunes and misfortunes, other family drama—was bullshit. Adiaphora. It don’t matter.