Spring New Moon
“A person writing at night may put out the lamp, but the words he has written will remain. It is the same with the destiny we create for ourselves in this world.” — Shakyamuni
Paul Strickland and I sat at the Origami eating noodles and sushi. We muttered about the AIG bonuses, parsed some recent appearances by Obama and then veered into the realm of faith. Paul remains a committed Christian and I have long since fallen away.
“I miss the assurance and comfort faith gave me,” I admitted to Paul, “but it’s a bell I can’t unring.” He looked at me with a trace of doubt about how to proceed. Such admissions tempt the faithful to evangelize, but Paul steered a path away from temptation. He refers to God as the Great Spirit, a nod, I imagine, to his Cherokee heritage.
We went on to the nature of time. He commented on the strange notion of simultaneity, which apparently he and I both embrace. That is, everything that ever happened and will happen are, at each moment, all in existence. This odd idea proceeds for me from the notion of conservation, nothing is ever lost, matter and energy constantly in transition from one state to another, but never exhausted.
There was other stuff, too, but in the end we got up, two older men, baby boomers approaching retirement age, and commented on the way out of this Japanese restaurant that family and friends, that was it, all of it.