Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon<\/p>\n
“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.” \u2014 Shakyamuni<\/strong><\/p>\n Paul Strickland and I sat at the Origami eating noodles and sushi.\u00a0 We muttered about the AIG bonuses, parsed some recent appearances by Obama and then veered into the realm of faith.\u00a0 Paul remains a committed Christian and I have long since fallen away.<\/p>\n “I miss the assurance and comfort faith gave me,” I admitted to Paul, “but it’s a bell I can’t unring.”\u00a0 He looked at me with a trace of doubt about how to proceed.\u00a0 Such admissions tempt the faithful to evangelize, but Paul steered a path away from temptation.\u00a0 He refers to God as the Great Spirit, a nod, I imagine, to his Cherokee heritage.<\/p>\n We went on to the nature of time.\u00a0 He commented on the strange notion of simultaneity, which apparently he and I both embrace.\u00a0 That is, everything that ever happened and will happen are, at each moment, all in existence.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \n Spring\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.” \u2014 Shakyamuni Paul Strickland and I sat at the Origami eating noodles and sushi.\u00a0 We muttered about the AIG bonuses, … Continue reading Family and Friends, All of It<\/span>
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