Chance encounters have ways of taking what I know to be true, turning it sideways and dumping it all over the frozen winter earth. After encounters such as these, I often feel sick, disoriented and strangely fulfilled. Yesterday, I happened upon a soldier standing alone amongst the rocks and rubble of an ancient barracks on my way home from work. Dusk was fast fading into a slimy cold night, and the soldier never once took his eyes off of the horizon. I slowed my car to a stop in the soft gravel beside the road and approached him.
Read
The closest I have ever come to believing in God (other than the ritualistic recitations of The Word in Sunday School and crayon-depicted images of a bearded guy riding upon a chariot of clouds) was on a brisk fall night. After returning from a Judgement House put on by Rachel’s church, we sat together on her bed in the dim light of the moon refracting though thin glass and a depressed table lamp, glowing gloomily. I watched her cry, so upset and distraught by the thought of not being with me in Heaven when we died together (presumably). After explaining why I didn’t—why I couldn’t—believe in a god, she looked at me with tearful eyes. As her tears brought about my own, she asked me in her beautifully sorrow-cracked voice: “What’s the harm in believing in something you can’t prove?”
Read