What if you and I could sit across the table from each other tonight, under the stars? What would you say to me? Some people say, “I’ve read a lot of your writing, you know?”

“Yeah?” I say.

There’s not much to say after that. “Thanks” doesn’t seem to work. “That’s cool” sounds arrogant, like it’s somehow cool to have read things that I wrote. Mostly I just hold still until the moment passes.

“Is that weird?” people sometimes ask. “Is it weird to suddenly find out that some stranger knows a lot of personal stuff about you, and you don’t know anything about them?”

This really does happen to me. It happened to me last week, as a matter of fact. A guy named Gary at a coffee shop. Really great guy. English accent. We ended up talking for about two hours.

“No,” I say. “It’s not weird because I don’t think about it. It’s like it’s not happening.”

That’s the truth. It’s as if someone said, “I saw you naked two weeks ago.” Yeah? Well, you’re not seeing me naked now, so I guess it doesn’t bother me too much unless we keep talking about it.

Now if I could ask you something – anything – I would say, “Do you believe in things that we might want to be true, but for which there isn’t a lot of hard evidence, maybe no hard evidence at all?”

I’d be trying to ask if you are a faith person. Any kind of faith person. Maybe you believe in Buddha, or Jesus, or God, or Allah, or any number of other ideas about an eternal being or beings. And if it turned out you were a faith person, I’d like a follow-up question.

What kind of faith do you have?

Is it frightened faith? You need the comfort of believing in the stuff your parents taught you about God, and you’re scared sh**less that someone is going to talk you out of it? That’s okay. I've been there myself. I’m just trying to figure you out.

Or is yours that kind of arrogant faith that says, “Everyone else must be a complete idiot not to have faith and believe what I believe.” I hope not, because you seem so nice. Plus, I probably don't believe what you believe, so now I'm stupid and how are we going to have a decent conversation once that's established?

Is it desperate faith? Are you trying to hold onto meaning in a world in which meaning is increasingly hard to find? Yeah, I get that. I feel you.

Is it stubborn faith, like mine? Are you just ornery enough to stare down an empty universe and say, “I DEMAND that there be meaning in these skies.” And then you stare real hard and angry right into the Milky Way. Then you laugh because of how small and silly you are. You laugh at yourself, but you keep staring. You ARE going to stare down the universe.

You know, I’d just kind of like to know what kind of faith is keeping you in the game these days.

Or.

If you’re really not a faith person – at least not so much in the obvious and traditional ways – then I’d be REALLY fascinated and want to know the whole story.

Are you the sort who has always seen the default human position as NOT believing in magic or gods or any of that stuff? In your mind the evidence would have to be pretty strong to push you away from your default position of unbelief. Maybe you’ve never been able to understand why so many see it the opposite way. Like believing in God is the default, and you’d better have a damn good reason for not believing.

See I would get that. I would so get that about you. Because I seem to see just about everything in ways that are the exact opposite of most people. I know what that’s like.

Are you a kind of arrogant, angry, “only idiots believe in God” sort of person? I hope not. Because if you are, then I’m stupid, and how are we going to have a conversation now that my stupidity is out on the table for everyone to see.

Ooh, are you one of those dreamy and courageous scientist types, who has such a rigorous epistemology that you just can’t violate it for mythic reality, no matter how beautiful the myth and no matter how old it is?

Yeah, see I find that to be romantic. I was almost you. Just…almost. Sometimes I fantasize about being you.

So when the conversation dies down and we are both left looking at the stars, wouldn’t it seem like there would be no way we could remain unchanged? For one thing it would be just the two of us sitting at our little table beneath an infinite dome of starry mystery. We’d be talking about all the possibilities of what might be. It seems like there would be no way we could avoid feeling like brothers or brother and sister, right? Two humans, pitting their minds, hearts, and souls against the sky and against the unfolding drama of knowledge and mystery?

It would be sad when we had to part ways, and I would probably say, “But we can still be friends, right?"

rlp