NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
I keep hearing a familiar voice while having lunch with Lou at the H bar.
“Who’s that behind me Lou?”
“I think it’s Theo Tinderbrush. He just sat down a few minutes ago but he has his back to us.”
Lou is enjoying his usual ‘Berger and beer’ and we have just heard Tinderbrush tell some one standing next to him about his trip to Australia. Dr. Theo Tinderbrush has returned from Melbourne where he attended the “Atheist’s Global Convention” in April. “Atheists,” he says “call it their ‘Celebration of Reason’.” I turn around to see who is with him only to find Lark Bunlush approaching and the one he was talking to walking away towards the door. All at once Lark waves to us and speaks to Theo, and then suggests we sit together. Tinderbrush gets up excitedly and one foot catches a table leg and he staggers as the small square table scrapes across the tiled floor against his chair. His thin summer weight linen blazer swings open as he raises his arms to embrace Lark sweeping the pepper and saltshakers and menu off the table-top with the bulk of a weighty pocket.
“My God! How did that happen?”
“Theo why don’t you move over and sit with them.” Lark introduces me to Theo, who, still flustered, moves heavily towards our table but doesn’t sit down.
“Was that Ms Flack, Theo?”
“Yes it was. The congressman can’t make it Lou.”
“I wish he could have joined us. Why don’t you sit down Theo?” Lou stares into his beer.
The waiter comes over to clean up. Lark apologizes for the mess and bends down to gather some pieces of glass that he cannot reach with his broom.
“Where are you from?”
“Tibet”
“Really! Were you born there?” She hands him some bits of broken peppershaker including the metal top. He sneezes.
A baby is crying over by the bay window. The father takes the child from its mother and walks around the room toward us to calm it. The Tibetan waiter takes away the debris in his dustpan without answering Lark standing up to look at the baby. Now Herman Intaglio joins us, and starts sneezing as he sits down. Lou looks up at him.
“It’s the pepper Herman!”
“That’s my fault Herman, sorry.” Theo sits down opposite Herman while Lark is still cooing the baby.
“Theo, are you throwing pepper around for some reason?”
“No the shaker fell on the floor and broke and when the waiter swept up, it seems to have filled the air. Theo tries to stifle a sneeze and sinks behind his hands, hunching his shoulders. Lark pats him on the back, sneezes into the crook of her arm, and sits down next to him. She puts her hand on his shoulder and leans over to him.
“So what’s with Congressman Bean? … is Boris Tarantula going to design the replacement for the Washington Monument?”
“It’s still simmering in the stew cooked up by the Select Committee on Aesthetic Crime. I think it’ll get buried with the election coming up.” Theo has grown a big reddish gray goatee and his front teeth flash from the overhanging mustache curling east and west under his nostrils.
“Come on then Theo, I want to hear about the convention.”
“What are you professors up to now?”
“Herman, I have been in Melbourne with the atheists and my old friend Sylvester Paumgartner.”
“Your benefactor Theo!”
“Let’s not go there, Lark.”
“I didn’t know you were an atheist Theo.”
“Yes, have been since … well since I was twenty seven.”
“So what led you away from the good Lord?”
“I found it didn’t make sense any more.”
“What didn’t make sense?”
“The existence of god.”
I ask if any of us is a regular churchgoer. Only Herman responds. Rubbing the back of his head and looking down at the table he says he doesn’t get to Mass very often these days. He is obviously more interested in discussing Theo’s skepticism.
“So, Theo, why should anything exist?”
“No one knows why, Herman. The world is simply given to us.”
“Yes, given by God.”
“No, our world evolved out of the big bang, from a singularity. At least that’s the current theory.”
“Yes, a single God!”
“We don’t know what the singularity was.”
Lou offers up his open palms and shrugs. “Well who can say what god is!”
“No one, it doesn’t exist.” Lark is following this with one hand twirling the lock of black hair growing out of the waves of grey above her forehead, while her other hand supports her chin. The waiter comes back for orders and Lark looks up and puts her hand on his arm. “Say, were you born in Tibet?”
“Yes”
“Wow! … How did you get out?”
“Walked”
“That’s amazing … How long you been here?”
“Ten years.” The waiter’s face remains expressionless, his voice is soft. Theo interrupts and places an order followed by Herman. Lark doesn’t place an order. The waiter steps away quickly. Lou puts down the beer he was drinking and addresses Herman and Theo.
“You were talking about two beginnings which are both mysteries.”
“Except one is Divine and the other is a sort of calculation.”
“Herman, do you also mean supernatural when you say divine?”
“Of course Lou. God is a supernatural all knowing being.”
“Okay, but if both god and the big bang are essentially unknown, how do you know that God is supernatural? How do you know they aren’t both the same thing?”
“For one thing Lark, the bang is said to have been 13.7 billion years ago. There’s no such figure for god. Besides we talk about them so differently.”
“Well you might say Theo, it all begins at birth?”
“What’s birth got to do with this Lark?”
“It is our beginning isn’t it Herman?”
“I would agree that birth is a miracle, but not a supernatural one.”
“What sort of miracle is it then Theo?”
“It seems miraculous Lark, because birth brings a new animal into the world. I mean don’t you find that extraordinary?”
“A new animal? Theo don’t you mean a new human being?”
“Possibly, but we are not the only species that is born.”
“Yes, but the others don’t argue about god.”
“That’s right enough Lou.”
“They don’t have to argue in Eden!”
“Well, perhaps talking is the real point.”
”What do you mean Theo?”
”You might say the whole fantasy about a supernatural god and associated myths, and scientific theories, all came about through talk.”
“A lot more than talk; divine revelation and human ingenuity and calculation.”
”Well I don’t believe in divine revelation Herman. It really boils down to people talking to each other, or writing and reading articles and books etcetera.”
“I don’t know if you can reduce the word of god to that, Theo.”
“Lark, what has god ever said?”
“I am that I am.”
“That is profound alright, who did it say it to, I forget?”
“In King James, God said it to Moses, Exodus Chapter 3 Verse 14.”
“Lark, you are quite the Biblical scholar!”
“Why is life so short? Why is it so inexplicable? Lou, I have always been interested in belief and faith. I really want to ask our waiter about Tibetan Buddhism.”
“Now is not the time … he’s working besides … ”
“I know Lou, I shouldn’t have gone there … you’re right.”
Theo puts an arm around Lark’s shoulders. “Lark and I have discussed this many times.”
“Yes and you always point out that some human wrote the biblical texts.”
“That’s it Lark. I mean we only have the writer’s word for it.”
“Look, you have to accept tradition in this case.”
“Why Herman? Tradition tells me that the earth is flat.”
“Theo, you don’t know who you are, without tradition, and if you don’t know that, then you are nowhere!”
Lark breaks into song:
“He’s a real nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.”
Lou laughs and claps silently. “Bravo Lark!”
Theo is leaning back with his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Okay Lark, I know, there’s no challenging the authority of the Beetles!”
Herman leans forward across the table towards Theo.
“Look Theo, have you ever been really terrified?”
“Yes, every time this topic comes up!”
“No seriously Theo. If you have ever been really scared shitless, then you knew God!”
“I did?”
“That’s right! … When you’re that terrified your ego isn’t getting in the way.”
“Well the experience isn’t like that for me.”
“Thinking is ego Theo, and no thought can help you in that instant, only God can help you!”
“Herman, how about meditation? Doesn’t that take you to the same place?”
“Maybe Lark, I pray but don’t meditate, nor am I a Buddhist.”
“I mean is god necessarily supernatural?”
“Of course Lark. That’s what I said to begin with. How else could the world have been created from nothing?”
“Well if God created the world then it’s not that nothing was there, God was there.”
“God was there but he had nothing to work with. He had to create it.”
“Herman, I take your point about the ego, and Lark I see what you mean about meditation, and I don’t think that we are talking about the supernatural in either case.”
“What do you think Theo? It’s just psychic states?”
“Yeah, I can go with that Lou.”
“What is a psychic state? What do you mean?”
“Lark, I just mean something that isn’t supernatural, that science might explain.”
“Do you think psychic states are supernatural Herman?”
“Psychic states, that’s just reductive jargon Lark. I am talking about your immortal soul, the center of your being, your heart, okay?”
“Herman, all I am saying is that I accept the known and the unknown, and I don’t see what the supernatural adds to knowledge. I think it is just mythology.”
“Theo, you must understand we are talking about a matter of faith, not knowledge!”
“Are you saying that you believe things you don’t know Herman?”
“Lou, I know that my faith is strong and I believe in God.”
“Yeah Lou this is getting into semantics or philosophy or something … I mean is faith knowledge?”
“Lark, knowledge is justified true belief. I think that sums it up as simply as possible.”
“Okay Theo; are you trying to say that Herman’s knowledge of God is justified by his faith?”
“Doesn’t make sense to me Lark.”
“I am not going to deny Herman’s faith. Faith needs no justification. ”
“Are you a materialist then Theo?”
“No Lou. I just favor rational thought.”
“Theo do you have no faith at all?”
“Sure I have faith Herman. I expect the sun to come up tomorrow morning, and I trust my friends, my bank will … “
“You’re on thin ice there Theo!”
“Right Lark, let’s leave the economy out of this for now even though trust is essential there too.”
“So Theo, you believe in God’s work but you deny God’s existence. I can’t understand that!” Herman’s phone rings before he can get the first bite of his fillet of trout.
The waiter is standing next to Herman with plates balanced half way up his arm. “Chicken Salad?”
My cell phone chimes. It’s the Light House gas station. My old Saturn has soaked up another $1,300 in parts and labor. The Battle Hymn of the Republic sounds from Lou’s cell phone, and he pulls it out of his pocket. Theo’s ring tones sounds like the opening flourish of Schubert’s A Major piano quintet. Lark’s phone didn’t sound, perhaps it vibrated, as she opened it up at the same time as Lou. Theo spreads his thumb and finger through the whiskers on his lips to clear the way for lunch, but goes on talking. At the moment it doesn’t look as if any one will eat.
