LOVE LETTER TO AN ATHEIST

Here's a contradictory thought -- there's nothing mysterious about the mystery of summer-night silence...!

To consider, or even to dismiss, this thought, you first have to define mystery. Problems are smaller than us, therefore can be solved (what is 2+2?). Mysteries are larger than us, therefore can only be embraced (where does 2 come from?). And so while the problem of summer-night silence can be solved with an instrument, the mystery of how its dense fragrance envelopes you can only be embraced with a soul.

And yet, having addressed this mystery it's still fair to assert there's really nothing mysterious about mysteries. Not if you can modify your intellectual aspirations with your intuitive expectations. In effect, not if you grant we were not made (evolved ?) to understand everything in the Garden (the Cosmos?). Rather, to live comfortably with some of its mysteries just as we find them.

Genesis tries to make this case. Personally, I learned it with considerably less theological fanfare. It was that immensely black, cricket-songed night I was driving her home, and lost my way on a dark country road. Quick now -- a big GPS problem to be solved! Actually as it turned out -- a small opportunity to surrender to the mystery of that which may be unsolvable!

There we were. Cushioned under a canopy of stars, captured in a melody of night music, mesmerized by the way long-sealed curtains parted ever so briefly to let us peek into eternity. On that eccentric August evening, being lost became being found. For a sliver of time, highways and headlights were quite irrelevant. Caught inside this gossamer tick of time, we watched ancient tales blending into modern spacewalks. It became an ET moment in which we were the ET's.

Fortunately -- I prefer to think unfortunately -- a pair a passing headlights stopped long enough to guide us back to the highway, the city, and the everyday problems of our little lives. But for that brief shining hour, I can remember how we embraced -- not solved -- the mystery of the silence of summer nights

For the doubters, remember this. All stories are true...and some even happened.