God plays dice

     A friend of mine died this week.  He wasn't a close friend, but I knew him for 32 years and I wish we were closer.  He was a pretty incredible person and it would have been nice to know him better.  Besides being incredibly talented he was just a really nice person.  My first memory of him was when my son was joining his little league baseball team right after we moved to Florida.  He had no friends and Mark introduced him to his son, another incredibly nice and talented person.  The two of them took my son under their wing and he was immediately incorporated into their community.  For all the great talents he had, I am most enamored by his generosity of spirit.  I think your children are a reflection of what kind of person you are and he has four wonderful children who are medals on his wall of achievement.
     At the funeral his dearest friend and constant companion Jack, gave a moving and inspirational eulogy for Mark.  He noted how everyone's first thought when describing him was "renaissance man".  It's true.  He was a scientist, a writer, a musician and on and on.  He went on to recite two quotations from one of Mark's books, "God doesn't play dice with the lives of men," (Albert Einstein) and "I am what I am," (Popeye the sailor man.)
     But sitting in church and reflecting on life I had to disagree with Mark (and Al Einstein.)  God does play dice with the lives of men and with every molecule and muon in the universe.  People were looking for a reason at that funeral...a reason Mark had died two weeks shy of his 65th birthday...a reason why they wouldn't.  I looked at the stained glass windows around me depicting Christ's stations of the cross, and realized that all religion exists because people want to believe that God doesn't play dice.  But what's so wrong with believing there is no reason, that it is all just chance?  Jack related that Mark's son picked up his car from the hospital after he died and drove it back to his home.  As he parked the car he noted the odometer said 100,000 miles...exactly.  And Jack said...'there are no coincidences.'  But there are... precisely because we don't notice the hundred thousand times the odometer was off.  So what?  So what if there is no greater reason to live than to live the life Mark did, to create and to procreate.  I may disagree with Mark about God and dice, but I definitely think Popeye got it right.  We are what we are and whether we choose to make the most of it or to believe there is some higher reason, some greater reward is a very profound choice.
     It is the very reason for what I think ails our society...our world.  When mankind was young and knew nothing about the world it lived in, it is understandable that they invented gods and myths to explain it all.  And when science emerged about 500 BC and we began to learn, it is also understandable that those gods were rejected as useless crutches.  It is not surprising when mankind began to unravel the mysteries of the universe but was still fearful of death that one myth prevailed, the dream of eternal life.  But that fear and that dream have resulted in terrible things.  That fear has resulted in the dark ages, in crusades and war, in killing, in persecution, in bigotry, in hatred, in all the things religion claims to disclaim. 
    As I sat in that church I admitted (for the zillionth time) that I am frightened too, and I am jealous of those who put their faith in a higher being and feel so comforted.  But so what?  I am what I am and isn't it better to face that fear than to hide from it?  Wouldn't the world be so much better if we weren't trying to tell each other how to live, what to believe and trying to build bigger and better bombs to kill each other?  The bible did get it right.  We just don't listen.  Now that mankind has unlocked the keys of the universe it is time we let go of the myth of fear.  "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."
    Mark had it right.  He was what he was.  I don't think it's so bad to live every day as if there were no tomorrow, every moment as if it were your 100,000th.  Goodbye my friend.  Even though I hardly knew you, I will miss you.