Losing

SOMETIMES, if not often, life simply slaps you in the face, as we all know. This morning I got a phone call from a good friend of mine, a fellow member of our local senior center. Her news was that our director, a young lady of about forty four, with three kids and and dynamic personality, had passed away. At forty four. A room full of old fogeys like me, and a dynamic young woman with three young childern who adore their excellent mother, passes away. My mother, a nurse, said that she didn't like the watered down expression "passed away", that she much preferred just comning out and saying that somebody died. Fair enough, mom. You're the expert. Sometimes, though, it helps softies like me soften things up a bit, expecially when things are so damnably miserably hard that you think they might become unendurable. Well, I can't speak for anyone else, as as for me, and as for today, as far as I am concerned. I am the loser. Dear God, what a loss. Yes, I am grateful for having lived to be seventy one and a half years old. I thank the dear lord, whatever that is, daily. But wasn't it Bertrand Russell, probably Bertrand Russell and a lot of other people, who questioned the "goodness" of a god who would permit or allow such suffering, even on a planet on which primitive barbaric little bipedal primates scramble around, misguidedly thinking that they have to kill somebody to survive? Either the force which created us is amenable to our suffering, or indifferent to it, or so it seems. Let's get that straight. It was Archibald MacLeish, I think, who said that If god is good he is not god, and if god is god he is not good. Makes sense if you think about it. I can't count the number of times I have quoted it. But my goodness was this lady ever special, mother of three great kids, the whole package. I can't imagine what it must be like to be "angry at God". I simpy cannpt conceive of myself engaging that state of mind. And I think it was Bertrand Russell who said something to the effect that any belief he otherwise might have had in an omnipotent God vanished wen he visited a hospital for for terminally ill children. I mean, look, either god intends for and wants us to suffer, or he can't do anything to prevent it. Chistian apololgists for this tend to scatter like newly enlightened cockroaches when confronted with this stark, unavoidable reality. My plan is to hopover to the senior center and see who's there. The kicthen staff, and perhaps a few others,would be my guess. We can help comfort each other just by being together. I don't worry about god's plan. The universe is seemingly functioning precisely as intended by "the great eternal genius who built the world" as Einstein put it. Einstein's religiosity which he said "consisted in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit" covers all the bases for me. "We are indeed immortal, made so by the effects of our actions", said Goethe. And, I don't question, or get angry at God. I'm incapable of it. And I think that Ashly, my friend forever, is too. "one does not always lose when one has to do without, said Goethe. We haven't lost Ashley. we've just watched while the force which created the universe has moved her to another, better place.