Hopewit

  Our balcony fig-leaf; just in case. In an essay I wrote once upon a time, I used an illustration meant to focus on the nature of believing as an act of choice … or as gift.                Two seven-year-olds are walking home from school when one, Devon, says to the other, Earl, “What is Santa going to bring you for Christmas?”                “I don’t believe in Santa Clause,” Earl says.                “Why not?”                “I can’t. We don’t have a chimney,” Earl replies, and leaves poor Devon to contemplate an existential question that lies well beyond his reach.                An adult equivalent might take place in a palaeontologists’ laboratory where one Christian scientist, Devon, says to his fellow scientist, Earl, while working on reconstructing a dinosaur spinal cord, “I wonder if this specimen lived in the Garden of Eden?”                And an adult Earl says, “Impossible. I just carbon dated those vertebrae over there and this guy is somewhere between two

  A sixtieth wedding anniversary is occasion for talk of time . “Seems like yesterday” and “Where have the years gone” and “My you look young in your wedding photos” all point to an awakened consciousness about how time past, present and yet-to- come is experienced. Time drags in the dentist’s chair, seems to speed by while clinging to just a little more of it, please Lord.                 I read some websites on Physics research, but I can’t claim to know how time and space are related and can be mathematically shown to be the same thing. It belongs in the same bin with the theory that space is curved, that time is relative, and that time slows or accelerates slightly depending on gravity. I can take the scientists’ words on these, but don’t ask me to explain what they mean.                What I think I get is that accurate time measurement has become more and more important to economies, political systems, and daily commerce. Our measurement of time, however, is completely earth