It is said that God exists outside of time and space. This makes a lot of sense to me on many levels. There is the experiential level of deep communion where one completely loses the sense of time and space, and then more practically and logically our everyday experience and understanding of time and space.
It is easy to think about time being a man-made construct of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. My body shows a tale of time passing, but yet there remains something of me that feels unchanged despite this exterior. Everyone can relate to the experience of the endless thirty minutes at the end of a long day in a grocery store line, or when especially hungry and waiting at a busy restaurant. Or the contrary, time spent laughing and exchanging with a friend or loved one, you then look at your watches and two hours have passed. You do not know where the time went.
I am always especially struck by time and space relativity when I go to Paris. There is a true sense of a time warp, where it moves in a completely different way. Space too becomes this strange illusion. I will explain. In Paris things take longer, even little simple meaningless things. This past trip I needed a new bank card, my old one had been sent to our old address, so I never received a new card. I had written an email to the bank about a month before going but never received a response. When I asked about it, the gentleman told me he never got it? I went to the bank, about a twenty, twenty-five-minute walk, which means almost an hour for both ways – when you add in wait and teller time, a good hour. Here in the states I would drive 5 minutes, be given a new temporary card with code, while they would mail the permanent card to the updated address, and be done with the whole ordeal in a good half hour on a given morning.
In France it went like this. My first trip to the bank, I explained the situation, I was told we would not change the address yet because if we changed the address they would send the new bank card there. So for now, we order a new bank card to be sent to the bank, and it will be there in a week. "Ok, can I use a check to take out some money?" "No, there is no money here. You would need to walk another 10-15 minutes to the next branch that has money."
A week later I go back to the bank. My card is there: success! "Now can I use the card to withdraw from the machine?" “No, you need the code, which we do not have. That has to be mailed to you". OK, so now we do change the address in the computer, but not to our permanent address in Virginia, but rather to my grandparents’ address where we are staying. I will need to come back to the bank after I receive the mailed code in order to change the address to our permanent address in the US.
About a week later I receive the new code, and return to the bank to change the address. So basically getting a new bank card (that I can actually use) and updating my online information took a month, four trips to the bank, and approximately 4 hours in travel time. A banal example, but you see the point.
Then there is this strange space phenomenon. My grandparents live approximately a block from the Cite Universitaire. There are many buildings and a big open courtyard in the back. There are some music studios where I go to practice in the back corner. When you glance across the street from downstairs of my grandparents building, it literally looks a stone’s throw away. However, when you begin to walk there, you have to cross at the cross stop, then double back to the entrance. By the time you cross the courtyard to get to the music studios it is a good 15-minute walk....and yet it looks like it is just right there.
I also had this same strange phenomenon of space and time at the Le château de Vaux le Vicomte. There are beautiful gardens there, expansive and manicured. There is an air of timelessness and spaciousness. I began to walk and felt like I was lost in another time. They do not look huge, but once you venture forth, it is as though they keep stretching. The time is passing and yet you look as though you have not walked so far. When you turn to head back you realize the seemingly short distance takes an hour or so to get back to the enormous Chateau.
We are now leaving the chateau, I am having a heart to heart with my aunt about my aging grandparents and all the complications that this brings. I dare to ask her a bold question. I am curious, and it would be too raw, too sensitive or inappropriate to ask others. Do they have plans for their deaths, do they wish a funeral or burial, cremation? I really have no idea. They are not people of faith, so I really don't know how they feel about any of it. She says that my grandfather mentioned a plot, near a relative, and it was a good deal. "So they want to be buried there? Have they written somewhere their wishes?” My aunt surprises me – apparently, not to her knowledge, and nobody has broached these issues. It seems strange to me, considering how well thought-out and planned so many aspects of their lives are. I ask her what she thinks. She says that she believes you have to base decisions based on the people left behind. For example, when asked about her own mother, she did not want her buried right near her as it would be too painful, but on the other hand, she cannot support the idea of cremation. She wanted her mother buried near her childhood home where she could visit if she chose, but would not be saddened daily by a place she would pass frequently in her daily routes.
It all seems so odd to me. I understand if you think and believe this is all there is, then I suppose the people left are the priority.... but what if it is not? What if there is something of that person that still exists in another form, plane, or dimension. Should we not honor what they desire? It is a somber moment. It feels to be outside of time and space, and I am floating in the illusion of what is and is not.
Jump ahead. Back in Richmond, slowly returning to home, feeling a little in between two planes, the Paris plane and the US plane. We are snowed in almost a week, this strange time warp continues, back to reality, everyday life, but not just yet. My heart feels a little sad, melancholic. Paris was so wonderful. I think about life, and death and everything in between. Why there is something rather than nothing? I think about our lives like a video production on a screen, each one with its unique story and then that story ends.
I ask Calvin about these things, and he says he understands. He says that something is good, better than nothing, philosophically speaking. He says also that knowing there is something that does continue on into eternity makes this life have more meaning. I see his point, I agree. If there truly is nothing after, then it is easy to see a certain stark futility -- one moment you experience tender cherished moments, and then they are gone. But if there is something that continues on, then this is only a small part of a much larger story.
The beauty returns, the flower blossoms, releases its fragrance and beauty generously to this world; the winter comes, the flower dies, but its seeds have been blown by the wind and spread far and wide. When the spring comes a new patch of flowers blossoms and so it goes on into eternity, generously sharing its beauty and fragrance for all to enjoy.
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