balance is not necessarily moderation. on the ride home tonight after a yummy birthday dinner with daniel (happy 23 tomorrow) i listed to Bart Erhman on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. very interesting. his path led from fundamentalist christian to agnostic. he has written a book on the inconsistencies within the New Testament, who wrote which gospels, etc. he realized at one point that he did not need belief in order to be a good person. that we are hard wired to treat others as we would wish to be treated. so once he accepted that he would not turn into a person without ethics or values, he changed his approach. teaches in the dept of religious studies (so these issues still matter to him) at UNC Chapel Hill. that's not an easy place necessarily to be an avowed agnostic.
i forget if i wrote here some of the slightly cute tidbits from Noah Ben Shea's PBS lecture. i flipped past him again tonight, and he was at the point of: don't let the past determine your future. we have only two arms. if we are holding tight onto the past, we can't embrace our future.
so that's the balance. finding out how to remember the past. honor the past. celebrate what was. without being stuck there. it must be doable. others before me have done it. doesn't only apply to spousal loss. relevant really to everyone. balance is also between work and home. i have to be careful not to seek too much refuge in the structure, people and activities of work. not to use it as an escape. but i realize that i need that connection. but it is something of which to be aware.
one other snippet that sticks:
the only mistake you can make is not learning from the last one. i'll have to keep that in mind when i make a mistake next.
trying to work out a date for the unveiling of Linda's headstone at Valhalla Cemetery just outside of White Plains NY. takes some negotiating. we'll get there.
so happy birthday, younger son. my gift to you, as promised, is not to call at 7:30 in the morning to sing happy birthday.
