The path was shady and cooler than the cemetery, and they both walked in silence for a moment. Something had transpired between them. They could both feel it.
Finally, at length, she ventured back into the debate that had captured their attention throughout the day.
“You say you think love is God, but you never said where love comes from. Why do people even want to be around each other?”
He thought it over for a moment, raising his eyebrows, preparing his answer and then replied: “The sociability of humans is a direct result of the benefit of reciprocal altruism,”
“Wow.” She said with a grin, happy to be on jousting terms again. “You can take the special outta just about anything. You honestly think we’re hanging out because of,” she put on airs, “the mutual benefit of reciprocal altruism?”
“Yeah, well, with you and I, it’s slightly different because the possibility of sex is thrown into the equation.”
“I’m not sure what equation you’re talking about. Delusional horny man plus wishful thinking equals impossible dream?”
Rowe managed a chuckle.
She walked in front of him, then spun on her heels to talk to him.
“Evolution can explain why you’re so horny, but it doesn’t explain love.”
“No, that’s not true, any species that benefits from having two parents will pair bond. It drastically increases the survivability of the offspring.”
“Oh, that’s so sexy… I hope that’s how my husband proposes.”
“We’re pair-bonding right now,” he said, raising his eyebrows hopefully.
“Oh, we are, huh?”
“Increasing familiarity, extending trust, it all piques oxytocin production in the brain.”
She smirked, studied him skeptically, and fell back in beside him. “Have you ever been in love?”
He was unsure how to answer that.
“Finally, a question that trips you up,” she said.
“Love is…” his voice trailed off.
“Patient, kind,” Winnie offered.
“Hard to define,” he said with less panache.
“Like God,” she added.
“Exactly,” he said, nodding as if they agreed. “I have been in love… although I didn’t know it at the time. I mean, you grow up thinking that the whole “I love you” phrase is somethin’ so sacred and if you say it too early, you’re tricking yourself. I think that fear was… I don’t think it served me well.”
“How so?” she asked.
“I was pretty serious with Alexis.”
“Goth girl?”
“Yeah… I didn’t realize it was love until I looked back on it in retrospect. It’s not like there’s a line we cross when we can say ‘now I’m in love’”
“Do you miss her?”
“I don’t want to get back together; it was really unhealthy at the end,” he shrugged. “But sure, I do miss her at times.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s living with a man in New York, with a child on the way.”
Winnie didn’t know what to say for a moment, but then added, “Do you want kids?”
“Mm-hmm,” he smiled, this was something he liked to think about. “I would want four kids if my wife shared that sentiment… and if I wasn’t concerned about overpopulation. It’d be a pain when they were in diapers, but it’d pay off when they were grown, and all came back for Christmas.”
“I’d like that,” Winnie said.
“Looking back on it all. I think I have a clearer idea of what love is,” he grew wistful. “When I first came to college, I used to imagine different… or I found myself looking for potential mates with an eye toward what that person can give me, you know? in terms of compatibility or intellectual stimulation, emotional connection, sexual compatibility, but when I look back, I think that’s selfish and it sets you up for failure because no one other person will fulfill all your needs. Love isn’t just being loved; it’s doing the loving. It’s not about what you get, it’s about what you can give.”
She studied him, inwardly pleased. He met her eyes but his attention was immediately drawn to a deer over her shoulder.
Winnie followed his gaze. It was a doe, standing 30 yards away, poking its head up between two trees and then venturing out into a small clearing. It was followed by two fawns, and deeper in the woods, a majestic buck. They were beautiful creatures.
“Isn’t it strange how they always look so perfect? It’s not like they can take showers,” she remarked. She immediately felt self-conscious, as if she ruined the majesty of the moment but Rowe picked up right where she left off.
“And they don’t even have hands to comb their hair,” he said.
“I know!” Winnie said – encouraged he was sharing the observation.
“Especially animals with long hair” he continued. “Like wolves or foxes, they always look perfect.”
“They get up every morning and look in the mirror and they’re like sweet, perfect hair day,” she said as they shared a laugh.
The continued walking until they came to a fork in the path. At every juncture on the trail, there were signs with labels such as “Racoon’s Ridge,” “Turkey Trail,” and “The Bunny Hop” – all names of various trails in different directions. They followed the sign labeled “The Catbird Seat” which was the name of the observation deck. It was a mile off the trail and led back to a tributary that cut a ravine as it fed the river. The deck was built thirty feet over a fifteen-foot waterfall, which didn’t quite roar, but did produce more than a gurgle. The churning water down below produced an earthy aroma.
They shared the deck with a family on the other side, a young couple with two small girls, who were overly curious and constantly demanding the attention of the mother who kept pulling them back from climbing the railing.
Rowe and Winnie sat on a bench built into the deck, glad to have a rest as they had walked uphill for the last mile.
After soaking in the view for a moment, she turned to face him, crossing her legs, on the park bench.
“Okay. Let’s try something. Close your eyes.”
He happily obliged.
“Now… for the next ten minutes, I want you to imagine that there IS a God.”
“Okay.”
“Imagine… you have a vision of God.”
“I’d see a doctor.”
“Okay, imagine that scientists have just uncovered the God particle.”
“If scientists can uncover it then it’s not supernatural.”
“I don’t know why you keep saying God has to be supernatural.”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
Winnie didn’t wait for an answer, she was anxious to start her experiment “Okay. Imagine Carl Sagan just published an article claiming he was wrong about all this atheism crap.”
“That would convince me… because he’s dead.” Rowe said.
She grinned. “Okay, that’s right… how about…”
“Richard Dawkins,” he said.
“Yes. Imagine Richard Dawkins wrote a new book called…” she thought, then continued. The Invisible Light… no… The Unlikeliest…”
“Sounds appropriate.”
“No, A Deeper Truth, and How I Finally Found It. In which he said all this time, he was looking for evidence with his eyes, when really he should have been feeling with his heart.”
“Okay.”
“And you realize that all you have to do is look inside your own heart and suddenly you can start picking up these radio waves of truth that I’ve been talking about. And they’ve been all around you all your life, you’ve just been ignoring them. And suddenly you feel the awe of knowing we were all created for a purpose… That there is a force infinitely more powerful than yourself,” she continued, “and that if you listen carefully… you can hear it, in your head and in your heart. Maybe not in actual words, but your intuition. In the majesty of a leaf, in the beauty of a relationship, in the kindness of a stranger.”
He drew in another breath, holding it in his lungs. He tried to recount his day, in particular, the blade of grass in the park, but every thought quickly found its way back to Winnie: her mirthful laugh, the bounce in her step as she spun in front of him.
She watched him closely, unaware of his exact thoughts, just pleased to see him engaging in earnest.
“Okay, open your eyes,” she said. “How do you feel?”
He looked out into the ravine. The sunlight streamed through the leaves.
“It feels really good.”
“Yeah?” Winnie was encouraged.
“Yeah… I feel… magical… safe… alive… weird….” he genuinely soaked it in. “I feel kinda like this is all, like the entire world, is just a fun virtual reality game and that there’s a great big safety net underneath us.”
“That’s a new one. But I can see that – it’s because there’s something greater than your physical self,” she said.
Rowe thought about it and grinned. “And hey, I get to live forever!”
“Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not,” he shrugged, earnest. “I’m really not. It feels great. I can see why it’s so popular. I mean, my problems seem pretty small compared to forever… I mean, the idea of life after death. I’m not gonna lie, it’s somewhat appealing. And the idea that my future wife and I will be like… two souls… intertwined for eternity.”
She watched him intently.
“But if I give God credit for all the good things,” he said, “don’t I have to give him blame for all pain? Like, why did he let those rebels take over the church you built in Gambia?”
“We have free will.”
“What about the tsunami that wiped out 100,000? He really botched that up.”
“Well… maybe there’s a reason we don’t know about.”
He didn’t buy it.
“A lot of modern theologians,” Winnie said, “suggest a more deistic view of the universe. That he set the whole thing into motion, but now takes a hands-off approach.”
“If he takes a hands-off approach then why do people pray?”
“I suppose you think prayer is garbage?”
“It’s the worst thing in the world,” he said with a sly grin.
She rolled her eyes.
“I can’t think of a more effective way of making people feel like they’re helping others when they’re doing nothing. I go insane whenever I see politicians praying for gun violence to end. Don’t pray about it, do something about it. It’s like it prevents them from actually doing something. It assuages their guilt and they never have to get-up off the sofa.”
“Just because some people misuse it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Prayer can lead to action if you realize that God works through people. I pray all the time. It calms me, makes me stronger, gives me clarity to focus. And that makes me more able to change the world.”
“See you’re not… I feel like you’re not describing actual prayer… in fact, I feel like you’re not even, or everything you’ve described today isn’t Christianity.”
“Yeah,” she replied and began to think about it, biting her lip briefly “You may be right, but this debate isn’t about Christianity, it’s not about religion, it’s about God.”
He nodded and thought about it. “Fair enough.”
She looked out into the ravine and thought it over.
“I do call myself a Christian, but I don’t identify with evangelicals and how they’re so… anti academia or science… and call everything they don’t like fake news”
He nodded.
“I apologize if I was arguing against a straw man. I do see the difference between religion and God… I mean I get it that you don’t agree with all Christians, I mean you could just as easily try to link me to Stalin because he is an atheist and I’d cry foul about that, so I don’t want to do the same to you.”
“Don’t kneel,” she said with a mirthful teasing look in her eye.
He flashed his crooked grin and said, “Let’s go get lunch.”