"What Matters Won't Change; What Changes Don't Matter"

I finished reading The Chess Garden last night, and it was just fantastic. The title of this post comes from a quote from one of the characters. I like it, because in the past week, it's helped me to realize some added peace while being back in the thick of things that worried me before, and because it is, I think, the perfect expression of how I am living my life when I'm happy. I'm not worried about what could be; nor am I worried about what was. There is only what is, and faith that the stream of life will take us where it will and that wherever that may be, it will be wonderful.

There's a moment in the movie Michael, in which the angel Michael is seen standing in a field across the street from a motel that everyone is staying at, and under his breath to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," he sings, "We're here, because we're here, because we're here, because we're here..." and onward to himself, ad infinitum. A moment later, lots of Hollywood nonsense come and encroaches, but for just a second or two, the movie touches on something like a correct philosophy, or the philosophy of life I would have if I had to have a philosophy of life. Just the other day I read a quote by Goethe, which said (paraphrased here) that the important thing in life is to live. The Chess Garden puts it differently, that the metaphor of Christ on the cross comes in the crucifixion of the here on the now, the containment of the eternal and the divine into a single moment that stretches out forever (or the containment of infinite time into a single place that stretches out forever). That the best communication with the divine is to realize that divinity speaks to us when, instead of struggling to make things as we want them, we look at things as they are.

I'm a little sad, now. In the way that I'm always a little sad when a story that has touched me deeply comes to a close. In the way that characters can be like friends and guides, and that last page can feel like a very final farewell. I think I'll go for a cup of coffee, and maybe commune with some of my real friends for a bit.