An envelope on which he doodles Christmas thoughts: "Once upon a time, a long time ago, the son of god was born the son of man so that you and I should live happily ever after. Amen."

He was, I think, a good Christian. A good thoughtful Christian, that is. One who did truly try to walk the talk, but not in a stuffy way. I was, at the time, a practicing atheist (the Ayn Rand effect). I don't remember our discussions on this, but I know there were some. He loved me anyway.

These days I'm a little irritated by our current atheists, although I find myself still in basic agreement with them. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens make wonderfully cogent arguments against the silliness and sometimes danger of organized religion, but there seems to be something else at work in the universe that they are missing. I would call it the basal formation, if it didn't start to sound so much like pesto. But there you have it. The secret of the universe is pesto. It's that thing of which everything else is a part, and it must be the reason why nearly everyone on the face of the planet has acknowledged it in some way, and then gone too far and tried to organize it to their own satisfaction. But it's there, all the same. And it isn't anything separate from anything else. It simply is everything. Nothing so mysterious about it, after all.

But maybe we need the mystery, if only to lay down the laws we make for ourselves. We won't take any guff from each other, but it seems we are all willing to take some guff from the pesto of the universe.

I wonder if he is still a good Christian. I just believe in pesto.