It’s a perfect morning here in Boise, Idaho, at 8:39 am, 72 degrees, not a cloud in the sky or a breath of wind.  More accurately, it is a perfect moment here in Boise because in thirty minutes the sun will climb high enough to start the mercury rising until it tops out around 100 degrees.  Still, other than the whine of the HVAC system a couple of stories below me, it is a nice slice of time.  From this two-foot by four-foot “balcony” (ten dollars more than the standard king room) I can see over the solar panels on the roof below to a greenbelt running along the river positively seducing me to leave off with the typing and take a morning stroll.  Despite the incessant motorized hum, I see no human activity.  It strikes me as a scene from a Twilight Zone episode.  It all looks normal at first glance, but where are the humans?

And with that thought, I am brought back to reality.  We are in the middle of a raging pandemic made so much worse than it should be by the raging incompetence of our President.  Before stopping in Boise for the night as part of our drive home from Telluride, Melissa and I pulled off the interstate in Twin Falls for lunch.  Following the recommendations of Yelp and the directions of Google, we found ourselves outside a local pub, a rectangular, one-story cinderblock building with no windows.  Masks on, we paused at the door, taken aback.  The place was full and no one, not even the staff, was wearing masks.  The Chill and Grill should have been renamed the Dread and Spread.  To her credit, the waitress who handed us our take-out order was perfectly polite even if some of the patrons seemed less than pleased with our KN95 coverings – Coneheads in the heartland.  Act normal.  Leave a good tip and get the hell out of there.

I confess I do not understand how our nation could take something as decent and neighborly as wearing a mask to prevent my sneeze from splashing on your face and turn it into a Bill of Rights issue.  It reminds me, in a good way, of that great Steve Martin line: “Mind if I smoke?  No, mind if I fart?”  The comedy drains from me, however, when I remember that Herman Cain died of Covid 19 after attending Trump’s Tulsa rally without wearing a mask, and still, so many Republican officials either stay silent or defiant in the face of reality.  If that response to Herman Cain’s death is not exhibit A in support of the argument that human existence hangs by a thread, I am not sure what is.

Strange, however, how the earth doesn’t care, doesn’t pause or shift in her cycles.  The birds still flit from tree to balcony.  The bees still buzz around my laptop, the air smells green and warm.  We humans, in our self-absorbed arrogance, forget that Nature feels no obligation to treat us with any greater respect than any other organism, any other speck in her web of creation.  She grants us no greater or lesser right to existence than the dinosaurs, the spotted owl, or the white rhino.  In the fertile soil of our cherished self-determination, our arrogance fertilizes the noxious weeds of our self-destruction.  Nature has no opinion on mask-wearing, only consequences.  Embraced as I am by this gentle dawn, an embrace that contains both a healing beauty and an invisible threat, the fate of humanity feels more like a jump ball than a preordained right. 

I have, like many people, moved past outrage and indignation only to find myself stuck, like my laptop caught in an infinite loop searching for a logical explanation for this anger, fear and resentment over wearing a mask.  I don’t have an answer, but I believe insufferable arrogance like that of Trump hides a debilitating fear.  Behind the rage and defiance of the Republicans opposed to masks, the defiance of the people who believe the virus is a Democratic hoax, and the self-righteous indignation of the evangelical ministers who refuse to close their Sunday palaces, is that same debilitating fear.  Despite our great achievements, despite our remarkable and singular self-awareness, we cannot escape the fact that we do not control the course of our lives, much less the course of human events.  Even the strongest, most devoted faith cannot excise the threat of our mortality, the threat of meaninglessness.

Sometime after my father died, my uncle Varney sent me an email.  I don’t remember what prompted that particular exchange, but I think it may have been something I wrote, and he read.  I never set out to be provocative when I write.  My only rule is to be honest.  I try to leave off the sentimental horse manure and steer clear of empty clichés.  I am not always successful.  Sometimes, however, I surprise myself by writing something that strikes people oddly, even stirs up some unpleasant emotions, although, at the time I wrote it, I did not see it doing that.  I think this may have happened with my uncle.  I may have said something about my father that struck him as nihilistic or hopeless.  In response, Varney told me about a conversation he had with my father.  As I recall, Varney, in a deliberate attempt to be provocative – something my uncle loves to do and can get away with because he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body – asked my  father what he would do if it turned out that there was no God.  My father, a practicing Catholic until the day he died, said, without hesitation, “I wouldn’t live my life any differently.”

If human existence is precariously balanced on a knife’s edge, I find my father’s philosophy courageous.  It takes a fair amount of humble courage to admit that you do not know something, but it takes an altogether different level of humility and courage to admit that you do not know whether God exists and still act as if God does.  We have no right to existence, but we do have the right and privilege to choose how we will live.  My father had the courage to acknowledge that his faith was no guarantee that God existed, and still he chose not to let the fear of meaninglessness lead him to despair or loud, arrogant irrationality.

Faith in anything – ourselves, love, God – is ultimately hollow unless we struggle with it, unless we humbly admit that the universe may not care whether the human race continues or not, and then courageously choose to love in the face of that reality.  To those who refuse to wear a mask, I’ll still wear mine to protect your right to live and turn my cheek to absorb your angry slap in the face.  Maybe then, you’ll find the courage to let go of your anger and overcome your fears.