Tasting Eternity

My old friend and I went to a restaurant for lunch,
a ramshackle little place, but my friend told me
the food was great -- and it was! Three different
chicken curries, a lovely lamb curry, and a half-
dozen veggies, and mango drinks to wash it down.

I suppose we visited the buffet more times than we
should have but we were talking philosophy as we
always did when we got together and speaking of
God and the soul and the meaning of life really
can make you hungry -- then my friend said he
believed in God but had trouble with Eternity --
it seemed scary, terrifying even to think of time
going on forever, endlessly, a road never ending.

I laughed a little, then smiled at my old friend --
‘THIS is eternity! ‘ I told him, ‘Right now, this
moment as we eat this delicious curry and try
to figure out the meaning of our existence’.
I swallowed a mouthful of lamb korma and
laughed again -- ‘wherever we exist is eternity,
and we always exist somewhere, and time is
an illusion, time does not exist, except as a
moment’-- And the next moment, I asked him
if he had room for the rice pudding ...