It is interesting that Arthur C Clarke recognized that physicians are more likely to be atheist. The first story of his that I ever read was ”The Star” which describes a Jesuit astronaut coming upon the blasted remains of a civilization that once orbited the star that supposedly went nova in order to announce Jesus’ birth. In other words, the Christmas Star. The question asked is, how could God destroy an entire civilization just so that the shepherds and the Magi would know where Jesus was born?

What is funnier is that I was introduced to this story by a Jesuit priest who mentioned it during Scripture class, back when I was a freshmen at a Catholic high school. I never understood the nature of faith and doubt until I met the Jesuits. Faith and doubt have the same relationship that light and shadow have. Without light, there can be no shadow. Without doubt, there can be no faith. Anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you something. Seriously.

And in a moment of synchronicity, a real supernova seems to have anticipated Arthur C Clarke’s death.

(from Deadly Computer Blog)

Arthur C Clarke has died. I’ve actually read quite a few books of his. Besides 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001, I also read the Rama series.

But the story that actually sticks in my mind most dramatically is The City and the Stars, which is about Earth a billion years from now. The image that was seared into my brain were the three stars aligned in a straight line, which were actually artificially engineered as a monument of the hyperintelligences that superseded the human race. A lot of the imagery in The City and the Stars also reminds me of the movie “Dark City”. Diaspar is a city where people are randomly generated by a computer and assigned random back stories, similar to how the Strangers in “Dark City” randomly assign different histories to random people, and the protagonist has unique characteristics that make him want to escape the city, leading him to an incredible truth.

A lot of things have happened this week.

I think about the concept of a Gate. A Portal. Somehow it ties together with Holy Week, perhaps. I just finished reading a short story by Philip K Dick about crossing over into the Afterlife, which in reality is simply another universe within our multiverse, and he cryptically alludes to the concept that Christ was the only other person to cross universes back and forth.

The Gate makes me think of Palm Sunday, and Christ’s arrival to Jerusalem. Or Dave Bowman’s odyssey through the monolith.

But Portals and Thresholds aren’t necessarily tangible things. And Barack Obama seems to have crossed through such a threshold: he is the first politician in my lifetime, and perhaps in all of American history, to honestly address the problem of race in America. While I hope fervently that this signals a turning point in American history, I fear that we will only listen to him when it is too late, like the Trojans who ignored Cassandra and Laocoön, and finding their city, their nation in complete ruin.

And I have my own little thresholds to cross. Tomorrow is day 11 of 12 of the long stretch, and my third overnight call before I finally get a day off again. Today is halfway through this rotation. In two weeks, I will be done with the pediatric portion of my residency training.

The first day of spring is today.

Where does the time go?