Episode 313 - Reverse Chronology

About this Episode

Harold Pinter wrote a play once entitled "Betrayal" and he used a sort of trick to tell his story. He began the play at the end -- at the tragic finale of the events dramatized -- and ended the play at the beginning, at the touching and tentative start of those events. He reversed time, to tremendous effect.

Today's brief cast is intended as a salutary instance of what often happens in life: Things start well and end badly. In addition to the startling music that begins and ends my story, I tell how I met a very old friend after almost 55 years of not having seen him. This friend, now dead, by the way, was once a charming, funny, open, dear young person, truly at the threshold of his life. After 55 years, however, he had grown humorless, disappointed, withdrawn, and turned in upon himself.

Just once, at one brief moment within our conversation, my friend came to himself -- and right then, he was all at once 15 again. I was hurtled back in time by the mere expression on his face, only to be hurtled back again into the present when his eyes went grey again.

Reverse chronology! It doesn't have to happen. God is there, even as I write this and you read it, and... I have proof.

Listen to the last track, by the way, of "Reverse Chronology". It's a gem. And remember what Gerald Heard said so memorably in 1941, quoting from Meister Eckhart, "If you want to find God, go back to where you lost Him." LUV U.