A Peculiar Anniversary

For our anniversary, Eric and I went to a vegetarian restaurant in a little town near by. Somehow I had come across their Web site while I was looking up a recipe for something I have long since forgotten. The menu offered so much that sounded so good I really wanted to go there. So off we went.

As soon as we walked in, Eric's freak-o-meter started pinging. I have little experience with religious fringe and didn't notice anything other than a rather quiet hostess and a rather empty dining room. But he, far more versed in such matters, spied the dark blue books on a little etagere, and those, with the smiles and demeanor of the employees, as well as the fact it was a vegetarian restaurant, had him squirming. He, apparently, had our server squirming, too. I wondered if the server didn't like women or just me in particular. Everything Eric ordered was an "excellent choice." One item was whipped up with the chef's special ingredient – love. I didn't get any love, and my choices were not so enthusiastically received. Ah, well. I guess I didn't appear receptive to enlightenment.

The food was good, and the selections were numerous. Everything was quite attractively presented. We thought we'd go again, but now I'm not sure.

When Eric went to the bathroom and I paid, I peeked at their blue books and free DVDs. I grabbed a couple of the DVDs out of curiosity, although I still haven't watched them. Eric was so right about the place.

At home, I looked them up on the Internet. There were buzzwords galore: advent, atonement, accord, later days, light energy, perfect, love, fear, depression, God, Jesus, forgiveness, peace, enlightenment, and my favorite, hologram. As far as I can tell, it's a New Agey thing that combines a whole bunch of ideas from a whole bunch of religions. We're all on our way to departing our bodies and the time-space continuum through forgiveness, and when we do, we'll be gods ourselves, or something like that.

People can believe whatever they want to believe, and that's fine with me, as long as they don't get too crazy and decide it's time for all of us to depart our bodies and slip a little cyanide into the Kool-Aid (oops! too late) or bomb the shit out of the Middle East because God told him to (oops! too late) or fly airplanes into the World Trade Center so exalted martyrs can be greeted by virgins in heaven (oops! too late) or ... yeah, it's endless, isn't it.

So, that was my anniversary. We drove around the countryside a bit, then came home. It was nice. Odd, but nice, too.