The title I gave to one of my collections of poems is ‘Between Silence and Silence.’ I have always thought it sad, and occasionally a matter of momentary despair, that each of us emerges from oblivion into life, without permission given, and after a really very brief period of existence is hustled back into oblivion. The time between, full of alarums and excursions, doesn’t make much sense, when you come to think about it, in the context of infinite personal oblivion on either side of this short appearance. For God’s sake, if one may be allowed a small blasphemy, what is it all for?
In an interview Peter Minshall, the great creative genius of the Trinidad Carnival costume band, was asked out of the blue: “Is there a God?” Startled, he replied off the cuff, “Well, I certainly can’t take credit for all that I do.” Belief in God, and the belief in some kind of personal immortality which flows from belief in God, is based on the disbelief that the existence of anything, the universe and eventually human life, can emerge out of nothing. Creation requires a Creator who will not in the end forget His creatures. That is the hope in the backs of the mind of many people and certainly all those professing the Christian faith. It is a comforting hope and gives some protection against the angst caused by contemplating the prospect of death and final oblivion.
It comes as a shock, to me anyway, that scientists have recently proposed exactly how and why everything can perfectly well emerge out of nothing at all
