For the dead are dead...

Doing a lot of musing on faith & related stuff in the last few weeks; as usual, a combination of outer and inner events coming together. Partly it's been due to re-reading Humans, the second book of the Neanderthal Parallax, a set of books about a rift that creates a bridge between our world, in which Neanderthals died out millenia ago, and a parallel Earth where our kind of humans died off and Neanderthals became the dominant species, with their own culture, technology, belief systems, etc.

There's a scene that takes place at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington that I find interesting, where a Neanderthal physicist (Ponter) is being shown around Washington by a Canadian geneticist now living in the States (Mary) and they end up debating the effect of belief in life after death on (our) human culture, as Ponter's people are universally atheist and Mary is Catholic. I don't really agree with everything Ponter says, but it does make me think.

***
Mary continued to read to him from letters and cards and plaques and scrolls that had been left leaning against the wall.

Phrases stuck in Ponter's mind.

"We know God is taking care of you..."

"I long for that day when we will all be together again..."

"So much forgotten / So much unsaid / But I promise to tell you all / When we meet among the dead."

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ETA: A few explanations: 'Gliksin' is the Neanderthal term for our kind of humans, Klast is Ponter's wife, who died a few years ago, and the Neanderthal world has far fewer than a billion Neanderthals in it.

ETA 2: Just realized just how appropiate my "contemplative" icon looks with this post. Hm. Serendipity.