A particular kind of friend

 I think it’s important to have one or two friends that will examine questions with you. I’m talking about open questions — the questions you don’t know the answer to. I’m not talking about finding someone who will reinforce existing views.

Melvyn was such a friend. I asked him what he thought “religion” was and why it is a feature of most — but not all — human cultures. 

Melvyn, a physician and a teacher of physicians, came at such problems mostly — but not entirely — as a man of science. Medicine had been Plan B.

He’d gone to the University of Texas to become a concert pianist. He said that the university had taught him, in his freshman year, what a real musician was. He had been forced to cast about for another career.

In those days, you went to medical school after your junior year — you got on with your “real” studies without wasting time on electives. Melvyn spent his life making up for that year. He read literature and took every literature course offered at three colleges. He played piano and had a collection of opera recordings. He painted — I admired his watercolors — and visited the world’s art museums.

Many philosophers think “religion” entails a belief in a supernatural being, an idea I can’t grasp. I don’t know what the ancient Greeks believed about the gods, but I think the religion of a polis was one of the things that made communal life possible. Carlyle’s idea that religion is “the thing a man does practically lay to heart, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there” makes more sense to me than talk of supernatural beings.

Melvyn could see the question was open for me, so he took the time to examine it with me, even though he thought it was risky. He came along as if I’d invited him to a convention of grifters, pickpockets and swindlers. But he came along.

Melvyn had profound respect for his Orthodox parents and had attended Hebrew school, but he shed conventional religion as a teenager. He delighted in telling how his little granddaughter had introduced him to a friend: “This is my grandfather. He’s a terrible atheist!”

But Melvyn had a practice, within his practice of medicine, that got at the question we were investigating. By the time we’d meet for lunch, he might have read 125 X-rays that morning. Before reading each one, he’d say the name of the patient, quietly, but aloud. It was a reminder that he was dealing with a person, not a case. And then for a moment or for an hour, whatever was needed, he paid attention.

The science of the matter on the X-ray was a vital part of the story, and Melvyn’s ability to focus attention was remarkable. But that little practice of reading the name of each patient, so small that most people didn’t notice it, was also a part of the story.

It was my lot in life to have a friend like that. I was lucky.