Syndicated columnist Marc Munroe Dion: Glimpse of forever is too much information

"World without end. Amen."

So goes a part of the old prayer, though our part of the world, our green and blue globe, may indeed end, and that end will be made by people in a factory.

Of course, that's only true if you think our globe is the world, and it's not.

The world is forever, going on and on and on, outrunning scientists and astronauts and preachers and philosophers and the signal that sends World Cup soccer into your big-screen TV in Rulo, Nebraska.

And you're on your little wooden ship, sailing out of sight of land, and you think the world may end just beyond the next wave, but just before the entire crew dies of scurvy, there's more land, more world.

And millions of years ago, people looked up at the night sky like it was a roof, and only the smart ones ever asked what was beyond the roof. Maybe it was where God lived because if he was God, he sure as hell wouldn't live in a flea-infested hut the way you lived.

So, you burned offerings, pigs and chickens and leaves and sometimes a person and, eventually, incense, and the smoke went up to forever, where God lived.

The internet, which is a mixed curse, is currently abloom with pictures of forever, pictures of deep space, pictures of part of forever sent back by the James Webb telescope.

A picture of my front yard is also a picture of forever. It's just a piece of forever closer to me, because forever never stops, and it's all in one piece, and you'll never find God because he has all of forever as a place to hide.

I hate forever. It scares the hell out of me. I like an end to things.

What I like is cozy and small. I don't even like those houses with what they call an "open floor plan," where the kitchen "flows" into the living room, which oozes into the dining room, which crawls into the family room so that you're never sure where you're standing.

I like small rooms with four walls, and I like to be able to say to my wife, "I'm going into the kitchen" without her saying, "You're kind of in the kitchen now." How long before they take the walls away from the bathroom, leaving me unprotected?

"Too much information," some people say when you divulge some saucy detail about your love life or talk too freely about that black thing on your back that seems larger and crustier than it was last month.

That's how I feel about those space pictures. It's just more forever, and my front yard is eerily part of it, and the entire universe has an open floor plan, and I'm not too sure where I'm standing. I can't really identify what's in the pictures, but it's too much information.

Besides, if you want to take pictures of forever, how are you going to know when you're done? Eventually, you'll just have to stop and admit that you left some of forever out of the picture, the way you accidentally left half of Uncle Randy out of a wedding picture.

Uncle Randy is part of forever, too, even if he is just one of the parts that is currently standing in line at a convenience store, waiting to buy a scratch off lottery ticket.

Every room in my house has a door you can shut, so I can make individual parts of the house much smaller if I feel like I'm spinning off into forever. Thank God for doors. They're the only thing that keeps us out of forever, out of that space that never ends. Ask the homeless, whose trouble is that they're lost in forever with no walls and no doors to close.

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