Comfort yourself, you would not seek me if you had not found me.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 3.553

Is there a purpose behind the apparently random events in any life? Does meaning play any part in our existence, or do we simply delude ourselves when we are able to discern a pattern behind seemingly fortuitous occurrences in our daily lives? Does God exist, and if so what sort of a being stands there before a universe in black disorder? The human has pondered these questions since the dawn of his peculiar intelligence. Various religious geniuses have emerged, each having some glimpse of the reality that appears to lie behind the treadmill of endless human activity. The philosophical or spiritual systems they have pioneered invariably tend to become rigid and imprisoning in the hands of their disciples. We all want assurance, and those in charge of the tradition look also for power, allegedly to spread the doctrine but more subtly to gain ascendance over their peers.

In the world of science truth can be contrasted sharply from falsehood, the deciding factors being logic on the one hand and experiment that can be repeated on the other. When we enter the more diffuse world of values the contrast between truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, goodness and evil is equally sharp, but the criteria are inner, personal ones. We learn to make our own decisions, since the opinions of our friends and neighbours vary to the point of total discordance. The existence of a number of higher religions, each with its own complement of saints, teaches us that spiritual truth is far more embracing than the fundamentalist would have us believe. Anyone who sets out to prove the superiority of a particularly spiritual tradition or way of life over its rivals shows in the end only his or her own mental constitution and the nature of the prejudices governing it. On the whole, the young are very assured about the basic issues of life; increasing age, with the experience that accrues from the various events and encounters that have attended it, makes us less certain but very much wiser. The somewhat dogmatic God of organized religion drops into the background as we discover the living God in whom we all live and move and have our existence (Acts 17.28).

Whenever we are moved by a noble action, a beautiful piece of art or music, or the dedication of a person who will not let rest enter his or her life before a particular work of goodness is carried out, we know the unknown God who is closer to us than our own identity. Can natural beauty also reveal its Creator to us? Indeed it can: if we cannot see the work of God in the world of tangible phenomena, we are not likely to discover, him in non-material realms. This is the deeper meaning of incarnation, and stresses the importance of corporeal existence in the development of the human personality. Nevertheless, there is something even greater in human art: natural beauty has been ennobled by human toil and the suffering that is part of meaningful existence.

We know God within ourselves; without that inner knowledge we would not seek the beautiful, the honest and the good, which shows itself fully in unreserved sacrificial love. Whenever we are raised in consciousness from the self-centred life of this world to the self-giving life of compassion we have found the divine principle within us. We seek to make intelligible and therefore articulate what is deeply set in our soul. But God cannot be so manipulated. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in No Rusty Swords, "A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol." He also said, even more challengingly, "The only way to be honest is to recognize that we have to live in the world even if God is not there" (Letters and Papers from Prison). It is in that frame of mind, in fact, that we know him within us.

May I never lose the courage of my own convictions about your presence in my life, Lord, even when the edifice of my world lies shattered about my feet. Then may I continue onwards, trusting in my own integrity.