"When I sing the hymns of faith in Jesus' love, I am drawn by their intimacy, their allure, their poetry. But in the end, such faith is simply not available to me. I can't do it. I lack the resources to render my capacity for love and my need to be loved to supernatural Beings. And so I have no choice but to pour these capacities and needs into earthly relationships, fragile and mortal and difficult as they often are." (Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature)I recognize this quandary. There is that in us which reaches back through time to our mother's breast, even the womb, to a security and succor we have been hard-pressed to find and maintain in our adulthood. The scriptures, saviors, and guardian angels of our traditions are no longer within reach of our needs for assurance.
I do envy those who say they've never turned to God for that assurance, or they've never needed heaven at all in any form. If they're being honest they have a rugged sense of individuality I'm not likely to achieve. But I wonder if they're also not missing out on something. The constant tug between the draw of religion and the quest for the ever-elusive horizon of knowledge is itself character-forming. Maybe the stalwart prefer to be rock-solid in their world view. I prefer the soft crumbling loam of insecurity and growth.
