The Only Way To Show A True

We Have Domesticated God's Transcendence. We Often Learn About God At About The Same Time As We Are Learning About Santa Claus; But Our Ideas About Santa Claus Change, Mature And Become More Nuanced, Whereas Our Ideas Of God Can Remain At A Rather Infantile Level.

Theology Is-- Or Should Be-- A Species Of Poetry,which Read Quickly Or Encountered In A Hubbub Of Noise Makes No Sense. You Have To Open Yourself To A Poem With A Quiet, Receptive Mind, In The Same Way You Might Listen To A Difficult Piece Of Music... If You Seize Upon A Poem And Try To Extort Its Meaning Before You Are Ready, It Remains Opaque. If You Bring Your Own Personal Agenda To Bear Upon It, The Poem Will Close Upon Itself Like A Clam, Because You Have Denied Its Unique And Separate Identity, Its Inviolate Holiness.

Western Liberal Humanism Is Not Something That Comes Naturally To Us: Like An Appreciation Of Art Or Poetry, It Has To Be Cultivated. Humanism Is Itself A Religion Without God-not All Religions, Of Course, Are Theistic. Our Ethical Secular Ideal Has It's Own Disciplines Of Mind And Heart And Gives People The Means Of Finding Faith In The Ultimate Meaning Of Human Life That Were Once Provided By The More Conventional Religions.

You Know How It Is In The Symphony When You Are Listening To The Symphony, The Last Notes Die Away, And There's Often A Beat Of Silence In The Auditorium Before The Applause Begins. It's A Very Full And Pregnant Silence. Now Theology Should Bring Us To Live Into That Silence, Into That Pregnant Pause.

If We Try To Hold On To Our Partial Glimpses Of The Divine, We Cut It Down To Our Own Size And Close Our Minds. Like It Or Nor, Our Human Experience Of Anything Or Anybody Is Always Incomplete: There Is Usually Something That Eludes Us, Some Portion Of Experience That Evades Our Grasp.