"…Forty years ago, I took a college course in the philosophy of religion. I still have the textbook, and I've been looking at what I underlined in that book, at which passages I carefully marked with a star. Why did the girl I was 40 years ago decide certain passages should be marked with a star?
I signed up for the class because I was having my first crisis of faith. The class itself did nothing to clarify my confusion, and continually thinking about the questions that plagued me wasn't helping, either. Still I fretted. Still I tried to figure out what I believed and why.
Then one summer afternoon, months later, I was sitting in my parents' backyard, listening to a mockingbird sing. Suddenly, inexplicably, a feeling of peace came over me. A feeling of perfect, absolute peace. No voice of reassurance came with it, and no words formed in my own mind to explain it. But if there had been words, they would've sounded something like: "It's OK. Don't worry. It's OK."
I didn't need to understand. I didn't need to decide.
It was the closest thing I have ever known to the sort of moment William James described in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" — a work that is heavily highlighted and marked with stars in my old textbook. And maybe that memory is enough for me now, too. I can continue to ponder, to be puzzled. I will almost certainly continue to feel just a little bit lost. I'll look for a new church someday, a new place to put all this sorrow and a new community with whom to share it, but I'm not obliged to find that place just now. Ash Wednesday tells me only to keep trying: to believe, to be better, not to give up hope. And that's faith enough for any season."
Margaret Renkl, nyt
My reply: profound experiences for which we have no words are real, even for us secular humanists. Fortunately we don't have to give anything up for them.
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