The problem with leaving a post in the middle is that when I get around to finishing it, I can't remember why I thought it was going to be interesting. This is not an interesting topic. So here is a quick list of what I was going to say and then I'm done. Here's what I miss: the sense of a shared purpose; the sense that the universe is explicable, that things ultimately make sense (I can't tell you how often I used to think to myself, "when I get to heaven, I can ask God why things are like...insert dilemma here ... and then I will understand")(including wanting to know if Shakespeare really wrote all those plays); and I miss worship. That will sound like the dumbest thing in the world if you've never fully experienced corporate worship (worshipping God with a group of people, preferably a really large group of people), but it is a sensation that I've been unable to reproduce without the requisite belief in God. And I miss it. It's a beautiful feeling. Sometimes I can let go of my cynicism enough to let it flow again (see my posts on going to the Creation music festival last summer) but it is rare. Sheri Tepper has a fascinating novel called Raising the Stones that posits a race of beings whose reason for existence is to be "god" for a given culture, with the corresponding idea that other beings have evolved a need to have a god, and that acknowledging and worshipping that god fills a need that is innate. Sort of an evolutionary extension of the god-shaped hole, yes? (is that Pascal? that's what came up when I googled it, and that sounds right... pensees, right? I have no idea how to do an accent aigu). It's interesting. All of her novels are interesting.

AB