You Never Know When You

That's The Strangest Thing About This Life, About Being In The Ministry. People Change The Subject When They See You Coming. And Then Sometimes Those Very Same People Come Into Your Study And Tell You The Most Remarkable Things. There's A Lot Under The Surface Of Life, Everyone Knows That. A Lot Of Malice And Dread And Guilt, And So Much Loneliness, Where You Wouldn't Really Expect To Find It, Either.

These People Who Can See Right Through You Never Quite Do You Justice, Because They Never Give You Credit For The Effort You're Making To Be Better Than You Actually Are, Which Is Difficult And Well Meant And Deserving Of Some Little Notice.

Religion, If It Is Genuine, Is So Profoundly Interwoven With Individual Thought And Experience That It Is No More Exhaustible Than Consciousness Itself. And Fiction Whose Purpose Is Didactic Is Bad No Matter Whether The Matter To Be "taught" Is Christianity Or The World View Of Ayn Rand. It Seems Often To Be Assumed By Writers That Religion Is A Pose, Meant To Deceive Oneself Or Others, Or That It Is A Bad Patch On Doubt Or Complexity. This Is Only Convention, However. The Writers I Know Have A Much Deeper Engagement With The Real Issues Of Religion.

Faith Takes A Great Many Forms, Suited To A Variety Of Sensibilities, And Mine Happens To Suit Me Very Well.

One Of The Things That Is Wonderful About Hymns Is That They Are A Sort Of Universally Shared Poetry, At Least Among Certain Populations. There Isn't Much Of That Anymore Either. There Are Very Few Poems People Can Recite, But There Are Quite A Few Hymns That, If You Hum A Few Bars, People Can At Least Come Up With Two Verses. Many Of The Older Hymns Are Very Beautiful.