![]() ![]() “Reminders of the sacred were everywhere, strewn about almost carelessly, we might say. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief ![]() Whether we realize it or not, simply to be human is to long for release from mundane existence, with its confining walls of finitude and mortality.” Two great paintings suggest this longing in their titles-Gauguin’s Who Are We? Where Did We Come From? Where Are We Going? and de Chirico’s Nostalgia for the Infinite-but I must work with words. But the longing is there, built into us like a jack-in-the-box that presses for release. ![]() We are seldom in direct touch with it, and indeed the modern world seems set on preventing us from getting in touch with it by covering it with an unending phantasmagoria of entertainments, obsessions, addictions, and distractions of every sort. All great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion tries to name and analyze this longing. This desire lies in the marrow of our bones and the deep regions of our souls. It acts like an unquenchable fire that renders the vast majority of us incapable in this life of ever coming to full peace. “There is within us-in even the blithest, most lighthearted among us-a fundamental dis-ease. ![]()
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