Deep calleth unto deep

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In a world where everything is public and nothing is hidden, our life becomes void of mystery and eventually meaningless. We lose the sense of depth within our hearts (how pathetic these words sound - and how old-fashioned indeed!) What I tend to say is better expressed by Thomas Merton:

 "Actually, our whole life is a mystery of which very little comes to our conscious understanding. But when we accept only what we can conceptually rationalize, our life is actually reduced to the most pitiful limitations, though we may think quite otherwise. We have been brought up with the absurd prejudice that only what we can reduce to a rational and conscious formula is really understood and experienced in our life. When we can say what a thing is, or what we are doing, we think we fully grasp and experience it. In point of fact this verbalization - very often it is nothing more than verbalization - tends to cut us off from genuine experience and to obscure our understanding instead of increasing it." (New Seeds of Contemplation)

Art and religion are the last quarters of the unconscious or mysterious. It is important to notice that art and religion point beyond morality, too. A work of art or an act of worship has ultimately no goal beyond itself.  (Think about an actor who, after the final applause, would stand in front of the audience and proclaim the moral of the play. It may happen, but probably in a poor play). Artistic and religious experiences are gratuitous - a word that means both free and unnecessary. Perhaps we had it better to imagine, as John Lennon once sang, that there is "no religion, too." Sins of religion(s) are multifarious, and increasingly many people thrive happily without religious beliefs. Yet we lose something essentially human if we fail the fantastic and demanding world of faith.

Not least for aesthetic reasons I use the King James version of Psalm 42, that says:

"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me."

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