Susan "You may not have meant to speak in preaching terms, but when you said this: Bill D.... you have to let go of intellectual prejudice ... and have faith...., you tried to tell a good friend of mine what to do, who had not asked you what to do, whose heart is probably NOT being prepared by the Holy Spirit at this time to hear what you think he needs to hear"

All I can do is offer my apologies to Bill D (apologies, Bill :-) ) if he thought that's what I meant. I was using the 'you' in a general sense, more like the pronoun 'one'. I was thinking more about myself really, but also other people I've known and met (not mudactters) whose 'rationality' has proved a stumbling block to knowing God. Not because God is irrational but because the rationality in vogue today is the product of 18th cent enlightenment that rejects God as lacking empirical earthly basis.

My post above was an attempt to explain something that's very hard to articulate. I was in a church today and a metaphor came to me: I am very interested in architecture and history so I often visit historical buildings. If one goes into any typical renaissance cathedral in Italy one will find a whole smorgasbord of icons, paintings, sculptures and motifs. Most people will probably recognise Christ on the cross, but who is that woman in the painting and why is she holding a wheel? And that guy full of arrows looking sorrowfully into space? And what weird thing is this: four animals clustered around a big stone table - a cow, a lion, something else.... what a weird thing this religion is! One finds oneself surrounded by nice antiques but as obscure as hieroglyphs. One's appreciation of them will probably be artistic (intellectual) but one doesn't connect with them emotionally or on other levels.

But if one comes from a Christian background, and depending on how much one has studied that, one'll recognise the woman with the wheel as St.Catherine and be familiar with how she was executed on that wheel for not renouncing her beliefs, the man full of arrows as St.Sebastian, the four animals as symbols for the writers of the Gosepls. The Cathedral suddenly becoms an open book, alive with meaning it doesn't have if one is not 'tuned' to see it. For me, religion and faith are in some way similar. If one is not tuned to it, one doesn't see the evidence, the meaning or significance of things. It can appear like so much mumbo-jumbo and mindless behaviour. I willingly admit this may not be everyone's experience, but I've been on 'both sides of the fence' and can at least refer to my own experience.

I do apologise if I came across as preaching. That wasn't my intention and I'll have to be more careful if that's how I come across. I suppose I have heard the arguments put about scientific proof, evidence etc., many times and wanted to say 'if that's not working for you, try looking at the picture another way. I can't guarantee you'll see something that makes sense (that's not up to me) but it may be worth a try'