Gilbert Keith

"For the world of science and evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare." (Chesterton; The Ball and the Cross) -without reason our heads would always be up in the clouds, wandering around with no point of reference to guide us. Our feet would never touch the ground to feel the soft, warm earth beneath us that was created to astonish us, feed us, give us a sense of purpose and teach us things. Without faith our feet would be so grounded that we'd start to find them below the surface. Very soon we would find our whole bodies under ground. We would not look to the sky for inspiration, purpose and hope, but we would look at this decaying world around us, even worse; we would only look at ourselves. I don't think it's a coincidence that we think and speak of heaven being in the sky and hell being at the center of the earth (it might be more appropriate to say that it's at the center of ourselves). And I think that without guidance from the stars our hearts would go there awful quick. But it is equally, if not more, scary to think about staring too hard into the sky. If this planet did not weigh us down and fight for our attention, our eyes would go blind from the sun, our bodies would float into a dark coldness that would kill us, and who knows to what other hellish places our souls would float. Why have people for so long argued about faith and reason? We so desparetly need both. Sometimes we need skeptics, rationalists, and even atheists to remind us to be practical and wise. We also need believers, spiritualists and the like to remind us that we are not alone and that there is more. We need to get along. All of us. We need to share our thoughts and opinions with one another and learn things and teach things. We can do all of these things as friends, not enemies. Maybe one day we can find ourselves reaching common understandings about life and real truth, but until then I'm sure that there are plenty of values and interests that we can share. z