Reflection 310

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Astonishment

The real atheism is the philosophy which talks as if it carried the Absolute in its brief-case, and the piety which has altogether got over its surprise. To find Him quite believable is no longer to believe in Him. For a Whole easily understood and approved, incapable of shocking and overwhelming us, cleaned up or watered down to suit our drawing-room and prayer-meeting daintiness – such a Whole is not even a useful myth. When we are at our best are we not thankful that this glorious and terrible Reality is just what it is? The fact that it is mysterious beyond telling and altogether unlike our design for it – this is surely the very thing that makes it so adorable. In Hell we know and are known only too well, and are all expert theologians and psychologists; but in Heaven we never begin to recover from our astonishment at one another, and therefore boredom is unknown. Knowledge that is only knowledge is the very abyss of ignorance. (Douglas Harding. The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth.)