Linda Ferguson was the planned speaker on December 2, 2018

Two thousand years ago the Corinthians received a letter and part of it said: Look not unto what is seen but to that which is unseen, for that which is seen is temporary and that which is unseen is eternal.

A while ago, I used to go to the Socrates cafe in the library. If you aren’t familiar with it, this is how it works: the moderator asks the group, “What shall we talk about tonight?” and people raise their hands and give suggestions which are voted on. Questions such as, “Are we living in the golden age of America?” (well I have to say that was quite a while ago), or “Is there good in evil?” But the question “Is there a God?” has never come up when I’ve been there, although it somehow seems to be part of many philosophical questions. Most in the group say they are atheists. Now that surprises me because I thought the point of the meeting was to hear other ways of thinking and being open to alternative ideas. So of all the possible questions we could discuss this is the one they felt they already had the answer to. They believe in science. We believe in science. Science is good but it can’t answer everything.

Even if we only want to believe things we can see with our own eyes; those can be false. Just ask any magician. We can be studying the scenery, the sky, the trees, the rocks. And then a rock moves. Oh, it’s a turtle.

It’s good to have these deep conversations for there are so many things we just partially understand.

For instance my husband was a pigeon fancier. He raced homing pigeons and this is how that worked: He would take the birds on training flights to another city and hope that he would find them in the loft when he got home. The night before a race he would bring the birds to the club house where they had rubber rings slipped on their feet. Then a truck would drive the birds usually hundreds of miles away. At dawn the next morning the birds would be liberated and they would all fly up and circle around getting oriented and then head for home. But how did they know the route? They would use the magnetic field and possibly other ways as well. Apparently birds, mice, turtles and other animals use the magnetic field when they move around. Unfortunately, that’s never worked for me. I can’t feel or see the magnetic field but I believe it exists.

We live in a world of unseen phenomena. Radio waves, infrared light, the thermal winds that the birds float upon. Ultraviolet light that birds can see and even communicate with.

And then there is the entire universe. We can see and know part of it but beyond so many light years away we can not know. Maybe there are super universes and ours is just one of many. Many people feel certain there is life somewhere out there.

And then there are questions like, What is consciousness? We can’t explain where it is in our brain or exactly how it works. Where our thoughts and ideas come from. How imagination works. And how living matter evolved from non living matter.

Everything we can discern has a threshold, a level above which we can not know. We know animals can see and hear things we can’t. They have heightened senses.

But there is another kind of sense which we do have that they don’t. It’s called the numinous. A spiritual force or influence. We sense there is something that is greater than us, a presence that we want to connect to. What it is no one can really say. We can’t define what many call God. Our concepts of God are limited by our experience and our highly materialistic viewpoint. In crisis even non believers may call on this inner guide for help, help to calm us and give us peace. We ask for courage when we need it and to enlighten us when we don’t know what to do.

The divine spirit lives within our own minds and we do not have to look beyond the stars to find it. We need to look inward not outward. And here in the silence we can commune with that of God which is in all of us.