God

The misfortune is that mysticism is true, as Walter Bagehot said.


People always put a spin on things and recreate God in their image. Once He supported absolute monarchies and auto da fe, now he is pro-homosexual and feminist. I am a Catholic with a Protestant mind always suspicious of the spirit of the age which tricks people in every age into mistaking it for timeless truth. For me mysticism is religion and I love Pascal's words in his memoranadum jotting down his incoherent record of his great mystical experience towards the end of his life - 'Not the God of the philosophers but the god of Abraham and Isaac and Joseph.'' In my mystical experiences for which I thank God I had exactly the same impression and very strongly.

I came to believe a long ago in the supreme force which created the world, the First Cause,  but took no interest in Him/it. Later thanks to various experiences I became aware of a very personal God who intervenes in all our lives constantly. Jesus and the Bible are much harder to believe in but I do despite all the evidence believe in the Catholic (and Orthodox) Church/es. Why?  Because I know God reveals himself because he has done so to me and to many others and therefore must have made a general revelation  and because of reasons which pointed inescapably (the only word) towards the Catholic Church as the Truth. Despite the external banalities of modern Catholic worship, despite the fact that the Catholic Church feels like it came into existence in the 1960s,  despite very many things.