The world is revolving around the sun at the same moment that it rotates around its axis, 360 degrees a day 940 million miles a year of travels through the sky which is eternally black pierced by spots of white rather like dandruff on an obsidian table-top. We are left with with the impression of the cold night-wanderer and the rain in his brown locks soaked dripping, clinging, heaving his pack about the night. Is there a light? She is the pale bath of the moon. The moonlight trickles down at her speed and neither warms nor must instill in the wanderer much hope, but she is there, a beauty to be gazed at.

The notion of our hearing is connected intimately to separated spheres of experience. All of our senses take place in a void between consciousness and neglect, the void of existence, absent of the devil's trust and void of meaning. All things cycle endlessly back into their proper moment, space and time dissipate into darkness and rise like smoke at an altar.

Pain channels through every experience and in the thrust of a movement, the individual strums and hums of life become more real; the same for pleasure. If there is some object that is the definite source of all emotions and consciousness we should call that object the divine; our experience draws us closer, pulls us and pushes us, this is the meaning of heaven and hell.

A spider crafts her weave in intricacies; man crafts his weave in intricacies; God crafts his weave in intricacies. The complexity is apparent; the exact genius of it remains an eternal mystery to the eye; and it is in the void between sensual experience and intellectual apprehension that the mind comprehends, an experience which is communicated to the very extremities; a pounding in the heart a tingle in the fingertips.

All experiences are weaving themselves as we speak into a coherent whole. The chains of our lives are unbroken, stretching endlessly backward and forward to their source; the weave is of gold and it is a shining unity in the glimmering sun. The sun moves all things to warmth; but to stand in the sun too long is to burn. We are all burning in the light of a faith that is too strong for us; we will break.

Twice a day, pious Jews recite the Sh'ma. What is the Jew? An exile in the land of plenty, the long-suffering, the faithful people. When the prophets declared fire and brimstone their genius was fire and brimstone -- repent, but know the sinner that his sin is the source of his suffering. We have been faithful to pain for thousands of years. Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Even blocks of ice will melt; they drip down in the spring, they fall in a rushing, they flood they plains, they water the Negeb.

Our redemption flows like rivers through the Negeb.

And is it to know that we repeat? Or is it to experience? There is something beyond individual pleasure. There is something beyond individual love. God is said to be ineffable because though we can say that he is elusive or he is love or he is light or pleasure and happiness or wonder, we cannot say what wonder is, nor in saying can we hope to experience. What is the movement of God in the soul? It is an imperceptible feeling, it is no more true than the rotation of the earth, its revolution, the axioms of existence. To say that I feel God is to say nothing more than I feel gravity; to take joy in gravity is not to understand; everything flees, life is not ineluctable or inevitable, it is exactly the opposite; all things flow into eternity.

Atheists are not atheists. Atheism is impossible. Because it is merely a quibble over labels; eternity is a common truth to all and ineffability is also a common truth to all. All speech reaches the point of reference, the dangling ends of a cord that are sparking with electric shocks, beyond which -- nothing can be comprehended. And as much as the atheist asserts there is no God, he cannot assert that he is without awe. Because the universe is awful. The atheist only rejects the notion that God is at all personal, that God in very fact and deed cares; that there is some plan. But the atheist cannot reject God, only protest his involvement in the earth.

And how does God work in the world? Is it through science? Do the laws of nature stand as his testimony? Are they the sparks of his thought? We can have no surety of this. It is a strange anathema to say that God operates in history -- as if one were talking of economic laws or of astronomical certainties. For instance: "The end of prayer in schools was the end of the schools; the sixties cut from their circuit and at ends the chords that led God to resound even in the institutions. The power blackened, the light ceased." No. God is not a principle of which it can be said, "So it is." God is not pleasure, either; of God nothing can be said at all. So why do we worship? Why do we desire awe?

Man was made in the image of God because he is the race of questions through neurons at the speed of light; the light flickering of a shaft from a cold planet that orbits about a weary wanderer, we are dancing in circles, we are the slow tempest and the limbo; but when the breaking of sun comes across the hills and the sky is red and gold --

God is not pleasure, but through pleasure and all kinds of pains and grief and the dull monotony of living we come to Him.