Looking out over a sea-scape in fine, calm weather one could be excused for thinking that here is the clue to the personal search for a meaning to our existence. Quietness, peace, happiness and a breadth of vision of what is beyond us. But we all know that is, in many respects, an illusion. Elsewhere on the planet there is certain to be the total opposite. Earthquakes, devastating floods, wars, the pursuit of evil to unseat settled societies of people. There seems to be so much that actually militates against any suggestion that there may be a reason for our existence beyond the daily round and common task. But, as we saw in the previous article, humankind has within itself the possibility of trading our faith and trust against all that can be unleashed against us to deny any ultimate reason in our lives. In this article we are not going to trespass on ideas which we shall be exploring later - the maturing of our human trust and faith into faith in the divine, in Jesus and the consequent transfiguration of our hopes. For now it is important to discuss what are the limited possibilities, within our human sphere, of a meaning, or meanings, to be found in life.

The amazing development of modern science since Isaac Newton (1642-1727) has been so fruitful for life in the world. Some say today, as many began to say in the 18th century, that science, in its many developed forms, has superceded religion and consequently cancelled any ideas that we can understand our lives on this planet to have any ultimate meaning. But while we cannot point to any compelling argument, apart from a religious perspective, that some meaning can be found as to why we are here (as in the old question,'Why is there something rather than nothing?') we are able to look into our own selves for some meaning. And presumably some meaning is better than none! We are not bound to acquiesce to the sceptics. Even as the psychologists would say, positive thinking can be a great asset in many areas of our lives in the modern world.

The trust and faith that we have in ourselves, as we argued in the first part of this series, has led to three very important areas in human life - poetry & literature, painting and music. Poets have often found that what they see around them in the beauty and seeming order of nature is, as it were, just the forecourts of a world which is 'beyond'. Wordsworth wrote, I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the sense
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

From: Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

But apart from the natural world there is also in the mind the constant enquiry, the comparisons with what is and what might be found in life, as T.S. Eliot writes,

I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought;
So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

From: East Coker, Four Quartets.

While poetic vision has always turned our imaginations to what might be true, cloaked here under words, the work of the great artists throughout the centuries has been able to catch the imagination of multitudes who could not read. During the 13th - 14th century, Giotto's paintings in Italy depicting people naturally, rather than stylized, as in the previous two centuries, gave back to us the opportunity to perceive the beauty of the human person related now also to their environment. The artist seeks to interpret for us the humanness lying under the surface, revealing what belongs to us uniquely and yet which is a gateway to an understanding of what lies beyond the individual person. The National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in London UK are thronged with folk eager to see what has been produced over the centuries. The National Gallery has an invitation to young people, 'Get creative!'

Finally, Music has always had the power to take us forward and upward, capable of an enormous influence on us, physically as well as in the mind. It is interesting that the great development in music in the West which came with the 17th and 18th centuries coincided with the new philosophy and science of Descartes and Newton. It was an era of new ideas and none more so than in music. By the replacement of the old plainsong and polyphonic music of previous centuries with the exciting complexities of new tonalities, composers like Bach were able to write melody and harmony which could launch the mind and body beyond the here and now. Through the classical and romantic periods, to the music of the present day, people are lifted out of a feeling of finitude and their own locality, virtually to the spheres. At the Royal Albert Hall Promenade concerts, thousands in the summer season flock to hear all the great musicians and the other arenas, like the O2 arena in London, cater for particular kinds of music.

These peaks of the self-assured creativity of the human person and our own lesser creative and responsive experiences which are part of daily life, speak of the human exploration into 'what is not of this world'. They are the positive elements of our desire to come to terms with the longing within for 'meaning'. For many of us there is great satisfaction in small achievements. These give us hints that such self-assured, creative living can point to something 'more'. Next time we shall continue exploring - with an evaluation of experience that is seemingly beyond our normal horizons: the extension of our own faith which requires the perception and courage to trust another person.