Windsurfing may not be everyone's sport! But the challenge of wind and sea is an apt illustration of keeping faith with the Lord in the turbulence, and the silence, of the real world. For there is no certainty in the faith and trust that acknowledges and responds to the risen Lord. Certainty only belongs to those who deny faith - like Richard Dawkins! There was an interesting interview by Stefanie Marsh with him, published in the London Times of 22nd August, 2009. I give a brief excerpt here, as it is quite revealing of the man who claims that God is a delusion -

Anybody who has ever met Dawkins outside a debating room describes him as a rather shy man - not at all the "Darwin's rottweiler" of public life. In private I found him to be charming, if slightly irritable at times, a surprisingly romantic creature who is also the kind of person one can imagine bitching behind your back for being too thick. At one point he launched into a long, perfectly articulated and very soulful description of what it was like looking up at the stars at night in an attempt to convey how an understanding of science can enhance one's experience of the natural world. He is also passionate about poetry - Houseman, Shakespeare, Yeats - and admits to being "rather embarrassingly, rather shamingly moved to tears when I read poetry aloud"... As to the big unanswered questions: "I think we all think that there's something else out there. I do, certainly. But it's not supernatural. It's ... I think there's a lot that science doesn't know and indeed may never know, and that's exciting."

What we have noted as our inner response to the enlarging of our boundaries in poetry is naturally part of Dawkins' experience - an instance of how our innate trust and faith can respond to what is 'beyond' our own horizons. Then, when he says that the 'something else out there' is not 'supernatural', we can agree wholeheartedly! For the whole tenor of the New Testament writings, and our own experience of God and the risen Lord, is that he is 'with us' - not a God out there somewhere beyond this planet, like a divine UFO! The supernatural element in the history of religion, having had a long and honoured run in many mystical writings, is totally misleading for people today. But, of course, Dawkins doesn't understand how we can appreciate his interesting responsiveness to the arts and be people of faith as well!

Discipleship, following with the risen Lord, must often have moments of uncertainty and doubt. Apart from the fact that there is no hotline either to the Lord or to the Father. It is the nature of our trust and faith that there is the possibility of failure and doubt at any moment in our lives. That is the fragility of discipleship. So, unlike Dawkins, we cannot show any proof of what we believe in. Neither can the writings of the Hebrew bible nor the New Testament writings provide anyone with proof of God - they are also rooted only in experiential encounter and thought. So daily following with the risen Lord in discipleship depends still upon our own conscious instinct and decisions even if there is inspiration in the Scriptural writings. But faith and trust lie underneath, providing the foundation of all that we are involved in. Intimately bound up with this dynamic relationship is prayer.

Like sharing with the risen Lord in eucharist, Christian prayer is also characterised by thanksgiving. Prayer is often caricatured as the 'last resort' when we are down on our luck! Actually, for the one who is intimate with the risen Lord in faith, what rises in the mind always is the joy of giving thanks - it expresses the whole relationship of faith with such a person. Like our human feelings of gratitude, prayer of that kind can be silent as well as spoken. The deepness of silent presence with the Lord is beyond words - like many human intimacies in friendship and marriage.

So the person of faith will feel that prayer is not so much like a human externalisation of trust, either in thanks or in petition, but a communion that wells up from within. Like a child who doesn't quite know what to say but says it anyway! Prayer is a relationship for the person who has come to know the risen Lord in faith. Without this regular, daily tryst, the trust we have begins, subtly, to wither. Prayer in that deep sense is food for our faith and understanding. Characteristically it never seems like that! It is only when we begin to think like Paul that faith is really something that, while being the foundation, has the possibility of being built upon -

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 12, 13-14)

Faith, understanding, being understood - the essential foundation for the growth of the human person in love. Next time we must see where that leads us!