Readers of a certain vintage will appreciate Michael Novak's somewhat melancholy reflections on his association with Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy back in the late sixties.
He closes with a thought with which probably every believer can identify:
In those days, I was fascinated by the overlap, in actions at least if not in words, of many people I knew, some of who were believers and some unbelievers. The latter seemed to me, in action, far more Christian or Jewish than they would admit to being. (They certainly were not nihilist nor even amoral, and not relativist nor morally indifferent.) And the Christians seemed to me to live in a deeper, darker night than they much speak about, closer in many ways to unbelief than to belief-at least so far as feelings go. There are many days when the believer, trying to become conscious of God's presence within, feels nothing at all, sees nothing at all.
Sometimes it is easier to act as a particular way of life demands than to say one believes in it. And it may be a quite noble way of life, indeed.
Let God sort us all out, I used to think (and still do). He sees it all more clearly.
C.S. Lewis notes in Surprised By Joy that believers (and others) often make two mistakes: They first make a state of mind their goal and then secondly attempt to produce it. He might have said that the surest way to miss a feeling of the presence of God in one's life is to seek it directly. If we set out to muster a certain spiritual feeling we usually wind up frustrated and disappointed. As in so many other areas of life, perhaps, the best course is to act as we should and not concern ourselves with feelings. We have all eternity to experience the sense of God's presence.
