God is either a gift or a delusion, the source of all gifts and of the possibility that everything may be received as a gift, or the phantasy of men who prefer to imagine that they receive gifts rather than to acknowledge that they must face facts – on their own.

I believe in God. It often puzzles me that I do; I am often hard put to it to explain why I do, while my conduct and attitudes not infrequently suggest both to others and to my reflective self that I do not. But I do.

I believe that life is a gift, a response, a dialogue – a dialogue with more than myself, more than others, more than the facts and the beauties, the mysteries and the muddles, the terrors and the trivialities of the universe. I believe that life is from God, with God and to God, and sometimes I begin to experience it so. Therefore I hold that this faith also is a gift, my given starting point, my proffered attitude, my donated way of proceeding.