Why did the chicken cross the road? To know what's on the other side.

Why go up the climbing wall at the new Sports Centre in West Cumbria? To know what it .looks and feels like to be at the top and to experience the adventure of getting there.

Why do people climb mountains, go down potholes, explore, want to go where they (or anyone else sometimes) have never been before? Why do people do research, peer into the night sky through telescopes? Within us all, though it may take different routes or shapes, there is the desire to go beyond. A Spirit common to everyone.

It's part of the sex drive. It is the call within to go beyond what we know of ourselves that makes people fall in love "I want to explore another human being in every part of his/her life." Come to life afresh through another person.

Religious people identify this Spirit in a personal way. They have a sense that beyond everything, we know all life is interconnected and has its origin in a Supreme Being. A "Person". This is the best way we can describe it. We don't have a better word. Beneath, there is this vast driving force, this Spirit, to go beyond, and this driving force is somehow personal. It is within us as much as outside us and knows all about us though we 'know only very little about It/Him/Her.

Read whatever holy book of the world you like in whatever language. They all imply that mankind is having a relationship with a Person. Christianity has no monopoly of this. This Person, this Mystery, is calling us beyond ourselves in a good way and we each in our own way want to reach out and understand. "To know even as also I am known"

It's a bit like being born blind. You know that the world is full of movement and sound and feeling but you have no real idea of what colour is like out there beyond your blindness. What is red? What is sky? Or a game of rugby? Or a human face? Or Springtime green?

This Spirit we do not know we give a name - 'God' It's a holy name but it is only a name like Alf or Emma. Here we are all very blind.

I went to a meeting recently where Buddhists and Christians were praying silently together. Together? What a terrible thing to do! Not at all. They knew that beneath the differences of their religions, they are interconnected by the same Spirit.

You must have heard local people say, "She married a Catholic but he's all right" (or he's not a Catholic but, ..... etc.etc.)

I heard also of a Muslim woman who in desperation asked her Christian woman friend to pray "to her Jesus" for her need. What's more, her need was met. All religions have their equivalent of this prayer of exploring, of reaching out - "O God, my heart is restless till it finds its rest in You."