Nothing prepared me for what I saw. I realized that the young voice was coming from 83-year-old Jonas, who was singing the "Sanctus" by Beethoven, with a beauty that could not be explained. It was like the Soul of all life summoning each spirit who listened: Here! Here is the sound of all that is true. Hear the sound of the Love to which you belong. That afternoon I learned that Jonas had been sent to Siberia as a young man because of that voice. Because of the remarkable gift he had been sent to build roads and live in obscurity. Now he was an elderly man, but the voice had never aged. Truly, it existed apart from any space and time.
Faith is not about understanding the ways of God. It is not about maneuvering God into a position of human subjugation, making a God who is a benign deity who exists to see life as we do. Faith, in fact, is not about understanding at all. It is about awe in the face of the God of all. And it is awe that inspires an alleluia to the human soul.
Faith is about reverencing precisely what we do not understand—the mystery of the Life Force that generates life for us all. It is about grounding ourselves in a universe so intelligent, so logical, so clearly loving that only a God in love with life could possibly account for it completely.