Something in the center of the human being is primitive and child-like and it interprets life as a fearsome experience. It tends to forget that the sun always rises, the moon waxes and wanes, the tides go in and out, the seasons circle through the year. It forgets that we are all firmly embedded in those cycles, that there is no place to fall, that we are always caught and held securely within the embrace of the Holy One. Rather than seeing this fearfulness as evidence of sin or failure or an obstacle to be overcome, I prefer to think of it as a divine gift, a quality that God hard-wired into us to help us preserve our innocence and receptivity. From fear and forgetting the religious impulse arises.
Fear makes hope possible.
Forgetting creates in us a yearning to remember our deepest truth. We discover in ourselves an ancient and irresistible need to conceptualize and relate to God, a need for prayer and sacrament and ritual and community. We seek God and we join with fellow seekers because we perceive our smallness. Remaining slightly uncertain about the ground we stand on keeps us vulnerable in a way that leaves room for God's presence and intervention in our lives. If we were never hungry, then manna would mean nothing to us.