"Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further. " -Soren Kierkegaard

I am spending this morning in a small cafe on commercial street. It's grey and rainy outside with that damp, leafy smell that belongs only to rainy autumn days. A man with two lovely labs is lecturing a small collection of like-minded people on the virtues of Barak Obama. They are not passionate, but they are very certain. I can hear them repeating the party line with a sort of half-hearted enthusiam but with the conviction born of many hours spent listening to NPR news reports and CNN "in depth" reports.

The man with the labradors has announced that we the layman cannot possibly understand the differences between the policies of the two, it is too far above us and his friends agree - they are not Harvard-educated after all, how could they understand; but Obama is so engaging.

There is a definate loss in man when he fails even to attempt faith, and this crisis: economical, political, and social is the result of man's pursuit of some other, lesser passion that has been raised in his mind above faith. But how do we take a mind so tightly wrapped around the little things of this world and remind it that there are made for greater things? What works on a mind to work faith out of it?

Even we who believe, our faith is not the passionate Faith that it ought to be: the faith that shone through the saints, that poured from the words of Augustine, the poverty of Francis, and the blood of countless martyrs throughout history. We do not want is as we should, so many times we forget to love God for Himself alone; because He gives us so much we begin to think of Him more as a giver and less as a lover, who Loves whether He gives or takes away.