ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the mystical element of life, the elemental mystery of facticity, of the without why, is the element of religion, the place of religion, the place of religion's love. The religion does take not place in experience; experience takes place in it. Love flourishes in being and movement and life, this life, before death, where religion is faith and hope and love of life. The physicists speak of the world as if we were dead, but religion is the response we are urged by love to make to the world while we are still alive. Religion means to dig down into that deep point, to make contact with that elemental stratum, where thinking's why is silenced, and we embrace living and loving, moving and being without why. That is what is celebrated in religion's dance and song, like the mystical poet's song, where life, like the rose, is lived without why.
