Whether you are deeply religious or secular there is room for wonder. I love the line from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem ‘Raglan Road’ where he invites you to walk along ‘the enchanted way’. Maybe the nature of religious expression is changing – it might be moving away from its largely institutional identity into something more personal. Belief may have a greater element of choice rather than the heavy-handed impositions of the past. Enchantment invites people to acknowledge that science and religion are not opposing forces but are common hosts on the path towards enchantment.

Excerpted from Dipping Into Life: 40 Reflections for a Fragile Faith by Alan Hilliard, with a Foreword by Tony Bates (pp 26-27)