I think most of us have met the divine at some point. We may not have recognised it, but we have met it. Not only in places of worship or through rituals and scriptures. Sometimes it arrives in quieter ways. A sudden sense of well being for no clear reason. The ease of being in someone’s company. The silence that descends over you in a forest. The strange completion we feel by the sea. Moments where we feel we are an extension of nature and not an exception to it. Some call it God. Some call it nature. Some call it peace, grace, presence, energy, love. The atheist too has felt it, only through another vocabulary. If you ask almost anyone whether they have known a deep and wordless sense of well being, within themselves or in the world around them, I doubt many would say no. The divine, I feel, is an experience and not a belief. Beliefs, names, and institutions follow the experience. The experience comes first. And when such a moment comes, in whatever form it chooses, I feel it is wise not to try to possess it. We are too small to own what is larger than us. The moment we try to capture it, we reduce it. We build walls around something whose nature is openness. We begin worshipping its container. The divine is beyond ownership. It does not belong to us. We belong to it. So I feel the right response is not to claim it as mine. It is to appreciate it as a gift bestowed upon us. To look at it as a privilege. As a resource to be shared freely. A quiet thank you. Not because we earned it, but because we were visited by it. That feels enough to me. What do you feel?