A few years ago one of my former youth shared this with me from “Gombe” by Jane Goodall:

There are many windows through which we can look out into the world, searching for meaning.  There are those opened up by science, their panes polished by a succession of brilliant, penetrating minds.  Through these we can see ever further, ever more clearly, into areas that once lay beyond human knowledge.  Gazing through such a window I have, over the years, learned much about chimpanzee behaviour and their place in the nature of things.  And this, in turn, has helped us to understand a little better some aspects of human behaviour, our own place in nature.

 But there are other windows; windows that have been unshuttered by the logic of philosophers; windows through which the mystics seek their visions of the truth; windows from which the leaders of the great religions have peered as they searched for purpose not only in the wondrous beauty of the world, but also in its darkness and ugliness.  Most of us, when we ponder on the mystery of our existence, peer through but one of these windows onto the world.  And even that one is often misted over by the breath of our finite humanity.  We clear a tiny peephole and stare through.  No wonder we are confused by the tiny fraction of a whole that we see.  It is, after all, like trying to comprehend the panorama of the desert or the sea through a rolled-up newspaper.