intimate communion is sought above all else: God’s presence is recognized as the source and gift of all life. But the absence established by our culture is an effort to regulate the presence of God: now we want Him, now we don’t. Such a desire for God’s absence has not always been part of the culture of the Western world. Indeed, its evolution within Western societies seems to have begun unintentionally. As moderns, we live in a world that is the result of a massive operation of the law of unintended