The answer to that was easy. "Religion doesn't cause war unless it is corrupted by politics."

Much later, I thought we had missed the most important question: "Why do people need religion?"

As far as we know, we are the only species that have this restlessness, this desire to put shape to the sense of Otherness that invades our lives.

There is no evidence that animals have such an inclination.

It has always been in us. The history of humankind fills us with searches for meaning beyond ordinary sensory experience.

We have created religious art and artefacts for thousands of years.

It's as though we are constantly reaching out for a greater reality we have forgotten. It lies wordless within us, and in the knowing of our unknowing, we call it God.

We recognise it in the parables of creation and culture and in the richness of the rituals we make for it. Great teachers help us to grow in its mystery but still can't explain it.

What we can say for sure about the Otherness is generous. It is abundant. It will fill any space we make for it and take us to a larger place.

It brings me to my life-long connection with Christ Jesus, whose Otherness becomes Oneness.

I reflect on that.

Then I think of my youngest son who, after two hours of filming the Dalai Lama, became a Buddhist, and my friend Nourina whose face shines with the beauty of Islam.

I acknowledge a wise Hindu friend, Swami Damodarananda who was devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and had that statue in his temple alongside the usual Hindu aspects of God.

Then there was Rabbi Larry who lectured in a Wisconsin seminary and emailed me Torah studies all about the Otherness that could not be named.

For Catholics, Otherness makes us one in the Eucharist, where the presence of Jesus reminds us that life is all about being blessed, broken and handed out to the world.

The abundance in all religious traditions takes me back to a present I received for my nineteenth birthday.

It was a tiny wooden Buddha.

My fundamentalist stage of growth could not cope with it.

I put it in the fire.

I actually thought my religious intolerance was virtue.

Twenty years later, in Taiwan, I walked by a river gorge where white marble boulders sat in blue water, and bush covered banks were alive with butterflies.

I heard a waterfall and saw a small path leading to it.

The path went down through a mist of spray and disappeared behind falling water.

Behind the waterfall, was a small shrine with a white marble Buddha and some joss sticks in a jar.

The beauty of that shrine with light dancing through the curtain of water brought a spacious feeling of peace and healing.

I felt Jesus Christ smiling in the white marble.

Later, more words came - fire and water, crucifixion and resurrection, the abundance of the Otherness.

Now, all of that brings me back to the big question that was missed in the interview.

Why do we need religion?

That answer also is simple.

It's because we are religious beings.

This is our sacred inheritance.

The sense of Otherness and the need to acknowledge it is within us all.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

He put a finger on my struggle.

Is it necessary to define the indefinable?

Is it important to name the un-nameable?

Can words ever do an adequate, or even half-hearted, job of capturing the essence; the vitality; the 'otherness' of God?

Do the rituals I participate in reveal God, or obscure the true nature of God? A bit of both, I suspect.

We are human. We get bored. We become impatient. We are creative. We like to add our own stamp. We can't resist the urge to revamp; to change. Perhaps, it is a well-intentioned desire to meet a perceived need in ourselves or in our communities. But what we can end up doing is so cluttering up our liturgies, and our prayers, and our sacred spaces, and our inner self, that we obfuscate the essence of God. Do we seek to be entertained or or educated or distracted? We like to explain things -perhaps over-explain - but "the who-ness of God dwells in inaccessibility." We focus on our self and not on the 'Other'. It becomes about what we feel and not whom we seek.

Consider the chasuble ….

An unadorned piece of finely woven fabric, cut well, will drape sublimely on a presider. With arms outstretched in prayer and praise, the cruciform shape is an immediate reminder of Christ. We are drawn into the mystery - simply, silently becckoned into LOVE.

But we cannot resist the temptation to decorate; to ornament; to embellish; to proselytise; to put a bit of ourselves onto it and into it. So our senses, and therefore our minds and our hearts, are distracted. We consider the workmanship; the design; the symbolism … and forget to whom it points.

On the other hand …

I was privileged to accompany a small, inter-generational family as they experienced for the first time the sacrament of reconciliation, or celebrated it again after a long absence. This was an intimate encounter: a palpable mix of silence, prayer, anxiety, joy, hugs and smiles, thanksgiving. Stripped of formulaic responses and self-consciousness, all we could see and feel was the loving embrace of a 'God-beyond-all-expectations'. A deep inner peace reigned. The experience sustains me still - twenty years later.

I yearn for the simplicity of the disciples going out with nothing extra. I yearn for the silence present when Jesus went away to pray. I seek the essence of God. I catch a glimpse of it in shady forests and beside lakes. I encounter it briefly in my room at dawn. I seek it, too, during public worship. Sometimes, amid the cacophany of images and sounds, I fail to remain engaged, focused, attentive. But then LOVE cames and sits beside me … and I begin again.

Resources:

God Rid Me of God: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzv0TNcTw54

Joel Mckerrow: http://joelmckerrow.com/

Liz Pearce, mother of 3 adult children, loves story, dollmaking, writing and silence.