Father John Michael Hanvey, who works at the THOMAS Organisation (Those on the Margins of A Society) in Blackburn, says there is loneliness in the human condition.

'Think with the heart, feel with the mind'. This was one of the themes of an artist at the last Venice Arts Festival.

Works of art have often touched me, as has music, even though I know nothing really about them.

Because the world is charged through by the sacred if only we could see, there are never-ending opportunities for us to think with the heart and feel with the mind.

For me spirituality and growing towards God and towards every person in my life will always be flesh bound.

The days when the Church thought the body to be a hindrance to becoming real and holy are thankfully long gone. And yet something is quite wrong in our society.

Most of us, quite rightly look for happiness here, limited though that will always be.

Most people find this happiness in someone else's arms.

But there is I feel a deep-down loneliness in the human condition.

There is also I believe the fear of the terrible possibility, that not only this is all there is, but also the fear in our psyche of eternal annihilation.

I think some of the work I'm involved with among young people whose minds have been fractured by the lives they are leading, drugs, prostitution, crime etc make me feel that the chasm between them and say some of the young cathedral bloggers from the Young People's Choir is too wide to cross.

I feel often that I wander in and out of different worlds that never meet and maybe never can!

Of course here I am not referring to the young people at THOMAS on our residential re-hab.

In fact this group, once they move into Stage 2 of our programme take the drug awareness drama workshop into schools and colleges; they in fact make the first move to other young people.

But it's the others that some of us are engaged with on a daily basis. Death is always on the menu for this other group - young death, death where death ought not to be.

In my worst moments I feel that the spirituality I'm involved with for my own life is as unavailable for them as are the chances of my climbing Everest.

The illness of meaning is painfully present in our society and I just wonder if there is really anything we can do that we are not yet doing, as church, or society is generally.

I wonder if there could be an inter-faith religious community living in the middle of our town, as part of its regeneration; a community that is specifically for God's glory in the spiritual care of so many of these lost boys and girls.

We regenerate our town for commerce and build bigger Malls and modern towers of expensive flats, car parks, Cathedral developments etc.

Could there really be a possibility of building in the middle of all this, a place to where these young people especially, would make their way because they know they are welcome and could dare to be who they are right now?

I'm not thinking of a 'social service' type enterprise but one that's speaking from the initiative of the town's youth.

After all, as one of the psalms says, 'if the hand of God does not build the home, in vain do the builders build'.