One of the not-to-do things while you are in church is to think about something else. But how hard it is. Very hard. There I was, in the middle of the Creed, voices rising together, and suddenly my mind wandered.

How long have these words been spoken? How many generations have stood like this, saying, “I believe”? Who first arranged these lines so neatly that centuries later we still repeat them without hesitation? The questions kept coming.

When I got home, I did what many of us now do when curiosity refuses to rest. I reached for the blessing of technology. One layer after another, I read about the history of the Nicene Creed, the debates, the crises, the need for clarity, the desire for unity. I moved from councils to controversies, from emperors to bishops, from theology to politics.

But as I kept reading, a new question formed quietly in my mind. Is the idea of a creed unique to Christianity alone? Not at all. Other religions have their own declarations of faith, their own distilled statements of what must be remembered and preserved. And then it stretched even further; is this instinct limited to religion? Not really. Nations have founding statements. Movements have manifestos. Even teams and institutions carry mottos that define who they are. Creeds, in whatever form they appear, do something specific: they protect identity, preserve core values, create unity, and guide behaviour. They remind people what matters most, especially when confusion or division threatens to blur it.

Looking at the creeds one after another, I began to notice something gentle and powerful. They attempt to explain the nature of life. They speak about the unseen. They describe humanity’s connection to the world and to something beyond it. They are not identical. They do not say the same things. At times they overlap; at other times they stand clearly apart. And somehow, that difference is beautiful.

Standing alone, each creed sustains the community it has shaped. It holds together a people, a history, a moral vision. And standing together, in all their difference, they hold something even larger. They hold humanity’s search for meaning. They hold the world in conversation.

Alone, each creed stands like a single flower. Together, they form a garden. Does red compete with yellow in a garden? Regardless of their colours and shapes, flowers share the same soil. They draw from the same water, the same minerals, the same sunlight, yet they appear differently and it is that difference that makes the garden beautiful. There is beauty in such difference.

To recognise beauty in difference is not to erase it. It is not to pretend that every flower is the same, or that every belief speaks with one voice. It is simply to refuse to see difference as a threat. It is to see humanity searching, reaching, questioning, hoping. And that search, carried across continents and centuries, is itself beautiful.

Maybe seeing it from that angle shifts the perspective. One might begin to perceive creeds not as weapons of argument, but as mirrors of humanity. For thousands of years, people have looked at the sky, at birth and death, at suffering and joy, and have tried to answer the same questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Is there something more? Perhaps creeds are condensed responses to those questions.

Though mainly seen as declarations of faith, creeds may carry something more within them. They may be carrying moral imagination, shaping conscience, forming communities in ways we do not immediately notice. Spoken in Churches, recited in Mosques, chanted in Temples, whispered in childhood bedrooms, they seem to work quietly over time. And perhaps those who make change in the world, those who leave their marks upon it, are influenced in one way or another by the creeds they have inherited sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes embraced, sometimes wrestled with.

Perhaps that is the quiet beauty of creeds. They live among human beings, taking form within cultures and languages, shaped by people yet often outliving the generations that shaped them. They seem to protect memory and history, connecting human beings across continents and centuries. In reaching beyond this world, they may also deepen our care for it. And through those who have been formed by them, they leave their marks sometimes small, sometimes great on the story of humanity.

And so, after wandering through the beauty of creeds at home, I remembered where it had all begun, a quiet distraction in the middle of the Creed. Perhaps the next time I stand there, voices rising together, I will remember this journey. Not to silence the questions, but to welcome them. Not to be distracted, but to understand more deeply.

And when I say, “I believe,” it may no longer be just repetition. It will carry history, humanity, and the beauty of difference within it.