A meditation on faith

I guess a number of things have been bringing this to a head. First and foremost, more than just a couple of rather difficult questions issuing forth from the mouths of babes - specifically my babes. C has been on this topic on and off for a large part of 2008, asking things like, "Is Jesus really real?" , "Is God really real?" He turns 10 in February. As the Christmas season came underway, my K said, "How did Mama Mary give birth to Jesus if she didn't have sex?" These are simple, straightforward questions and worthy of simple, straightforward answers, and yet, such simplicity is nowhere to be found.

Then there was a recent dinner with a friend who out of the blue makes it known to us his doubt, even his non-belief. This, when we were always quite certain that his was as staunch a faith as any.

But perhaps most difficult to accept is the doubt from the people you love. How to confront the incredulity that tumbles out almost unbidden from those nearest and dearest whose opinion, regard and favor you value, above all else.

They ask, how is it that you can believe such and such? How is it that you can go through the charade beyond the guise of tradition, culture and ritual?

Of course, you understand what they mean. You see why they doubt. You know cognitively how they are compelled to say the things they say. You are all too aware of how your faith appears: cowering, naked, and yes, almost naive and even a little foolish. Like believing in fairy tales.

Yet you struggle to gather together the broken pieces of your belief and you just stand there because you have nothing to say. You cannot defend it with words or explanations. You have none, except the sheer, dogged pulsing spirit.

You belief is not a choice, something that you are able to control.

Your faith is a force.

Despite everything, you simply believe, because you cannot not believe.

The absence of faith - anyone's absence of faith, even your own - feels to you a bit like a void. Non-belief feels too much like self-righteousness and arrogance that after all, draws only upon the limits of a single life that is known, lived and led - their own. It is just one life that leads someone to this conclusion, one life that is a mere drop of water in a universal cascade.

But you feel and know with an inexplicably inner feeling and knowing that there is something more. You take comfort in what has existed for hundreds of years before you, and likely for hundreds of years after you are gone. Because it is there. Because of the way it offers truth and hope that speaks in your life. And your faith finds its strong yet wordless reason in the quiet of your own mind, to the beat of your own heart.