Barry\u2019s sermon last Sunday was about \u201cfaith,\u201d if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains.\u00a0 Someone in the choir spoke up, saying she agreed, maybe she even said having faith is easy?\u00a0 simple?\u00a0 Anyway she was in her relentlessly positive persona.\u00a0 They talked about how it wasn\u2019t about \u201csize.\u201d\u00a0 I was uncomfortable with the whole thing.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have faith like that.\u00a0 I started to feel that you either had faith or you didn\u2019t, there was no way to build incrementally, and I certainly didn\u2019t have faith or I would not be depressed.\u00a0 So I was making myself wrong.\u00a0 Only later was I able to look at it objectively.<\/p>\n
So do I have faith?\u00a0 Yes, I have faith in the ultimate goodness of the universe, the goodness of the spirit that is creating the universe.\u00a0 I have faith that all things work together for good, but that doesn\u2019t mean that we will all be safe and happy.\u00a0 It does mean that nothing is wasted.\u00a0 It does mean that we are all immortal, or we are all one, (or both) because how else could an ugly and painful life, I think of Barry who killed Evie and himself, how could such a life be redeemed?\u00a0 I do have faith \u2014 I\u2019m not interested in moving mountains, but sometimes I wish I could magically bring myself out of depression, or even better bring it about that we would have world peace, justice, and environmental sanity.\u00a0 But I do have faith that depression is not some evil thing that afflicts me, depression is my god-given task.\u00a0 And my job is to stay present and bring compassion to it.<\/p>\n
I offer myself to this process of grieving for Bella, and for all the other losses of my life that her death opened up.\u00a0 I\u2019m willing to experience grief, emptiness, depression, despair, pain in the heart \u2014 in the faith that by experiencing them I process them, so the energy becomes available for living.<\/p>\n
Looking back on this attempt to understand faith, what I see is that faith is like trust, or maybe it even is trust, it\u2019s a choice, an action, not comfortable feelings.\u00a0 Even when I\u2019m depressed, like today, I can still CHOOSE to have faith in the complex, interconnected and beautiful universe that I know about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barry\u2019s sermon last Sunday was about \u201cfaith,\u201d if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains.\u00a0 Someone in the choir spoke up, saying she agreed, maybe she even said having faith is easy?\u00a0 simple?\u00a0 Anyway … Continue reading