Headed in the right direction for our lives

Faith is a complicated, misused, misunderstood word.

And that’s fine with me.

Because there are as many paths to faith as there are people to walk them. It’s not about what’s right or wrong or good or bad, it’s simply a choice each person makes about their inner lives to help survive the insanity of the outer one.

Even if that means not having any faith, which is still a choice, and perfectly acceptable one.

Here are several philosophies on the topic that resonate with me.

Recovery programs teach us that faith is believing that there is a greater power beyond our own ego, and it can be whatever we rely on for our source of strength. Imagine how not being the center of the universe might make you of greater service to the people in your life?

Franciscan monks say that faith is the freedom not to know, not to have answers for everything, to be able to combine a degree of knowing with a degree of not needing to know, because we’re being held at a level deeper than cerebral knowing. Imagine how not pretending to have certainty about the world might make your anxiety lessen and your conflicts reduce?

Tillich wrote that faith is the most centered act of the human mind and the ultimate concern as an act of the total personality, and it happens in the center of the life with all of its elements. Imagine how much easier your decisions would be if you trusted that everything belonged?

Personally, I like to treat faith as one of those rare chances to relax and not force answers, and ask some questions instead.

Allow me to list a few of them.

What if you could just be where you are?
What if you could just accept that right now is exactly where you are supposed to be?
What if you could just believe that you were headed in the right direction for your life?
What if you could just surrender to being held by the larger stream of life and actually enjoy this moment? 

These questions soothe me during difficult and prosperous times alike. They don’t sign me up for some magic lottery that makes everything okay, but they do stimulate sparks of hope, calm and gratitude an otherwise complicated and chaotic world.

And that faith gives me a meaningful experience of deep consciousness and communion with the mystery. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How are you placing your faith in the perfection of the universe?