FAITH – A four letter word in many circles, something relegated to Sunday mornings for a couple of hours and nothing more. Faith is an activity, nothing more than an experience for those that are not educated enough to understand the real order of things or something that we were taught to do as kids and so out of some twisted sense of obligation and routine we continue to do, but try not to make too big a deal out of it so that our kids are spared the pain we had to endure. Faith, nothing more than a superstitious experience for a zealous minority… or is it.
For me faith is not a noun, it’s a verb, more precisely it’s the predicate in the sentence of my life. If I am the subject than faith accounts for everything else that exists. Faith fills in the blanks; it informs my opinion, shapes my thinking and guides my steps. Faith is not an abstract concept it is as real as the white lines on the highway or the principles of a political party. Faith keeps me in my lane, orders my steps, directs my path, focuses my energy and defines my existence. Faith is not something I do; Faith is what I am.
"All I have seen teaches me to trust in the Creator for all I have not seen." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Faith is a higher faculty than reason." Henry Christopher Bailey
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." Albert Einstein
"Faith is the continuation of reason." William Adams
"It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination... If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed." Annie Dillard
"Strike from mankind the principle of faith and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep." Mark Beltaire
Faith should not be marginalized or regulated to venues and locales of religious expression and thereby excluded from the everyday conversations of our life and times. The dialogue of faith is as meaningful as a conversation on philosophy of politics or the cultural of the global economy. Faith is not an additive or accessory something to be sprinkled on top of a larger discourse; faith has value in and of its self and must be positioned as an integral part of the human experience.
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