"God, to whom our lives may be the spelling of an answer." -Abraham Joshua Heschel

Sunday, December 26, 2004

The Mystery of Faith?

Religion points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage. ~Frederick Buechner

Well, today I am lost in the midst of many thoughts and questions, which I am unable to ignore. What is this thing we call faith? Is it just a state of contentment with reality, a deeper trust. . . .or is it something more? I like to think of faith as a wrestling match with truth and reality, not to be pulled sway by any one thing, but to know and understand things clearly, and leap off in trust that something is bigger than yourself.

There, I talk about undefinable things such as faith, but maybe I just want to know, does anyone else ever question or wonder? Does anyone else ever think that there is MORE? More than just what I see and experience at hand? Do you just feel like you long for beauty, which sounds like the thoughts of a hopeless romantic. . . .but yet, I feel like there is so much more truth in the writings of the great poets than in most religious writings of today. At least the poets had passion, and they weren't afraid to admit it. Do I let myself have real passion? Like Thoreau, he said: "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, and I wanted to suck all the marrow out of life." If anything, I do not want to live my life tamed and subdued and resigned to the reality of life. . . .I always HAVE to live with the hope that there is yet something MORE left to be discovered. Don't you ever wonder that? That there's something more? Or, do we live in the tension between our hope and desire for something more and our life amongst the reality of what is? I don't know, I just have to ask questions with no real answer in sight, just for the sake of asking them, making them real, and then letting them just be. My questions are the manifestation of my desire, which isn't always fulfilled. . . .but I am okay with being left to wonder. . . . .

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home