this is how I define faith
hint: it's more than belief or religion
Have you ever been told, “Just have faith!” and wondered what that even means? Faith is a confidence that love is the truest reality.
Faith is an unbridled force you cannot own, possess, or summon. Faith arrives and announces itself, and then sometimes, without provocation, it slowly dissipates or rapidly exits. It isn’t something that can be willed into existence—only welcomed or ignored. Since you can’t manipulate or control faith, you should never shame yourself or someone else for lacking faith.
Faith is your personal pathway into the fullness of love. If someone insists that you don’t have faith, remind them that they don’t know what they are talking about. Your journey isn’t up for the discussion of others. The end of your story might be where someone else begins theirs. Their midpoint could be the culmination of your search.
Faith is a collective consciousness that binds together communities across time. A shared vision, language, or spiritual experience leads people to celebrate the Divine in one another in every generation.
Faith is always a risk. The only thing that separates the celebrated prophet from the false one is the test of time. Both had to rely on faith, and each one believed with all her heart that she was right. History honors one and disgraces the other.
Faith is activating. Unlike a stagnant set of dogmas, faith demands you embody the ideas you hold dear. It awakens the entirity of your being—your heart, your mind, your body, your art, your work, the roles you play, and the relationships you have. There’s a dance we do with faith, a chase we enjoy, a presence we welcome.
Faith is the audacious claim that your earthly existence has purpose. The faith within you holds out for hope regardless no matter how the tumultuous life gets. It believes, contrary to all the evidence, that you’re going to be okay.
Faith is what you reach the end of your intellect and think, “Oh my God, there has to be something more than this.” When what you see around you doesn’t inspire you to live well, faith reminds you that there’s greater meaning than what your eyes or mind can perceive.
Faith is fluid and always shifting. You cannot lay hold of it with ideological absolutes or separate faithful people from so-called unfaithful. There are too many of us in between for those counts to be accurate. Instead, faith is a gift which is poured out without prerequisites and which cannot be ever truly lost.
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Author’s note: This post was written on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
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