Rethinking Faith

There is a bigger, broader post in the works about faith, but I needed to share a few things now.  Shaping the ideas into words and setting them in some semi-permanent form will help me to anchor them so that I can explore them in more depth when I add them to the big post.

The concept of faith fascinates me, but it frustrates me too.  Faith should play a big part in my life as a Mormon, but the truth is, I have serious faith issues because I have trust issues.  And because of the words and ideas that I've always associated with faith, I believed my own faith was either defective or nonexistent.  Then I decided to be brave, take some risks, and see where it lead me.

September has been a month of exploring faith (and it's not done yet!)  This week, I went to a writing session focused on faith, and as usually happens when I really open myself up to writing, I learned some really important things about faith and about myself.

I think that as much as we might like to have a one-size-fits-all answer for faith, that's not the way it works.  Faith manifests itself in different ways for different people or at different times.   As we wrote the other night, I connected to how faith works in my life.

Faith can be testing the ground to make sure that it is safe before moving on.  I thought about tai chi walking, a drill we do frequently to explore balance and weight-shift.  You must be firmly grounded, with all the weight transferred to one foot before the other leaves the ground.  Then the empty foot lifts and does what we call a clearing step, a small sweep to make sure nothing is in the way.  You set down the heel, then the toe.  The foot is flat on the ground, but no weight has been committed yet.  You could easily pick up the foot and move it back to where it started.  Then, when you know there is firm ground beneath you, supporting you, you shift the weight to that foot.  Even after you have shifted the weight, as long as both feet are still on the ground, you are free to shift the weight back, forward, or balance it between both feet.  Your waist and upper body naturally, easily turn in the direction of the weighted foot.  If you choose to move forward again, you simply place all weight in that foot and lift the other foot for the next step.

I used to think about faith as "95% of people can walk across this icy parking lot without falling, so you should be able to too." To be careful or cautious about the way I proceeded seemed to be a lack of faith.  It worked for everyone else, so it should work for me too.  Now I understand faith as moving forward.  Period.  And if I need to take my steps with the certainty that tai chi walking provides, that can still be faith.

I also learned that my belief in possibility is also my faith.  Being a Star Trek Mormon is a legitimate way of operating in faith.

I'm excited to see where this exploration takes me and what the final form of the big blog post becomes.  Faith is what is important to you, and what you set your heart upon.  And faith always includes an element of Love. And in the end, Love, whatever it is and however you get there, is all that matters.