Daily Archives: December 5, 2013

This post may not be exactly what you might think it is. Most people when they speak of faith are using it in a religious context. That’s not what I’m doing here as my title might suggest. I’m not a religious person, tho I consider myself spiritual in many ways. But I’m not a Theist or a Deist. I don’t believe in a God or Goddess or a Creator of all we see. I don’t believe in Spirits. I believe in  Life.

What I mean by this is that I have faith in the continued movement of the cosmos, in the turning of the stars and the suns and the planets. I have faith closer to home too. That the sun will rise tomorrow and the flowers will grow and bloom, that the mountains will stay strong and only fall to the ground when it is their time, just as all life does. I have faith in the Cycle of it All.

It’s not that I haven’t been exposed to other ways of thinking. I was raised in a benevolent Christian household and in church I learned the Golden Rule and to respect others. I learned about Heaven and Hell but they never seemed real to me. I played the piano in my Sunday school and the organ in church and I was the president of my Young Life group, an organization for Christian youth. But it didn’t take…

By around the age of 14 I started to question things. It was 1963 and the world was in upheaval. Everyone everywhere was questioning the satus quo and the current beliefs about the Nature of Reality. Politics were the big game of course but religion took a close second place as a strong contender for challenge. Many of us came to doubt the words we’d learned in church or from religious people.

We learned to rely on each other and on ourselves, which is what I still do. I trust my lover to love me, my friends to care for me and my community to sustain and nurture me. I have faith in the goodness of people as well as the badness in them too. I have faith that people will be who they say they are and when I see differently I adjust my thinking to mirror reality.

I’ve also followed many different spiritual paths, from Eastern thought to Western. I did Yoga at a young age, and read about Zen and Taoism and Buddhism as well as mystical Christianity and Rumi. I was initiated into the Way of Medicine by a Native American teacher in my 30′s and then into a form of witchcraft (don’t get scared…) that was mellow and focused on the  turning wheel of the seasons and of life. It nurtured my sense of being a gardener and the cycles of the seasons we constantly follow. But I never deified it.

Of course there were so many politics in the pagan community that I finally came to an ending with all of them. I just couldn’t take the pronouncements of people who said they communed with Spirit and told me things that seemed wrong to me and challenged my world view of loving kindness. Not bad people, but some bad intents were all a part of my experiences and I stay away from that crowd now, tho I still note the passing of the seasons with good cheer and my own simple rituals.

I still have faith in that cycle of the seasons and the turning wheel of life. It helps to keep me going when I lose it and can’t find my way. I Know that tomorrow the sun will rise and the trees will grow and provide solace for me and for those like me who have faith in Nature, and in their fellow humans and in themselves most of all. When you have Bipolar Disorder you need an anchor, and Faith in the cycles of Life is mine.

I believe in a current, if you will, that travels throughout all life and connects us with one another. It’s pretty obvious when you go into quantum mechanics and new wave physics that we’re all made of the same stuff. Stardust some say and I like that metaphor. Of course it’s also a truism. We Are stardust and are made of the same elements that make up the cosmos. We’re all One with it. The same Energy is in us all.

So it isn’t hard to have faith in the way I’ve described it. You don’t need some entity of whatever sort telling you what to do. I’ve had it with higher powers that use me to embody their words and then turn their backs on me when I need them. Yes I have voices in my head all the time and they tell me some strange things. But as time has gone on I’ve learned which ones are goofs and which are real and I only listen to the real ones now. I hope…

I used to follow many of those voices in my head because I was taught that they were the source of my spirituality and my connection to Spirit. But I’ve found that many of them lead me into blind corners and just goof on me and treat me badly. Some are in direct contradiction with my “Elders”. So what do I do then? I’ve learned to keep my own counsel and my own brand of Faith.

I lose it so easily it seems and it’s hard to stay positive sometimes but faith is the thing that keeps me going when all else fails. Faith that it’ll wear off and I won’t be in a depression when I come out of it. It works. I have faith in a change. It always changes if you just wait it out, like a bad drug trip or something. It’s just chemicals in your brain so why sweat it? Keep faith in yourself and all will go well.

That’s what I believe in keeping faith in and so far I’ve done well with it. I try to love myself these days and I have others who love me too and that’s what counts to me at this point in my later life. I have faith in Love, along with Nature and people and all the rest of reality. It is what it is and I have faith in it’s continuance. It’s all I need.

Keeping the Faith,

Steve