‘Faith’ means to have complete trust or confidence in someone or something. That is a tough standard to meet. ‘Complete trust or confidence,’ no doubts, no wondering, no maybe, or most of the time but ‘complete.’ I can’t say I have faith in much when I look at that standard. An alternate definition says that faith is having ‘a strong belief based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.’ That one feels a little easier to embrace because it is not quite as demanding, on the other hand it feels like there is a bit of condescension in the words themselves since ‘proof’ is the standard we are measuring against. This is the old intellectual versus religious, or science versus faith debate that I personally think misses the point for both sides. I am a believer in something more than me, and I am fan of the scientific method, both can simultaneously be true.

If you are reading this you likely know that I write regularly and that I often touch on topics of spirituality, faith, even religion. I have been writing like this for upwards of a dozen years and my work has evolved over that time, though there has always been an undercurrent of seeking. Recently in an attempt to better sort my work I inadvertently reposted about two dozen pieces that are over a decade old. I try not to spam the socials or the mailboxes so this was a big oops for me. The result however was interesting in so far as I received a lot more comments than normal, unsurprisingly, not all pleasant.

I will say that my recent work is decidedly more faith-based than the older pieces so it was a bit of a shock when one person posted that Christians are all bullies and it was proved that being religious reduced your IQ. I did not respond to the poster, maybe I should have, but it felt like the kind of thing you just say ‘okay’ to and move on. I don’t need to have a fight with someone about what they do or do not believe, it doesn’t hurt me and I actually don’t want to bully anyone into believing anything so I just left it alone.

What I did do was think about the comment (and thought sarcastically: at least to the extent that I can think since I am a person of religious faith), and the ways in which we have made the richness and beauty and love of the world into a binary decision between what can be proved and understood with the mind, and what is known in the soul and the heart. It does not have to be one or the other, it does not have to be science or God, it should not be science or God. It should be the wonder of scientific discovery that reveals to us the incredible complexity of creation. I do not devalue the skill of the surgeon or the wisdom of the counselor, I marvel at the evolution of the world that has allowed them to craft the skills they have, in the time and the place and with the resources they have to do so.

I spend a lot of time reading, writing, working through various challenges and problems. I spent twenty-five years working in roles that were largely consultative. I deeply value the ability of the brain to process the problems of the world. Yet the brain is only one part of our bodies. I know there are labs working on finding ways to upload our brains to the wherever on the presumption that consciousness will then live on. C.S. Lewis imagined that same idea in That Hideous Strength (spoiler, it does not go as planned), and there are also labs that are busy studying the microbiome as we start to discover consciousness in our gut. I imagine that in another hundred years we will take for granted the complex interplay between our head and our belly and our hormones and the way these all inform how and what we think, feel, experience, in different ways.

What a miracle that we can do this; what a wonder that we are built in this system of internal interconnectedness. It is fair to say that I have faith that we are not an accident and we are not the designer of this miracle. The fact that there may be others in the universe who look different, operate differently, and yet exist does not shake that faith or lessen the miracle for me. I look out my window and see Oak, and Cedar, and Redwood and all are a wonder, yet different.

I show up to meditation almost everyday, I pray, I read ancient wisdom literature; I do this because at some point in my life I knew with a conviction not provable that I was not capable of controlling all of the experiences and circumstances of my life. It was humbling, and freeing. And once I knew that I wanted to tap into the comfort of that surrender, not to blindly do as another human would have me do, but to move in a way that was lead by my heart, that trusted my gut, that demanded I slow down and think with all of me, so that I could live more completely.

We all have a choice about how we look at the world: we can look with only our eyes and believe that what we see is all there is to see, or we can look with faith, though our heart, our eyes, our fullness and remember that the miracle of creation is unfolding before us, with us, through us. I just don’t believe it is unfolding because of us.