It’s Easy to Wander Away from the Message
I get so tangled up in my life, particularly when things are going really well (or really NOT going well), that I forget all about the daily practice of having faith.
Yes, the bar upon which my attitude and outlook has risen considerably since I started even trying to have faith. Generally speaking, my attitude and belief infrastructure (and therefore my life, it turns out) is a lot better when I pray and meditate. Gasp! Who knew?!
I probably should not be that shocked. Billions of religious and spiritual people, plus centuries of disparate cultures all drawing similar conclusions about a spiritual plane can’t ALL be wrong, can they? The work of Joseph Campbell, if you are curious, asked the same question and found lovely, inspiring, and affirming commonalities across cultures that is a central underpinning of my willingness to have any semblance of faith, and I am grateful. As I have written about before, in good times or bad, prayer, meditation, and practicing active faith appears to be the stuff upon which greener grasses grow. By golly, I wish I had understood that sooner.
I was raised by faithless people in a faithless culture, and while I am growing to love my own history despite the considerable flaws, failings, and malfunctions, my default for decades sounded a lot like the following:
I don’t like this
Why is he doing that?
Our culture is the worst
Why would she do that?
Life is unfair
I could do that better
I am the worst
She is the worst
He is the worst
This is the worst
You get the gist. And I will be the first to admit that I was taught all of that by many people who genuinely believed it or lived it or modeled it. Many of them are still alive, and I regularly wonder if they are alive AND WELL.
I also know that I heard a lot of bad news on the radio, on TV, and on social media. My algorithm now is chockfull of positivity, cute puppies, faith, mental and physical wellbeing, and focusing on a positive future. This gelatinous soup of positivity is a reflection of my own brain these days, but for the first several decades of my life the messaging was much more negative, self-defeating, and counter-productive.
I get a little sad thinking about my younger self and how much voluntary, self-inflicted pain she was stewing in due to a really unpleasant belief infrastructure. I am also grateful, because all of that pain led me - and maybe even forced me - to find faith. I couldn’t keep living like that. It was just such a BLEEPING bummer, y’all, and I am sure many of you understand.
It’s hard to have faith, no question. It’s easy to wander away from thoughts, feelings, sentiments, and any messaging that helps us stick with it and maybe even build it. But’s also really hard to be BLEEPING miserable all the time without hope for the future. Talk about exhausting. Been there, done that, not going back, y’all. Not going back.