When I say Faith is a slippery bitch, I'm not kidding you. She just doesn't give a fuck. She flits about; beautiful...fucking perfect, and we reach for her. She lets us hold on to her for just a little bit, but she's no ride or die. Things get hard and all we see is her in the distance, floating away. Those of us who are strongly connected to God, fight for her. We understand she is our connection to him. We can't hate her because she knows not what she does. She is just being her.
It helps a little that God infused us before he shuttled us out into Life. He almost opened our mouths and made us guzzle it. But he did that because he knew that Faith depletes. Just like that second Law of Thermodynamics that says things tend to atrophy. So too there is the apparently undiscovered law that Faith tends to slip away.
Like the school-child of my prior post, most of us who want to abide by Mother's rules and feel comforted by the security of Mother's assurances, must also have Faith in what Mother has told us. If Mother says we are going to be ok and we don't believe that then how far into the day do you think we will get before we begin to think and act like we are on our own - feeling either anger, fear or bitterness at the realization that Mother has abandoned us in this unforgiving and unpredictable place? It wouldn't be long I assure you. And the length of time before we begin to make up our own rules will depend on how fear-inducing the day is. Why? Faith inoculates us from the pathology of fear. Without it we are fodder for the natural slithering, hissing knaves of this world, one of which, is fear
If Billy the bully starts coming for us at 10am, if his taunts and shoves start sending our heart rates through the roof and our stomachs start burning from a release of adrenaline that make us either want to run and hide or kick him in the nuts, then nothing will keep us from losing it but the faith that, as Mother said, we will be ok.
Unfortunately Faith isn't loyal. She doesn't need you and she knows it. She knows even that you need her. She knows she is your connection to the Divine. She know she has the upper hand. She demands a certain environment in order to remain with you. She likes the easy life. Oh how easy it is to be faithful when the road is smooth and shoots out straight before you. Oh how easy it is to be faithful when the sun shines sweetly and the clouds pucker in a pillow of whiteness against a blue-blue sky.
But let tragedy, a characteristic of life, knock us to the ground, and any number of variables conspire to keep us there, and soon, to our dismay, she'll start to slip away.She may wisp away with the night air or flitter in and out of our lives for awhile. And with her beauty she steals our immunity from the debilitating fear that is a part of life. However exasperating Faith is, or rather her propensity to slip through the cracks at our doors, she is essentially, the God in us. Despite her elusive ways, she remains important and, therein, blameless and perfect because she just happens to be the Mother (and source) of the other important off-shoot of the Divine: Hope.
Ah Hope!
Like a breath of fresh air in a dank room. Like a cool running river on a sweltering day. Hope is pure, unassuming, purposeful, and entirely earthbound.
Hope the driver. The propeller. Our wings. Our superpower. If you ever wanted to be Superwoman or Batman but thought you had no superpower you were wrong.
It's hope.
We are untouchable - unstoppable even - in hope. In hope we can out-wait the most patient opponent. Is patience not the evidence of hope? Out-hope your opponent and you can outdo him on any frontier. Remember that story the Tortoise and the Hare? Let me tell you what one likely had over the other: An immense amount of hope.
So what is this relationship between Faith and Hope and how does it connect us to God?
Let me break it down for you as simple as I can: Faith is our connection to God and Hope is our connection to Life. Hope writhes itself out the loins of Faith and once it comes out, like a ribbon, it lays a path before us and sells us on it. Essentially it makes us want whatever is at the end of that path.
And so we set out on this journey called Life. Not knowing what we don't know; filled to the brim with Faith - oblivious to the fact it is leaking out the back of us at some rate per second, holding on to our ribbon of hope, as innocent and purposeful and color-coordinated, as that schoolboy on the first day of school.
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