“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” - Alan Watts

When I began writing these essays, I thought about the sorts of things I would write and decided that, along with reflections on things I have learned at work during my career, I would also allow myself to write about things I have learned by living these years. Occasionally, as I am today, I’ll write one of these broader reflections. Today, as we are in the midst of a season when our fellow humans celebrate holidays inspired by many ways of believing, I’d like to reflect on faith.

If this sort of thing isn’t your cup of tea, I certainly understand! I’ll return to topics more closely related to what I’ve learned in the course of my career in IT next week.

I remember an excellent college course I attended on consciousness and the professor began his first lecture by reviewing the definition of consciousness with us and using that as the basis for the discussion that followed. With that in mind, I’ll start today by looking at Webster’s definition of faith:

1 a :  allegiance to duty or a person :  loyalty

  b (1) :  fidelity to one's promises (2) :  sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) :  belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) :  belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
  b (1) :  firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) :  complete trust
3:  something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially :  a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>

Each of these definitions has some meaning for me. I do try to be faithful in the sense of the first meaning. The sense of the word “faith” that I most want to focus on today is that in 2 b: a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof” or “complete trust”. I struggled with this idea for many years because I kept trying to find something to have faith in that I could know for certain from empirical evidence. It was only when I sat by my dying mother and held her hand that I finally realized I could not expect to find proof for that which required faith.

One of her concerns at the end was for my soul. I wanted to reassure her but I also wanted to be entirely honest with her. I found my answer when I realized that, although our religious beliefs were not entirely the same, there was something we both believed completely without the need for proof. My mother had a deep Christian faith that she would be saved and enter the kingdom of heaven. I have a deep faith that there is something fundamental, and beautiful, that can never die and that goes on, connecting us to one another in a way I cannot know or explain, forever. She believed that God is love and I realized as I waited with her on that last night that our two beliefs were the same in some essential way. This allowed me to gently squeeze my mother's hand and assure her that I did  believe, that I had faith, that we would be together again even after death. The relief on her face, and the peaceful look that followed, will be what I remember most from that night.

I explored the teachings of many faiths, in the third sense of the definition above, as I searched for answers as a young man. I read Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist and other texts and atheist, humanist, and existential philosophy. I also read works on comparative religion and theology by Krishnamurti, Bonhoeffer, and many others. 

In the process, I came to realize that to find the truth I am looking for, I'll probably have to look where I haven't looked before, or look in the same old places with new eyes and a new heart. While I don’t intend to discuss my own specific beliefs here, I did find that the most important ideas seemed to be present in all these faiths and beliefs. I also took comfort in my exploring as I realized that millions before me had sought after truth and found it it shining the same light through these, apparently, different windows.

I have long been attracted especially to the mystic traditions of various faiths. The writings of Christian mystics like Thomas Merton ring true for me as do Celtic notions of a mountain behind the mountain and a cloud behind the cloud. I’ve found that ring of truth in reading about the Sufism of Rumi, Omar Khayyám,  and the Nasrudin stories, about the Buddhist  beliefs of Thích Nhất Hạnh, D.T. Suzuki and, Alan Watts, the Tao of Lao-Tzu, and the Jewish Kabbalah of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer Baal Shem Tov, and Martin Buber.

I feel a great affinity for the mystic goal of human transformation, variously defined in different traditions, and the notion that is is possible to find a union with the absolute, the infinite, or God. Mysticism has been defined as “the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.” Very seldom have I had that direct experience, but when I have it has been transformative and even years later it feeds my faith.

I struggled for years with the conflict between dualism, the idea that the body and mind are separate and the promise this seemed to hold that something could go on when the body died, and the non-dualist views associated with my scientific training and understanding that held that the mind and body were one and inseparable. I finally found a different non-dualist understanding that everything is one, beyond notions of space and time, and goes on despite the appearance of life and death. After years, the old Zen koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping” stopped puzzling me and made me laugh with joy instead.

For me, the closest I can experience to the reality of this oneness is the numinous feeling of wonder that comes when I am close to nature, gazing at the starry skies, floating on my back in the cool lake, breathing the spray and listening to the roar of the salty ocean, walking through the living forest, or standing on the peaks and meadows of our beloved mountains. Most real of all is the experience of oneness I feel in the quiet moments of closeness with my beloved ones.

My faith is in the something fundamental that connects us all completely to each other, and to the universe around us. Something that has no beginning or end but simply is beyond all space and time. The something we experience as love. Of love, I need no proof. In love, I have complete trust.

I wish you all great joy and love during this holiday season whatever your own traditions may be. I stand in blesséd wonder at the way we are all one everywhere, and everywhen. Today, on this shortest midwinter's day, I look back in gratitude on the past year and forward grateful to be starting another circle ‘round the sun with my loved ones. Soon, there will come the sweet quiet after the holidays that has always been such a special, peaceful, time for me. I wish you all Peace in this new year.