Faith as Belief in Possibility

well hello world feels like it's been a minute this episode is about faith and somewhat of a long strange serendipitous journey to get to the point of understanding that I'm at now in my life maybe it's part of being raised spending Sunday mornings in church or going to a Catholic elementary school but my conception and understanding of the word faith met something very particular to me it meant belief in a god of a particular religion that the homilies that I heard the religious classes that I sat in or explanations of why and how I was to think and that led me to this mindset that faith was something that I had to define it had to be explained and then it had to be defended you people try and I tried to describe it in this theological language or reduce it to a particular set of beliefs about the nature of the universe my mind even created this view that somehow there were these separate parts of heaven for different belief systems yet as I keep on this journey my own experience suggests that there is something much simpler and more practical and so the purpose of this episode is to kind of define or give you my experience or the approach that I take today today faith can be understood to me as this willingness to believe in possibilities the less defined the better you know it's this quiet internal decision to keep moving forward with any of my plans to remain faithful to the work that I'm doing you know that and that work is often defined as ongoing education of myself and to try to stay engaged with people around me even when my own circumstances are discouraging or I get really tired and that last part was a revelation because you know I can send texts make phone calls send letters send to emails and get nothing back but I know I know in my soul that they hear me and it means something to me and when I look at it this way from this perspective faith is less for me about certainty and more about orientation it's it's not this claim that everything's gonna work out perfectly and it's not just this blind optimism I'm not on the rollercoaster with my hands above me just screaming yeah that's not it it's this recognition I have this recognition that the future remains open to me and that my actions today they still matter and my internal emphasis how I do this through is the idea that when I think that what I think matters but how I act matters more you know all of this allows me I I like to say I just keep planting seeds even when the harvest is not guaranteed I can't control the weather and am I have planted a lot of seeds and failed to water and tend them and the results are what you expect nothing my faith in what I consistently see in action every day allows me to continue showing up to my responsibilities to my relationships even when those immediate rewards for that are absent absence in the present but not in a different plane of existence this universal consciousness that I believe in and one of the most powerful aspects of all of this of this new fate is I have this endurance during times that are discouraging and we all every but every single person listening to this or whomever not listening to this encounters moments when our best laid plans they fall apart it feels like all the effort we're doing is wasted that relationships feels one-sided you know the old why did you leave me on red I know you saw my text without some belief in this wondrous possibility that there is something these moments of discouragement those can easily lead to I want to withdraw I want to be cynical or I want to feel sorry for myself but this new type of faith that I have it's pulling me in that other direction all the time it resonates like there's this note I hear it in my soul that there is meaning that will still emerge if I keep persisting there's this suggestion that effort itself has value even if the results are uncertain and that little piece came from ultra running and coaching you know my understanding of this belief also shapes how I treat other people because very few relationships that I have operate in perfect balance they they ebb and flow you know that pendulum swings one way and it swings the other you know there are situations in life in just times in our life right when one person gives more than they receive and that's okay because when this faith when this trust is present I remain steady I get it I can continue to offer patience kindness presence and without immediately calculating that return and keeping this mental scorecard or this ledger of debits and credits now I that doesn't mean that I tolerate harmful relationships or abandon any of this new gained wisdom I don't rather it means that I understand that human connections they unfold over time and they change and that this generosity or if we can be generous often bears fruit in very unexpected ways giving for the sake of giving it works and another important internal dimension of this perspective is humility something I had to learn when faith is defined as belief in possibilities rather than in this rigid dogmatic certainty it allows me space for mystery I can acknowledge that I do not fully understand what I believe or how the art universe works that's cool I've learned to move forward without needing every single question answered and that took real time another thing that humility does is it removes this pressure that often feels to surround religious or specifically spiritual beliefs I always thought that if I couldn't define it name it categorize it or use it to exclude other ways of thinking then I lost you know instead of demanding this unachievable intellectual perfection this this way of living this program for living invites me to participate more in that mystery in the unfolding of life and I have lots of wonderful uh-huh these uh-huh moments they're awesome and for any of like our literal economic folks out there living this way it has profound quantifiable value it does sometimes hard to measure you know it encourages resilience because it keeps me oriented toward new possibilities it does rather than trapping myself in disappointment or reinforcing these thoughts by negative thinking that's not good you know I keep building this meaningful work in my life because it focuses my attention again on effort in integrity rather than immediate results you know I don't know if I could explain fully explain how much peace of mind I have gained through delayed gratification And it also, this is something that pertains to my relationships, because it encourages patients and generosity, and more courage than I used to have. So this faith, right, in a sense, it's not a conclusion, it's not this end point, but it's a, it's like a new stance toward life. I have this willingness to keep believing that something meaningful can emerge from this effort, from these relationships, from being persistent, especially when I cannot clearly define what I believe in, the act, the act, the actions of living this way, continue to shape who I become. And over time, I get what I always was looking for, what I always wanted in the first place, that if I keep doing the next right thing, it becomes its own kind of proof, proof. I have it now. Peace.