On Being Willing to Believe

There are times when the desire for connection with the divine is so strong, it almost becomes a physical object.  This divine is not the same for everyone.  What I want it to be is so different from what I recognized as divine so long ago.

I’ve realized that if I can’t be certain of the spiritual things, at the very least I can discern what I want to be true, and see where that takes me.  I want there to be an eternal consciousness that involves me, both during this life and after.  I want there to be meaning to this life - to the words that are said, the actions that are done, the bonds that are created between like-minded people.  No matter when my life ends in this body, let that not be the end of me.  I want peace, but not just peace, an inner delight in the people and world around me.  I want to know, and to be known.

In my silence at West Hills Friends this past week, the sentence that kept coming back to me was, “If I want to believe, I have to be willing to believe.”  It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but being willing to believe is harder than it sounds.  It takes an active rejection of the need for logic and evidence, and an acceptance that maybe, just maybe, an experience of something divine can occur in spite of its nonsensicality. Maybe the connection I want won’t be found in words or holy books, and it certainly isn’t likely to be found in a burning bush or the physical presence of a god, which would take away the need for faith at all.

I’m embracing the idea that my search and discovery of anything divine can be my own.  It doesn’t have to fit within a denomination, it doesn’t need a label, and it doesn’t need a guide.  It doesn’t have to include the word God, or extend to the Bible or Jesus or anyone else with claims to be holy.   I’ve begun to FEEL the things I’ve been looking for, even if I don’t always know what those things are.  This struggle against faith is no longer a matter of which system has the best answers to the questions, or which proof for the existence of a god is most likely to be correct.  My most recent intuitions are that these things are valuable tools that ultimately help one to realize that they don’t matter.  The adventure is in the journey, not in the conclusion, which is likely to never come.