When Faith is Missing 2/4/22

 “And it’s ever-present everywhere”  Van Morrison

When my faith is missing, that (faith) is the thing that has gone underground. My Higher Power, the Spirit of Life, the Creator, hasn’t “gone” anywhere. I’ve closed myself off to Love, Ease, Acceptance, Gratitude. My pride is hurt because something in my life isn’t meeting my conscious or unconscious expectations, and I’m mad. I have maybe equated smooth sailing with my awareness of my Higher Power, forgetting that I’m reminded to “meet life on life’s terms”. I don’t set those parameters. My challenge is to meet each difficult situation in the same way that I react to what I think is good. My life is my school, and sometimes my teachers are unpleasant or boring or seem biased against me. That’s okay. There’s a lesson for me, if I tune in, get over my snit, and allow myself the humility to learn.

In Christianity, even Jesus had a crisis of faith when he asked “Why have You forsaken me?”. Perhaps other faith communities have similar metaphors. We have challenges. The veils between worlds are opaque. We can feel quite alone.

When that happens to me, I return to being angry. I refuse to see God in the situation. Instead, I become a fault-finder, a victim, a replayer of old tapes. This is living in the shadow. May I always remember how freeing and warm it is to clear the clouds of doubt and stand, once again, in the Sunlight of the Spirit.

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