paint your faith

What does your faith mean to you?  Can you physicalize it in words or images on a page? Pulling it from the depths of your being and sharing it with the world is no easy task.  But that is the task at hand, and all we can do is try.

Over the course of this project I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the concept of faith…about the great many things that keep me going, that color my world, make the great and small challenges of life not only bearable, but indispensable.

Yesterday I was talking to someone about hardship, and personal growth.  Speaking as two people who have lived through more than her fair share of hard times, we were discussing the innate predilection towards harboring bitterness, of carrying all your hard times around with you, a constant reminder of the unfairness of life and the ways in which you have been wronged.

Part of what keeps me going is learning to let go.  For years, I nurtured my sadness and anger like William Blake’s Poison Tree.  Watering it with fears and sadness, it grew until I could not see from under its branches.  But unlike the tree in Blake’s poem, the tree whose apple kills the author’s foe, my tree of bitterness and cynicism was harming was harming myself and the people I loved most.  And so I am learning to let it go.

In this regard, I have faith in the idea that all experiences in life– positive and negative – can be turned towards a greater positive end.  Hard times are opportunities for learning, growing, gaining strength and depth, moving forward.  Good times are opportunities for giving thanks, giving back, sharing your good fortune with others.  Always moving forward.  I cannot change what has happened in the past, my own actions or those of others – but I can choose how those things will affect me and my world in the future.

I have faith that the universe works itself out.  That if you put in the hard work on your end, use the hard times to grow and the good times to share – if you truly believe that you can accomplish your dreams and you work towards living those dreams every minute of every day – then you have the ability to create your own reality, to bring your hopes & dreams into fruition, to reach out and seize your day.  I have faith that in doing so, you have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to help those around you find a way to embrace their own.

The universe works itself out, if you are willing to put the work in – but not in the ways that we expect.   Life is a series of questions to be asked.  There are no finite answers –instead, we are faced with a plethora of possible paths, each with its own unique set of hills, valleys, times and places of shadow and sun.  The beauty of existing is in embracing the uncertainties, nurturing the sense of wonder at the universe that we too often lose as we gain in age, knowledge and experience.  I believe that wisdom and faith lies in finding the answers that work for you, at any given moment in time and space, and in moving on to others as your personal path unfurls.

Yes, life is unfair, life is uncertain, life is difficult.  But it is also filled with beauty and mystery and even within the darkness there is light.  And for me, faith is learning from the sadness, letting the fear pass over me and through me and leaving it behind me as I move forward – footsteps dancing, fingertips trailing, spirit filled with the depth and breath of my experience, shining with wonder and love and everpresent light.

“We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls.” – Robert R. McGammon