Faith Thoughts

Richard Rohr in his book "What Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self," has some interesting ways of speaking of faith. I'm going to give you a few quotes and then discuss a bit.

Faith is its own end.

To have faith is already to have come alive

Faith is the opposite of resentment, cynicism  and negativity.

Faith is always, finally a self-fulling prophecy.

Faith actually begins to create what it desires. 

Faith always recreates the good world.

With faith, you keep trusting, hoping, believing, and calling forth life from stones, which is exactly what Jesus intimates in the chapter that follows his healing of the blind man (Luke 19:40)

Faith is a matter of having new eyes, seeing everything through and even with the eyes of God.

I think that faith's opposite is fear - all kinds of fears including those he listed (resentment, etc.) Sadly I see so many people who truly want to be spiritual, being religious instead, and so they live with fears and anger toward those who have a different slant on faith. For many, they mistake tribal attachment to a narrow point of view with the glorious experience of faith that leads to a world of goodness.

We can easily know if we are living faith or fear. Jesus gave us the yardstick. What is the fruit (result) of doing this or that? Faith leads to Light and creates goodness for all. Fear leads to darkness and withholding of good for some.

For me, faith is that inner connection that lives with the Holy Presence and knows and knows that it knows that all is well. Straying to the edges of that, faith springs us back to the Core, to the Presence, and to all the Guidance sought. I particularly like Rohr's thought about faith being sight with new eyes, even the eyes of God,

The Christ message was/is heavily tilted to faith that loves all. That is, from the beginning story of the star over the manger which shone to all peoples, including the wise men from the East, to his final teaching to his followers telling them to go into all the nations, all were included. 

It would do us all well to examine our own paths. Are we living faith modeled by Christ, or are we tribal and exclusive? Let's look with new eyes, even seeing with the eyes of God,

I come this day to step into a new life that sees with new eyes. I fearlessly look at my own faith path and release from my life exclusiveness. I open myself to embrace life and see as God sees. Lord fill me with faith and guide me to think, say and do that which brings goodness to all.