Belief and faith are strange companions. They can overlap, disappear and then reemerge fully developed and loaded for bear. Or illness or loss or anything in that array of scary life moments even the unbelievers pray not to have...
It's tricky territory, this land of belief. Of faith. Towards the end of the race, when the finish line is within sight, suddenly the only sucker's game is second guessing another man's vision board.
When children have imaginary friends, it is considered charming. But when we are grown, all bets are off...
Pursed lips of condescension meet big eyed claims that, "God is good." Yet, I've wondered where I fall on that faith chart. Cherry-picking is dangerous in the world of Higher Powers. I refuse to believe any Parent could torture a child, no matter how egregious the crime. That's not to say a price isn't paid. Like I said - tricky territory. (I have a technical explanation that makes perfect sense to me. But, in the end, it is just another one of seven billion opinions on earth.)
My introduction to my faith - via an actual meeting - happened when I was five, and the memories of that experience have lasted more than a half century. I can even recall my mother's expression when I told her of this supernatural conversation - one that happened while I was in day care. I saw her lean, inwardly but almost literally, to accommodate what her oldest child believed. I didn't say she went with me. But she definitely knew what transpired.
Now? All these years later? I still have perhaps an invisible Friend, but certainly not imaginary: If the measure of proof is found in comfort, then I am asking to be plied more of it, more of this thing called faith...
From hope, which can exist openly without danger of intellectual reprisal, to faith itself, is a quantum distance, though. Might as well be Icarus. Hecklers happen from hope to faith. Get earplugs for that jump. Your own heart pounding will be loud enough. You'll be called a wishful thinker at best, a fool at worst.
But when we are threatened with loss, big or little, it is easy to go wild with wanting.
Some things about which we are most certain are best kept to ourselves. Unless you are one of the people who actually pushed through that veil only to return, and even then, it is pure speculation. That's why it's called "near" death, not actual. Unless you've seen that Great Beyond - or up its skirt - you cannot know how sweet the promise.
The temporal lobe of the human brain can be stimulated to imply out of body existence.
It's all done with mirrors.
They'll say these things. And more.
That thing that tells me we don't die, but that we, instead, shift to a less dense plane feels good to know no matter how often or thoroughly I forget.
Because on that plane where time is static, if a factor at all, where the scramble to survive, to outlive, to achieve, attain and, even perchance, is where we finally escape the grief to which we are all heir.
We want a lot. And the hardest thing is to want what's here.
To those who fear, who ache, who mourn, time is the only messenger. To those who have figured out how to make it collapse into only this sacred moment? We pray that becomes contagious. Like the man said. "You got one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're just pissin' on today."
And yes, I'm writing about this in the face of something big.
And betting, despite the opaque nature of that reason, the people who understand read between the lines. Or at least look behind the mirror.
My thanks for doing just that.
