Mystery – Faith

Faith Is Trust – Recall your childhood – the people you loved and trusted and the people you were scared of and nervous about. You were developing your “gut instinct.” Who were the friends that stayed with you in the face of adversity and the ones who dropped away? Trust is the magic lubricant that soothes and heals life’s inevitable bumps and scrapes. People trust those you can have faith in, people who offer something else – status, belonging, self-serving rationales – disappoint us. Faith gets stronger the more it is proved. We hope for a good day, but we have faith that the sun will come up.

Warriors Are Trustworthy – We all love a good mystery, and warriors are expert at solving puzzles. But sometimes the mysteries of life are deliberate confusions to keep us confused. Why can’t our politicians ever inaugurate the policies that are the reason we elected them in the first place? They try to convince us that “secret cabals” and “unknown enemies” are at fault. They want us angry and befuddled so we won’t place the blame where it belongs and demand accountability. Secrecy serves the purposes of darkness. Warriors defend transparency. Warriors demand accountability. Outline your beliefs and stand up for them.

No Hope Without Faith – We are continually upgrading the level of mystery in our lives. We solve the puzzles that mystified us as children and keep solving until we come to the puzzles no one can solve. But we keep trying! The limits and un-limits of physics and space are constantly being mapped. We cannot be content with a label “here be dragons” placed across the unknown. We no longer believe God resents and punishes exploration, science and development. Insoluble mysteries often resolve around motivation. The ultimate question is: why do we make ourselves miserable? Artists teach us that these questions can be “solved” by posing them differently. Depth psychologists tell us that the shallow reasoning of our surface mind is far less important than the deep memories and drives we can uncover through emotional and analytic spelunking. Warriors love mysteries. Warriors develop and deepen faith. Warriors know there is a reason to never give up.

Models – “Faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong.”

– 1 Corinthians 16:13

“Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there till some light returns” – Anne LaMott

“If we fight with faith, we are twice armed” – Plato

#Haiku: Mystery

Can’t
“Get to the bottom of”
World, thought, faith, time or Love; it’s
Bottom-
Less