Faith In The Hand Or The Heart
Faith In The Hand Or The Heart
This week, March 28th 2021-to-April 3rd 2021, marks the beginning of several holy days and celebrations in a number of religions/faiths and it got me thinking about that.
I use figures of faith, deities, and religion in my writing with some regularity, it’s kind of par for the course if you’re writing Fantasy of any stripe, and part of me wonders if it is reflective of my faith or apart from it?
Of course one can only be so distant from their work before it becomes cold and lifeless but anyone who’s written villains understands you need not feel as a character feels to present them in a compelling way.
Across the world all this week and many times a year people will bend knee or lift their eyes to the sky and proclaim their devotion to … well to what? A history, an idea, a person?
What is it to have faith? When you have faith in your friend you don’t really have faith in them, right? Not them as a noun (person place or thing) but in them as a verb, as an action as a process.
“My partner won’t cheat on me.”
You have faith in your partner’s morality, on the actions they will take.
I feel faith in anything else is much the same. Be it your country, family, political party, coven, denomination, tradition, etc. Even a faith in your traditions is really faith that perpetuating those traditions into the future that acting them in the future is the right cause, yes?
“So why the ramble Wallace?”
The action is important not the ritual. Bending knee to your faith and not carrying it is as empty as promising not to cheat and sleeping with someone else.
We are not the rituals we perform but the actions those rituals make of us. Good or ill, right or wrong it’s what we bring into the world about us that defines us, defines our faith and defines what faith in us is.
So what is faith in you my friend? A shoulder to cry on? A warm hug in the late night? A ride home for the lost? Chastity when lust would be more fulfilling? Feeding the homeless? Sheltering the weak?
I do not know, nor am I here to judge. I am a flawed entity myself I have much to work on and I speak these things into the universe as much for your benefit as my own.
Make of yourself the kind of person worthy of having faith IN. And all else will follow.
Till next time. Thank you and God bless;
~S. Wallace