This is certainly an intriguing thread, and these are some the random thoughts I've been having because of it…(It's kind of long, forgive me...I wrote more when the website went down again!)

I need to begin with a brief story. I met a man while running a guesthouse in Greece, and during our conversation, we began talking about life in general, and our hopes, and dreams. I said that I was pretty disgusted with how humanity was still choosing to behave, and if I had my druthers, I'd wipe the species off the planet and give it back to all the other creatures, who seemed to be able to live here without purposely or otherwise, systematically destroying the very planet that gave them sustenance.
As I was speaking, I watched him growing more and more agitated, until he fairly exploded with anger at me. And as he ranted on about, well I'm not sure, but it was pretty much how wrong I was to want to give up on my species, I suddenly felt a light bulb flicker on, and I turned to him, kind of politely interrupting, to ask if he had any children. He stopped, and with a face reddened from his efforts to tell me why it was important to keep faith with humanity, he slowly nodded his head, and whispered, "Yes, I have two children."
At which point I knew what was going on here. Without realising it, I had shaken the very foundations of this man's faith. How could he hear me talking so calmly about wanting to eliminate my species when he had taken on the responsibility of procreating and raising two humans that represented the next generation?

To me, faith and hope are inextricably combined. To live in our world and not be able to visualise or comprehend a better way to live and love would be so devastating to our very thought patterns that I wonder if we are actually capable of it.

And here is where I find myself stuck. On many levels, I don't have faith in anything or anyone. I don't know why I was created along with the world I live on, or the stars and galaxies I will most likely and sadly never visit. This does not scare me, nor make me feel I am less connected to the whole thing. But it's a mystery for which I have no explanation, nor need one. I simply love the mystery.

Therein lies the rub, I think. People are rarely comfortable with unanswered questions. Our curiosity often matches our fears, and both feel more balanced once we can find a structure within which to build our walls of thought. The belief systems vary in as many ways as there are groups and individuals to conceive them.

One hears that phrase "having one's faith shaken" and behind that lies why I don't seem to have the need to have to imagine anything intangible about this thing we call life (and for that matter, death.) If one does not have faith, then one's faith is never going to be shaken.

It does fascinate me that as a species we seem to need faith, as much as we need to take in oxygen, but I don't know if I'll ever understand why it is necessary, except that both belief and faith have allowed much that is creative…and much that is destructive to be realized.

Faith seems to help the brain heal the body. But there are some beliefs that encompass a faith that seems to be powerful enough to actually harm the body. Faith seems to let people sleep easier because there is something or someone watching over them, and providing either a source of constant unwavering love, and/or constant, unwavering energy to keep us whole and functioning well. But the fear of losing one's faith can keep people awake and in sorrow. Faith also allows people to give up a smaller sense of themselves for a greater belonging to a stronger, more encompassing and protective power.

It seem to me that faith needs some kind of inner communication, a language to explain itself, rather than just the acceptance that we have a brain and body, and while we are alive, we are responsible for what that brain and body produces. But as I said towards the beginning of this far-too lengthy posting, maybe we can't help ourselves. Maybe the higher function of our brains demands that we use the thought process to create a faith, just as our bodies are built to procreate our species.

I've spent a goodly portion of my life in the study of "us", and we are a complicated crew. We are driven by our physiology and our emotions, and our ability to reason and question. We have developed wants, no longer necessarily based on needs, and we have shown ourselves to be capable of change to a certain extent, but our evolutionary process hasn't really developed for millennia.

We will pick and choose all those things tangible and intangible that make us feel saf(er), and within the complexity of that safety net, we will live and die. Our choices are legion, and for that, we will rely on our shared parts of our "reality tunnels" to communicate them to others. Our hopes and beliefs, and our faith, however it manifests itself will be our ultimate salvation or destruction.

For me, I say….let's sing and dance and love where we can…because we can…xx..e

(PS- I was not brought up in a religious household, and so for me, it was not a part of my living structure. I'd have to say that my parents had a belief system based more on political theory and practice than anything else. They were intensely moral, tolerant, dedicated, and supportive people, but in my mother's case especially, there was a definite distrust, bordering on dislike, for any organised religions. (This was not due to intolerance for religion, per se, but what she felt it was responsible for…think "opiate of the masses".) She did her best not to impose this on me, but I can remember finding it almost impossible to say the pledge of allegiance at school, without "blipping" over the word "god". So it's useful to me to always remember how much our parents influence us towards our later thought structures, whether to confirm them or to push violently away from.)


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"Confidence, reliance, trust"… Words used to describe Faith.

In the story of Pandora, (who was created by Prometheus, later to be punished for giving fire to humanity) Pandora is tempted to open a box, containing all the ills of the world. They all flew out, except Hope, which she managed to save inside the box, and therefore preserving hope for humanity. One wonders at the irony of that particular aspect of humanity being in such rough company in the first place.
Hope. In Hope we trust. We hope that things will get better. We hope that lives will improve. We hope that our children will grow up healthy and full of love. We hope for ourselves and for our world.
And in that hope, in its manifestation through a God or Creator, or All That Is, we place our Faith.

But is it possible that hope, or faith, can also be a way that stops us from taking responsibility for our actions? We say we have faith in our love of our friends, and in our belief that the sun will rise each day…The former is based on our confidence in our own emotional commitments, and the later on our confidence in the science of the Universe as we know it.
Both of these kinds of faith reside in our brains, in our conscious ability to think and rationalise and feel.
If we were any other forms of fauna or flora, we might not be able to conceive of the idea of faith, much less make use of it.
Is faith only a human trait? If we weren't in the picture, would the whole idea of a Creation fall apart? Is the fact of our faith reliant on the fact of our being?
Must we have a concept of faith? Is it part of our human survival technique?

There is a part of me that has searched for this faith; in religions, philosophies, science, you name it, I've looked for it. And there have been times when I think I've got a handle on it. I can almost believe in something so completely, without needing proof or anything tangible, other than my own mind telling me that it is real and important, and can be relied on.

   This is what my mind tells me…

I have faith in love as a powerful, healing force
But then I also have faith that there is power in the opposite of love, which can be equally as destructive.

I have faith that the human mind is capable of being much more creative than it presently is. I do not have faith that it will be developed in time to save our species from self-destruction.

I have great faith in the ability of the Universe to survive without our species.

That's it. But I have hope and wishes…

My hope is that we as a species will waken to what we have, and what we are responsible for, and…

I hope we will find a way to overcome our fears and our greed in time to save ourselves and our planet…

I wish I was more optimistic, but I would rather live without a hope that blinds me or a faith that allows me to procrastinate because I am not taking the full responsibility of my actions each moment of each day.

If faith is a bulwark against the hard stuff, then perhaps we would work harder without it to fall back on. But perhaps that's not possible. Perhaps we need to believe, and to hope, to have confidence and reliance and trust, because those concepts in themselves hold a power from which to draw the strength to keep trying…slowly and hesitantly, as it might often seem to be.
Fini, and Pax..xx..e