Sometimes I see religion as being a vehicle of faith, where faith is not possible in other things.

Tonight for example I am finding it hard to have faith either in myself or humanity, in the lessons of the past or the possibilities of the future.

The flipside to faith is despair.

You can't move forward when you feel depair.

You need faith in something, whether it's your job, money, your family, the innate goodness of people or God.

I make mistakes, people make mistakes, and material things crumble away. It is difficult for me to have an enduring faith in such things.

When I am in such a state, I look to all possibilities to regain my feeling of faith.

When my despair has reached irreversible levels, I have been known to start praying in my own way to God.

I usually do this silently, but form articulate clear thoughts and sentences in my head.

I ask the room "Are you there, do you exist, please show yourself, because if there is a time that I need you it's now." Sometimes I cry.

Funnily, I usually feel better afterwards. Whether there is a logical psychiatric reason for this or not I don't know. Maybe it's just that in crying I heal myself.

Whatever it is, (and I am not religious - I can count the number of times I have done it on one hand) it gets me through the hardest times. The times when I feel alone and full of desperation.

I then return to my "up" life, and pretend it never happened, and my faith in myself is retored, my faith in the future is restored etc.

When Mahatma Ghandi talks about light, life and truth persisting, I think this is what he is talking about. Somehow, the candle is kept alight.

Somehow, it is allowed to develop back into a flame.

I still don't know if God exists, or what he/she/it is.

I do know though, and I cannot lie about it any more, that it is when I have thought about him/her/it that my faith has been restored in a way that nothing else has ever been able to match.

What keeps your candle lit? what reaffirms your faith when you FEEL like you have nowhere to turn.

I would like to know.

lox