Faith can quicken our steps as we stumble along the road

National Catholic Reporter, August 23, 1996 by Tom Brubeck

When the Tlingit Indian sees the red cedar he would use for a totem, he walks up to it and lays a hand on the trunk. Standing in the dappled light of the forest in British Columbia, he speaks quietly to the tree and explains his intentions. He will make a beautiful carving for his family lodge.

The Indian shows humility and respect to the cedar because he has strong beliefs about the sacredness of life. The tree is part of the Great Spirit's creation and part of his own life.

Human beings have been around for 35,000 years. Most of us have "evolved" to the point where we can give almost exclusive attention to the pursuit of money and social status, but human experience has not always been this way. For our ancestors, as for the Northwest woodcarver, spirituality was a central part of life. Today, sandwiched between work, meals, maintenance, errands and the kids' softball practice, there are sometimes a few moments of silence. Ah, those quiet times! During those periods, do our minds sometimes wander to the spiritual?

There is evidence that the daily distractions have not stopped our search for something more fulfilling than Wal-Mart. Among the last words of Jesus was, "I thirst." We, too, thirst. Why do we search for beliefs? Do we seek meaning? Comfort and courage? Repentance and healing? Are we looking for community or strictly for personal salvation? Has it something to do with the banality and boredom of evil? Are we looking for God or for joy -- or are they the same? Perhaps we are decorating our interiors, for life without beliefs might be as dreary as an empty house.

Why and how do we form beliefs? For the moment, never mind what we believe. If we asked 10 persons what they believed, we would have a spicy stew. Even the iconoclast Edward Abbey robustly pronounced that he believed in "blood, fire, women, rivers, eagles, storms, drums, flutes, banjos and broom-tailed horses." Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang said many centuries ago, "It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way that you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action."

We are in a world where there is cause for action. In our parish we are told to remember the poor on the way out of church "by dropping a penny in the poor box." A fine gesture, but this is symbolic of a real-life ratio in heaping our largess on wealthy people while giving a few shiny coppers to poor people. A yin and yang out of balance.

How does this kind of world impinge on our beliefs? We live in a country where our main growth industries are autos, armaments, spying, whiskey, gambling and prisons, where millions live in poverty, and where there is a culture of consumerism that is helping to turn our planet into a dirt clod. If religion is beyond all this, out of context, say, with the 40,000 children who die every day of malnutrition, then religion could be a form of consumerism. It might be greed beyond the grave or a spiritual Darwinism -- salvation of the holiest.

If we can become attuned to our world and to our neighbors, beliefs can be a natural and vital part of life. In medicine, the power of suggestion often becomes belief. A placebo can effect a cure. Our bodies will produce almost any biological response once we give our minds the appropriate suggestion. A wisp of thought can create molecules! Norman Cousins, who used humor as medicine, said that belief creates biology.

Faith is powerful and has a common appeal. As our Catholic catechism points out, throughout history people have given expression to the quest for God through prayer, sacrifices, rituals and meditations, and these expressions are so universal that one may well call humans religious beings.

It is humbling and it could be foolhardy as well for a layman to raise the question of faith. Many persons are threatened by beliefs that differ from theirs, and the heresy watchers are part of every age. There are too many accounts of religious zeal and hypocrisy leading to torture and to war. Virtue can be more fearsome than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the same restraints of conscience.

Several generations ago, E.M. Forster stated flatly, "I do not believe in belief." But Albert Einstein once said, "The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science."

People will believe what they want to believe. The existentialist Ralph Waldo Emerson did not care for imposed ideologies. He left the ministry in order to be a good minister. He felt that people should have the same chance as their forefathers to shape their ideas and beliefs and not be forced to walk lockstep with dogma already fixed by tradition.

Is a "believer" someone who reads scripture and spends much time at prayer? Or is it someone who lives the two basic commandments to love God and love your neighbor? My gut feeling is that sometimes it is all of the above and often it is none of them.

Maybe the keywords are gut feeling. Much of what we believe and feel is beyond language. Beliefs can arise intuitively, slowly, bit by bit -- not like Paul's conversion. When you are not looking, there is grace. One day you might find yourself walking the dusty road with Jesus.