My own personal faith has been captured in a fading photograph propped now beside my computer as I write. It is not my entire faith – for my entire faith has evolved to include numerous other characters – but it is a relic from my faith that encapsulates the connection between my body and soul, a piece of the story of my past that gives meaning to my future. For anybody else, it is just a picture of any middle-aged woman squeezing any toe-headed toddler. Sitting at a kitchen table that could exist anywhere, wearing a smile, she looks directly into the camera as the small boy, who really could be any small boy, anxiously eyes some invisible toy just beyond his reach outside of the picture, resisting her embrace. In the background, upon closer look, a mug sits on the counter from the original Star Wars movie, perhaps the best detail for dating the picture. This picture, though, is not just of any woman, and not just of any small boy – not for me; for me, it is a relic of my faith and today, a whole Star Wars universe later, that same little boy has grown into a man with children of his own and is comforted by a moment lost to memory but remembered by a picture, a moment that is the foundation of the love he shares with his own children. The picture is a story. And it is a story passed from a previous generation intended to be inherited by the next. Its meaning does not lie in the physical presence of its two characters but instead in the sentiment pouring from the picture, its emotion – it stands for something far greater than a mere paper photograph. It’s greater even than the moment in my distant past it captures. The photograph represents a relationship, a love between its two characters. And no picture, no words, can ever fully describe its impact. It represents my faith because it contributes to my story. It reveals my past, and directs my future. It is my story. And faith is entirely caught up in story, caught up in memory, in connecting past to future and body to soul. People need story.
Throughout all history, people have held dearly to stories that satisfy an innate need for faith, stories that, by giving shape to the past, give meaning to the future. The thread of faith sews the fabric of the human soul to its physical body, in the same way that it ties together the present with the past. Story justifies belief. Faith wraps emotion into reason, even in the most extreme circumstances. Without some version of this faith, the body and soul cannot know one another, for the soul must believe in the body just as the body must believe in the soul, and in the absence of the other, both deteriorate. The body without its soul stands naked and subject to the elements of a brutal animal world, just as the soul lies formlessly without the body to give it shape. Faith is the binding force that gives the soul reason to inhabit the body. And without faith, the soul becomes disconnected from the body.
Humans must have a story in which they believe, that guides their understanding of a world otherwise un-understandable. Everybody wraps their life with story; it is a characteristic of being human. The stories each clings to, the connections they make, provide meaning, even if constructed meaning, to a merciless and otherwise unforgiving universe. The range of faiths held by humans is prolific, but no matter what the shape, human faiths exist merely as artificial constructs. They are only stories; their truth is arbitrary. While changing environments sometimes alienate belief from plausibility and breakdown faith, significantly more often, as long as the story of the past still connects to the future, it matters not if what one believes is true or not, for truth is merely an another artificial construct, one defined itself entirely by faith. Faith is rooted in story.
For many, faith stems from a religious code; for others, faith exists within an socio-economic system that offers hope for the future – from the extremes of capitalism, with its promise of the American dream, to the opposite extremes of communism, that offered class equality. Others find their faith from the social groupings in which they participate – from broad nationalisms to small cliques of close friends sharing common experiences. For many, faith lies simultaneously in multiple stories – believing in a combination of such narratives. Regardless, though, of its shape and complexity, story permeates all of this.
For me personally, faith exists most strongly within the connections I have made through family, the stories I share with them. Faith stems not from any religious belief or zealous patriotism. It exists instead in a picture of a woman who left me such a short time ago, and a little boy turned man who must live now without her. It exists in my own family that yet remains, in my wife and daughters. And it will be passed on to the next generations. It exists in my relationships with friends that have proven to me that world is filled with good people, people filled with love and passion, people who have proven that Earth’s indeed still the right place for love.
The picture mentioned earlier is of my beloved Aunt Marva – she died earlier this year on April fourteenth, and she is missed dearly. She filled the role of grandmother for me, for none of my biological grandparents were living by the time I was born. But she taught me how to love in their place. She taught me how to love blindly, to love even when you cannot understand. It can be seen in the smile on her face in the photograph, felt in the embrace; remembered today through echoes from the past. And it guides me in living my own life. It teaches me how to smile at the camera when I hold my own baby girls; it teaches how to hug them, how to hold them tight even when they wiggle. It reminds of a promise for the future, and gives my soul reason to remain. It is a piece of my story. It gives me faith.
