'Cause you gotta have faith!

Faith.  That's a very complicated word.  When I was in high school, I was very involved in our church's youth group.  Every year, the 8th graders who were going to be confirmed went on a confirmation retreat.  My senior year, our youth minister asked me to be one of the presenters on the retreat and she gave me the topic of faith.  I had been struggling to come to grips with my own faith, questioning everything I had been taught in my years of Catholic school education.  My youth minister, smart woman that she is, knew this and I told her I didn't think I would be the right person to give this talk to impressionable eighth graders.  She insisted I was the right person for the job.    


So, I thought about what I should say and wrote it down.  I picked a song that spoke to me on the topic, bought a candle from Bath & Body Works (Sun Ripened Raspberry) and gave instructions on how I wanted to make my entrance (I'm a dramatic person - I wanted to make an impressionable entrance!).  I was in a back room, trying to throw together a poster for my talk and waiting for my turn, thinking about what I was going to say, when God smacked me on the head, a la Gibbs (NCIS reference) - I needed to speak from the heart, not the paper.  I was going to wing it.


My youth minister came back and told me they were ready.  I asked her to turn off the lights and to please turn on my song after I sat down.  I walked out with my candle and lighter, sat down, lit the candle and the song began to play, Celine Dion's "Because You Loved me".

I stared at the flame in my hand, listened to the words and when the line "I lost my faith, you gave it back to me" played, tears rolled down my cheeks.  I was crying in front of a bunch of 8th graders.  I heard not one snicker or giggle.  When the song was over, the lights came up, and I began to speak, praying I would say what they needed to hear, and not scar any of them, or say the wrong thing and get into trouble.  I like to think they got it.

Faith is believing in something.  Nobody can tell you what to believe in.  Faith is deeply personal.  You have to discover it for yourself.  I told those kids that I struggled with my faith and that it's not a one and done kind of thing, it is constantly evolving.  I'm still evolving.  My struggle comes with organized religion and what to teach our kids.  I am what is commonly referred to as a "Recovering Catholic".  I won't go into the whys of it all, but being taught that only the Catholic way is the right way just didn't sit right with me once I learned there were more faiths and beliefs than just Catholic.  


My personal faith is in a higher being that I call God, but can go by many names: God, Goddess, Lord, Lady, Allah and the list goes on.  And each higher being's name has significance to the person using it.  My faith is not defined by any one religion's precepts or guidelines.  Faith is a deeply personal concept and I wouldn't expect anyone to believe exactly what I believe.  When it comes to faith or religion, I think it is dangerous not to think for oneself.  To follow one religion's specific decrees without thinking about what they mean, in my opinion, is doing a disservice to oneself and the religion.  For those who struggle with faith, I would encourage them to pray, meditate, think, whatever word you want to use for being introspective, and discover for themselves, with their higher being, what their own faith is. Not what some person told them to believe.

By the way, I didn't get into trouble. And that youth minister: one of the greatest, and faith filled people you will ever meet.  Period.  :o)