Faith

I was having a discussion with a friend who is preparing to exit the IC. I was trying to explain where I am on this crazy spiritual journey and he said that it sounds like I am discounting anything that requires faith. He is right, depending on how you define "faith".

I came across this interesting site called Live Real that gives lots of definitions. If you think you do, or don't have "faith" I encourage you to read all the descriptions on the site. I'll throw a few out there that I thought were interesting:

It is "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence for things unseen."

It is another way of saying that you have no proof.

It is an act of imagining the way we wish things actually were, and stubbornly insisting that it is that way, regardless of any amount of evidence to the contrary.

It is the effort to try to make yourself believe in something you really don't.

It is a concept of something that people resort to when they suffer or get themselves into trouble.

Whatever it is, if you have it, you'll be OK; and if you don't have it, you're in for a lot of pain and suffering.

An emotional state of conviction manufactured by emotional speakers at lectures, rallies, revivals, and crusades; in other words, it is the result of a successful sales pitch from a charismatic figure.

Ambrose Bierce: "Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

It is a polite way of saying "Please shut up, and stop asking me questions I don't have the answers to."

It is a deep inner state of being which gives one a profound and unshakable trust in life.

H. L. Mencken: "An illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."

A state of confidence which tends to be shattered by inevitable tragedies.

A weapon of defense against not-knowing; also a philosophical trump-card one pulls as a means of telling folks who are asking difficult, complex, or disturbing questions to basically shut up.

Something called up when faced with a question or situation that one does not understand or cannot solve, which in normal circumstances, enables one to easily rationalize one's failing to put forth any effort to understand, or even attempt to understand even the problem, much less the solution, and so enabling one to relax into a comfortable security of believing that high-ranking spiritual figures are on your side in doing so.

It is an word that describes a process of insisting that you believe in a statement, phrase, or position, and refusing under any conditions to consider, question, or doubt anything contrary to it.

Another word for "inner strength."

An intuition that there is an Answer to The Problem of Life.

Something that is preserved through avoiding, dodging, and hiding from doubting, thinking, and objective analysis.

Something that is arrived at after an intense period of doubting, thinking, and objective analysis.

"I discovered later, and I am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in lifes' duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God. Taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer