Leaping into Faith, Wrestling with God and Finding Certainty

I will be reposting some old blogs of mine from xanga to here. I do this because these are pieces that either lend more insight into who I am, or I'm fiercely proud of them. Or both. 

July 22, 2008----My personal philosophy

Faith Leaping, God-Wrestling and Certainty-Finding

I was talking with a friend of mine today and I came upon something that is very truthful and I've been giving it more thought throughout the day. 

We often hear that there are circumstances in life where we have to take a leap of faith; I believe, however, when you really think about it that everything we do is a leap of faith. 

When talking with a friend and saying something that might or will probably bring about conflict, we leap; we place our faith in the fact that the friendship can overcome the conflict. When we are small and we go from Pre-K to Kindergarten, we leap; other people tell us that we are capable and ready to move on, but to a certain extent, at least that 1% of ourselves, our internal, unique, independent voice that can't be guaranteed by others, no matter how many times our parents and teachers encourage us, we leap, simply believing that we really are capable of moving on to the next level of schooling. 

No one guarantees us happiness or love or success in life; to think about it, no one even guarantees us that we can be brave enough to know and love ourselves; no one guarantees us that we will live the life we dream of. There is no guarantee that we will ever fulfill our potential or ever come to know, while we are living, the immensity of who we are. But we march on, literally blindly, with only the faith that we can move forward into our lives. We simply believe we can, and so we do. 

Everything we do is a leap of faith, because no matter how much life experience we gain, or how much history we accumulate, or how much encouragement we receive, in the end it is only us, our own core selves that push us into the future. And history and precedent cannot, in any way guarantee anything, let alone something positive about the future, because the future is always different and ever-changing. 

I wrestle with God on a daily basis and sometimes He (or She or They) win and I have to submit to Their will; sometimes I win and I can shout in the face of God and tell Her (or He or They) that I am in control and that they are foolish indulgences of the imagination; that nothing is above me and that I make my own fate. 

But this is what I do know: I know that there is a magnificently good and kind and loving and nurturing and caring divinity, because the basis of faith is believing without seeing, going blind and leaping. And since everything we do in life is leaping, it makes only logical sense, at the least, to me that we should leap and believe the best in life and the best in people and nature, in the future, in the divine and, most of all, ourselves.