Faith Winter 2003

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving
and impossible
slither of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon. slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

(David Whyte)

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I want to write about faith. I want to write about that quality of heart, mind and soul that is open to the ‘more’ of what is possible; to the “more” of who I am and who I might become as a human-being in love with the world. I want to write about this time of year, the darkest time of the year when the sun is obscured by cloud and rain, when the earth herself conspires to obstruct the sun’s warmth from penetrating my frozen land and heart.

I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow, night after night. I want to write about this time of the world, this time of history when faith shrinks in the grip of a looming shadow. Hatred, revenge, despair is on the ascendancy. War, genocide and geocide bring the planet and the human race to survival’s brink.

I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow, night after night, faithful even as it fades from fullness, slowly becoming that last curving and impossible slither of light before the final darkness. I want to write about faith as I look into the terror of a final darkness. I no longer know on what or whom I call for help. Do I call to Jesus, to Christ? Do I call to God, to the intelligent force that brought the universe into being? Do I call on the wind, the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars? Do I call on the light? Or do I call on the darkness itself, the unknowing, faltering cry of my own heart? There is only the calling, the crying out. The object of my longing recedes, a transitory mist evaporating against an open horizon: all that space; all that open, open space.

But I have no faith myself. I refuse it the smallest entry. Instead I attempt to secure myself. I can feel the way my walls are built. Beginning in fear I attempt to secure my borders and nurture an ideal of self-sufficiency, or isolation, or control. Within my gates idols are carved by my hand, by the hands of family, tribe, country, religion, ideology. I sever myself from the whole. This severing could be called sin. This rending away from the web of the real could be called delusion. This sundering of my radical inter-connectedness could be called samsara. It could be called faithlessness.

Philosopher and theologian, Raimon Panikkar describes faith as existential openness towards transcendence, or if this seems too loaded, more simply as “existential openness”. He says that the experience of faith is primal for the human being. It is constitutive of what it means to be human. It is not to be identified with belief. I can wall myself off with my beliefs. I can make of my religion an exclusive claim to truth. I can make of my ideology an absolute right to rule. I can war and kill and do violence in defense of my beliefs. And in the process I can refuse faith the smallest entry.

From time immemorial, during this darkest time of the year, the winter solstice, human beings have celebrated the promise and the presence of the Light, even in its hiddeness. They have proclaimed that in the midst of darkness a light shines forth. And if we could free ourselves from the tyranny of the literal and open ourselves to the power of symbol and the truth of myth, we might find the possibilities of a new way of being human dawning this very day in the birth of a divine child; revealing divinity in the very depths of our human nature, reverberating through our entire cosmic body.

It seems to me imperative that, in faith, we open to the possibility that we humans can change. Yes, war and violence and bloodletting have marked our path for millennia. And almost every war can trace its roots to religious belief and moral justification. It seems we have made little progress in quelling our human desire for power, domination and revenge. And for the non-combatants of the world we appear to be in an accelerated regression. For example, in World War I 90% of those killed were military; in World War II, 50%; and in Viet Nam, only 10% (90 % of those killed were civilians). One can only imagine what the outcome of the present war in Iraq will be on the civilian population.

It is clear that we must change. As Panikkar asserts nothing short of a radical “metanoia”, a complete turning of mind, heart and spirit will meet today’s needs. As Thomas Berry says we must reinvent the human. If we want to survive, if we want to leave a habitable planet for the generations to come, we must turn in faith toward that open horizon of possibility where we can envision ourselves living in peace and harmony, with freedom and justice across every culture and religion, for every creature and person.

In David Whyte’s poem, the moon rises against an open horizon by which the moon itself becomes intelligible. The snow-covered landscape is illumined by its light through the graciousness of the unseen, which lies beyond appearance. And then there is that moment when that last curving and impossible light is itself absorbed into the darkness. This is the moment in which I find myself, at this time in my life, at this time in our world. The light no longer appears, nor the objects illumined by the light. I am left looking into all that open, open space. I am left with my bare awareness, my naked longing, and the infinite possibilities of the new, the more, inherent in the spaciousness before me. Let this then, my small poem, like a new moon, slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

Sources and Recommended Reading:

Where Many Rivers Meet, poems by David Whyte, Many Rivers Press, 1990;
Cultural Disarmament, The Way To Peace, by Raimon Panikkar, Westminister John Knox Press, 1995;
A Dwelling Place For Wisdom, by Raimon Panikkar, Westminster John Knox Press, 1993;
The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness, by Raimon Panikkar, Orbis books, 1993; Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics, by R Panikkar, Paulist Press, 1979

©Diane Pendola, Winter 2003. You are welcome to print or make a copy in electronic form for personal use or sharing with interested persons as long as the copyright notice is not removed or altered. Please do not print it in any other publication, or sell it, by itself or as part of another work, without express written permission of the author.

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