Faith

Faith is a really interesting thing.

You can't really think about faith the way you can think about life, truth, love or any of the other metaphysical qualities that comprise spiritual thinking.

Nor can faith be talked about successfully.  

Faith's largely invisible, but we see it on exhibit everyday.

To eat in a restaurant is an act of faith, as is driving your car along a public street or taking the golf club away during the first part of your backswing. 

People talk about 'bad faith', but as far as I can see 'bad faith' simply can't exist; there can only be good faith or faithlessness.

That he was a "man of faith", that she was a "woman of faith" is often said out loud at funeral's by those delivering the eulogy.

We all know that Emily Dickinson wrote "hope is the thing with feathers" but how many of us know that her poem continues with the words "that perches in the soul" and then continues  even beyond that?

Hope's different from faith in the way the slogan "Yes We Can" is different from the slogan "Yes I Can't", a slogan I saw posted on the wall earlier this summer in a small family restaurant near Sorrento, Italy. Hope is much more collective, faith is completely singular.

Yesterday I watched a hanglider take off from Fort Funston in San Francisco. He sort of wobbled as he walked to the edge of the cliff--enough to make me wonder if he knew what he was doing--then leaped over the cliff edge, disappeared for a moment or two, and the next thing I knew he was flying like he was doing god's work.