Day 26: Sames

The obvious next step, then, is to consider synonyms for hope.  A few of the entries in the thesaurus are confidence, expectation, optimism, anticipation, courage, faith, chance, desire, aspiration, dream, wish, trust, yearn, and long. 

For whatever reason, the one that I hang on to is faith.  Faith seems a close neighbor to hope that fits me better.  Faith holds a longer view of the arc. It hangs less upon my particular will.  To me, faith is a fundamental knowing that the Big Love that underpins this whole thing does, indeed, underpin it. 

Faith reminds me that Big Love has this and that it is well, even if all evidence is to the contrary and I have crumbled.  Hope seems flimsy when I crumble, driven to a specific desire or particular outcome.  Hope has a way it thinks this should go.  Hope is more about me. Faith is more about something much, much bigger.  Faith is enough to hold me up even when it lets me down. It is one small layer in from the Big Love that breaths through all of it and all of us.

My definition of faith has changed over the last few years.  I used to have faith in people or in institutions (like the church or marriage).  I don’t so much anymore.  Faith is deeper than those things.  Faith can shine through those things, but faith also keeps going when those things let you down.  I suspect there are lots of people who use hope to mean the same thing as how I describe faith, but to me, they are different.

If faith, hope, and love abide (and I do love a thing that abides), I choose faith.  I choose abiding faith because it feels deeper and more true than abiding hope.  I choose faith because it grounds me in and points me to the abiding love upon which we all stand.  And I choose faith because it reminds me that, while human love is a choice, this abiding love, this Big Love that moves through all creation … this is not something you choose.  It simply is, whether you notice it or not.