Faith: we find ourselves believing



I shall not understand unless I believe.

Anselm


The Masai people of Africa, speaking to Vincent Donovan said “to have faith is to be sought out by God. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end the lion is God”.

Think about times, when in hindsight, you have a sense of “being carried”, of finding and living out of hitherto unrecognized resources.
It is not performance: it is encounter.

Believing then becomes consenting to, hearing and obeying a creative command that raises us from the dead.

And what can be a deeper motive for faith?

Seeing faith in those terms can allow us to get in touch with our history of faith. This is an opportunity to become sensitive to and aware of the movements deep within us of a longing for life, a sense of our dignity and worthwhileness, our reaching out to another.

Faith is something deeper  and initially less definite than belief or belonging. It involves an attitude, a disposition, a range of imagination, a zone of meaning received, prior to all formulation and expression in language.

Michael Paul Gallagher

It is as if everything in our culture, even in our Church, conspires against us.

Our imaginative life is impoverished, the contemplative way of being open is devalued.

Formal Church life too often fails to touch our fundamental human longing, or arouse our imagination.
When do you feel moved, alive, in touch?

Where are the places which offer connection, depth or relation?

Where are you met – where do you feel enlarged, extended, challenged?

What touches you with immediacy, intensity, intimacy?

Not knowing is the mark of faith

Meister Eckhart




De noche iremos, de noche
Que para encontrar la fuente
Sólo la sed nos alumbra
Sólo la sed nos alumbra.
At night we will go, at night
To find the source
Only thirst enlightens us
Only thirst enlightens us.

For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation click on the link below.

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