Credo Week, day four: What is my faith?

What do I trust?

What experiences have taught me to trust?

Where do I look for strength and encouragement?

How do I celebrate my life and experiences?

What do I trust in that does not require explanation?

What has earned my unconditional trust and faith? Why?

I trust in the power of love for one another. I trust in strength of passions that drive us to become more authentic selves. I trust that the Universe wants me to succeed and has provided me with options to do so. I trust in my ability to listen to these things. I trust that this moment, as with the last, shall pass and make room for the next moment. Nature has a way of doing things. It may take longer than I want it to, but it works out in the end the way that it should. Childbirth is a perfect example of this. It hurts. It takes a long time, and your body does things you never thought it could, would, or should. But in the end, the nature of your body has produced a tiny human being and seen its passage into this world. I think all of life is like this. If I can only take the time to stop long enough to feel the natural passage from this step to the next, I will see what is meant to be. Or maybe I won't, but I will feel nature there at work. I trust in this process because when I quit believing in it, it was still there. Life was still happening all around me. Plants and animals and people, still living, breathing, loving. Still there.

Strength and encouragement is all around me. I can find it when I am looking, and sometimes, even when I'm not. Because it is in the nature of the Universe, and in the nature of people, to care for one another. I go to the mountains, or to the beach to sit and listen to the quiet drum of the earth that consoles me and strengthens me when I am down. I can watch the waves roll in and out and am reminded that life is like this. A wave rolls in, and I am close to divinity, it rolls out, and divinity is pulling me to where I might be meant to go. I trust in this guidance. And I trust in my ability to choose which way to turn. I trust in the ability to hear the divine through the people in my life. Wisdom can be found in the most wondrous, unexepected places. My daughter can find it in a slug making it's way across the sidewalk. I strive to be able to do this as well. When I listen to the words and experiences of others, I am strengthened in my belief in the potential of us all. When I trust their intentions and support, I am strengthened in my belief in myself.

I celebrate my life and experiences with my community. With my circle of loved ones. With my friends, family, my church. It is in sharing our joys with each other that I am reinvested in my faith. My faith in people, and my faith in nature. I celebrate out in the open, and I celebrate quietly inside of myself too. Even my failures are worth celebrating as long as they have jarred my consciousness enough to make me think in a new way about what I have failed.

I have unconditional trust and faith in the human experience. It is all that I can trust in sometimes. Life may be going in a direction that is not in my favor, but it is still an experience. My human-ness is the lens through which I experience it all, it is a foundation for my reception of and reaction to it all. All of life will be my human experience, whether I embrace it or not. I have unconditional trust and faith in my ability to choose. I have the power to view this all as an adventure, to let love in, to laugh and to learn. Just as I have the choice to hunker down and put my blinders on, as if this shall pass over like a terrible storm. And I have unconditional trust and faith in the experience of love. My faith is love. It is my experience of the divine. It is my expression of the divine. We nurture and care and support because of love. We defend and fight because of love. We learn and grow and move because of love. We accept, serve, give and receive because of love. Because of life.