Faith

I am standing at my niece's Tori’s baptism in Houston Texas. Somewhere nearby is Aidan and Yang. Aidan is maybe a year old so this is 2003. No Lydia yet. No Elisa. No Beijing Allios. My mom is standing next to me. She whispers into my ear that I could take Aidan up for a little dip; to be baptized. I politely decline, not reveling myself, caught in between being respectful to my mom and being respectful to myself. Her faith is strong and mine goes unstated. So, with my Mom’s remaining days dwindling,  I thought I would use this letter to state my faith after all. And the message I want you kids to understand.

Faith is about belief. Belief in something that you cannot fully understand but you surrender yourself to. For some, a higher power in a generic fashion. For others, a more specific god or cosmic balance. Faith is not a religion. Religion is an organization that supports a faith, sometimes no all together worthy of the faithful. My mom has both faith and religion. She wants her children to have both and at a minimum faith.

I believe in humility. I believe in love. I believe in people. That between the bug and the windshield on most days you are the bug. A bug that can easily be crushed by the windshield. And there will be days when you feel crushed. At that time you may turn to religion or faith. I turn to humility. That the next windshield may crush me yet again, that I am not that special, and that we are all in this together. That the way to get through life is with love in your heart. Especially on the days when you are the windshield.

On another occasion, I forget exactly when, but it was early in my marriage to your Mom when my Mom hinted that I could get my first marriage annulled. Which is interesting on a couple of points (besides the fact that I was married before). What was interesting about that is an annulment would have freed me in the eyes of the church to marry your mom. But to me it would meant invalidating my first marriage which I could not do, it was a real marriage despite the ending. The second interesting point and the crux of the message today is that for my first marriage I was married by a priest and a rabbi. A priest to represent my family and a rabbi to represent Mimi’s. Why did I do that? Because I had faith? No, because I was trying to please my parents and my family.

So the lesson here is choose your faith. I will support you in what you choose. Within boundaries of course (if you choose to believe in a mind altering drug as your faith I will remind you that addiction is not a faith). If you want to know about the Christian god and the Catholic religion, I will certainly help you. For other faiths, I will be a curious observer of your journey. 

Your faith can be as specific or unspecific as you like. I only ask that it comes from your heart and is chosen by you. Separate your faith from the organizations that support it. If you want to join an organization to support your faith, by all means to do, but do not select a faith because of the organization.

What if you choose not to believe in anything? As David Foster Wallace said in this commencement address, you do believe in something. Be it your iPad, money, fame, looks. Believing in nothing is believing in vanity. So choose to believe in something. Call it your values if that helps. Choose to believe that there is indeed something bigger going on around you, even if that bigger thing is just the rest of us.