After many years of catholic school I have since been a cynic on religion and all of its manifested glory. I just couldn’t believe there was this divine being who demanded the extreme retribution we were forced to ingest as scholars. I didn’t then and I quite frankly don’t now. I felt it was impossible to believe there was this one and only “almighty one” who was something to be revered. Did that mean I would have to live in fear and abide by the governing laws of retribution and thus the commandments dictating my life and defining my behaviors. Well if that was the case I was surely in for quite an upsetting journey.

Interestingly, I never was taught that those rules could have been defined as anything other than the governing rules and commandments from which to live by, or that those laws were only “said” interpretations of conversations and interactions between Jesus and his disciples. I remember sitting in Mr. Seaman’s class, (yes, can you believe this man had the balls to try and teach religion in a high school with the name Seaman? You can imagine the horrible yet apropos high school banter…) but sitting in his class, I felt this frustration about what I was being asked to hold in reverence, that this vast history was implemented and regarded as truth, when essentially it was an interpretation. It had been twisted and manipulated to generate this fear that would create an unwavering faith and dependence on something other than one’s self. It was then that I realized: faith was not something that you were told, it was not tangible and it was especially not a reaction from fear. It was and is the essence of what we need it to be at any given moment. There had to be something much more substantial in finding peace in the unknown definitive explanations that were generated to shepard the masses.

There have been all sorts of instances where I have needed and wanted faith, only to have it elude me in those important moments. But I have also found faith in all forms, the loving gaze of a fluffy supermodel of a dog that graced my life for so long, in the letter of a friend who needed to know that life was worth it, in the words of a Maya Angelou poem, in the expression of a loved one, in the presence of someone whose life was coming to an end. Faith has one and only one condition, that it is unconditional. We have the choice to make it what we need it to be. We don’t have to adhere to strict limitations imposed socially, we are able to create it as it is, vast and unwavering, complex and substantial.