Beyond wrangling and rhetoric
Refutation and debate
Or postures of certitude and confident belief
Faith is an invitation
Not to a perfect life free of doubt
Or even a perfect life to come
But a “now”
Full of clarity and confusion
Great insecurities and revelation
The beautiful and profane
All manifest
In the deeply flawed nature of being human
Faith is a practice
A daily putting on of a disposition
A bias towards welcoming and hospitality
A daily setting of my table
One that consistently adds a chair
Adds a plate
Shares a glass
Faith is a display
A way of offering my presence in this world
A wordless gesture, nod, and acknowledgement
That the stranger is welcomed and embraced
Faith is a lens
A way of seeing and beholding
One where my first inclination
Is away from the smallness of ideology and difference
Instead, leaning into a larger story than my own
One that anticipates
There is something astonishing in “the other”
A story that assumes heaven’s Advocate
Has already lured our mutual longings out into the open
And now these deeply human desires
Await the sacred shared experience of naming them holy
This is faith
The willingness to act “as if”
The “One Who Sets Us Free”
Has already engulfed the world
In resurrection and revelry
And we are all invited to believe the story
As best we can
This is faith for me