Reflections, Summer 2019. Volume 16, No. 2

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Terror artificially imitates the caprice of life in order to impose the illusion of righteous stability. In the name of petrified belief, religious or political, terror seeks to murder faith – faith in oneself, humanity or life itself.

Terror’s murderous despair is ultimately suicidal. The perpetrator’s self, already in the throws of death, is a desiccated mural on a gravestone. Terror’s explosive fury is a voracious vacuum – a black hole of no return.

Acts of terror question our sleeping beliefs, religious or political; beliefs that may have lost touch with the requirements of faith.

Faith and belief are two words often used to mean the same thing; but they don’t.

A living faith can’t be limited to statements of belief. Living faith exists in moments; moments wherein one dares to be open to life – without fixed prerequisites.

Our capacities for faith often go unnoticed until life’s disruptions challenge us; not only the disruptions of terror or calamities, but also the disruptions of actual differences between us. To the degree we avoid meetings with the other, within and beside us, we are vulnerable to the same beliefs motivating terror.

When disruptions inevitably occur, we search for frames to affirm ourselves, enabling us to meet the challenge and go on. Yet frames lacking a commitment to the trials of engagement and love always fail.  Love between us does not take pain away. It absorbs pain into realizations of meaning between us; realizations gained through the risks of meeting and loving.

Rising to the challenges of a living faith is the only validation of belief.

***

Faith

in tattered

shopping bags

of belief

torn

&

needing  patching

an inseparable couples’ dance

changing

from time to time

cycling

joy and disappointment

like any real relationship

faith can deepen

but can’t be ‘fixed’.

©  2019 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

All rights reserved

South Garden Press, New York

For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com