It is important to point out from time to time what difference the practice of faith can make in a person's life. Progressive religious people like myself can sometimes be reluctant to do this because we don't want to seem like we're pushing a hard sell on someone, or promising that all of life's problems can be magically solved by joining a religion or signing up to something. Any wise and reflective person knows that life's problems are always there and we're always learning how to live life well. There are no shortcuts in the art of living. There are no simple solutions.
But to leave it at that sells ourselves short. The practice of faith does make a difference. It does make give us deeper joy, peace, and love in life, if we truly practice it. This doesn't mean, in itself, signing up to a particular religion or just believing in something you didn't believe before. It means practising something: doing something day after day, week after week that opens your heart constantly. It means practising something like contemplation - the spiritual, mystical path that allows you to directly, and with your awakened heart, experience God.
What are the fruits of this? In no particular order, somewhat off the top of my head, this is what, in my experience and reflection, the practice of faith gives:
- The practice of faith allows you to discover how gloriously adored and accepted you are, in your own unique embodied self. It allows you to know you are loved and cared for. You discover that at the heart of reality is this Love that reaches out intimately to you in particular. You discover that God loves you, adores you, cares for you, entirely unconditionally. God invites you to discover your own gloriousness and to live without fear and shame. This was the experience that transformed me as a queer person and it's particularly important that those people who experience oppression in our current social system discover this truth as a basis for their own dignity and liberation.
- The practice of faith allows you to know yourself more clearly, including your failures and foibles. This does not lead to self-hatred because it follows on from the first knowledge of being gloriously loveable. But this does not mean you are perfect. The practice of faith is the practice of self-reflection and self-examination. It is the wisdom of knowing what kind of a person you are, and knowing your own wounds and shadows. Contemplation can bring up your own repressed and uncomfortable truths. The hard work is to be able to examine these with love and truth and to heal. It is not easy, but it can lead to you not taking yourself so seriously, and that becomes a kind of freedom.
- The practice of faith helps you to make decisions. It is the practice of pausing, understanding, reflecting, knowing, and feeling your way into decisions that will bring you more life. That is the practice of discernment.
- The practice of faith brings you a sense of inner peace. It frees you from anxieties (again that doesn't mean you never have any, it means your constantly recognising and freeing yourself as a process). It brings a feeling of solid peace. That doesn't mean bad things won't happen, but it means you have a sense that whatever happens God will be with you. Some might say this is little comfort, and yet, the experience of many is that it really is.
- The practice of faith wakes you up. You have a sense of aliveness and awakeness. The world seems more real, more beautiful. There is a vitality, a feeling of Life, that you are apart of, you breathe, you feel, you come alive.
Each of these fruits of faith can come in sudden dramatic form in the heights of spiritual experiences, but they can also come in small, soft, everyday sort of ways. You can have a particular religious experience when suddenly the world vividly comes alive in a way you have never experienced before. Or you can just do ten minutes of contemplation on a Tuesday morning, and feel, a little bit, that the world seems more vivid and alive. The latter is what happens more often, and is the more important in the long run. But just because it is ordinary, does not mean it's not important. The ordinary is important.
As I say, this is not a magic cure for an easy life. But it's not nothing. The practice of faith does provide these fruits, and the invitation is to discover them in deeper and deeper ways.
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