CowPi Journal

Seeking balance is not an object to possess or to hold. It is not a destination to arrive at. It is a process, a part in the engine that drives us down the path as we journey back to heaven. There is friction in any engine, and seeking balance causes much of it. God uses that friction to mold us into what we are suppose to be. To stop seeking balance means that the engine locks up, and we are dead on the path.

Father,
Please have mercy on those souls you called home this past year,
   bless their families and friends who were left behind.

Please bless all the babies that will be born this year;
   let them be beacons of your light in the world and
   draw their family and friends closer to you.

Please grant your grace of a good death
   to all those you will call home this year,
   so that they may freely choose you one last time on earth.

Please bless all of those between birth and death,
   illuminate our choices with your grace
   so that we too may draw closer to you.

Please fortify your gift of faith,
   energize your gift of hope,
   expand our capacity to love like you.

Through Jesus your Son, we pray. Amen.

I have had several people at different times tell me in counsel to “live my faith.” I was usually struggling through something at the time, a bit lost and confused about certain things, and my initial response every time was, “How? What does it mean to live out your faith?”

They did their best to answer that question, but to be honest, it never reached very deep into the whirlpool of my thoughts and emotions. To say “live my faith” felt like a lifeline that I did not know how to grasp. But to “live my faith” is not a lifeline to be pulled out of the water, it is the river itself. I needed to learn to float along with its current rather than attempt to swim against it.

I found a more satisfying answer in Merton’s words as noted by James Finley in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere. To live my faith is the same way I should (and do) approach prayer:

We should not look for a “method” or “system,” but cultivate an “attitude,” an “outlook”: faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy. All these finally permeate our being with love in so far as our living faith tells us we are in the presence of God, that we live in Christ, that in the Spirit of God we “see” God our Father without “seeing.” We know him in “unknowing.” Faith is the bond that unites us to him in the Spirit who gives us light and love.

(I would add compassion, kindness, and hope, but these naturally follow from the list of words above.)

To live faith is to live life as prayer. Something many saints and mystics have said of course. The note I wrote next to this passage in my copy of the book reads, “Be-with-You-ness” (or “Be-with-ness” as I have written in the margins on other pages).

“Be-with-ness”, to be truly present with another, needs an attitude of “faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy.” That is praying; that is living my faith.

Father, I just want to be with you. I’m tired of words. I want the clutter of thoughts in my mind to stop for awhile so that I can just pray, just exist with you. No asking for anything. No talking about things. No conversation. Just being.

I love you Father. I just want to love you. No strings attached.

Why do you love Me?

I don’t know. I just do.

Why do you love your wife?

There are no reasons Lord. I just do.

Why do you love anyone?

I don’t know. I just do. It’s something that is a part of me.

A part of you?

It is part of my essence, part of my being.

A part of your being…only a part?

Is love not a part of my being?

…

Is it my whole being?

…

Is this what Merton means that I am love. I am like you, made in your image? My true self is you?

You are like a drop of water in the ocean. Same but different. Two but one; one but two.

…

I love you Father.

I love you.