To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.—Alan Watts
People don’t live or die, people just float.—Bob Dylan, “Man in the Long Black Coat”
Faith as a kind of flotation device makes perfect sense when you hear it—but that it needs to be said at all means that it isn’t all that obvious. To trust in trust—for that is what pure faith is, regardless of any particular articles of faith—doesn’t easily occur because it doesn’t feel concrete enough. It’s a bit illogical, like standing on two floating floors instead of the usual floating floor with its trusty subfloor underneath holding it up.
I like to think of a good, solid faith, the kind from which one derives spiritual strength, not as trust plus trust but as trust squared.
First, we must trust ourselves, the fact that deep down and come what may, ultimately we will be true to ourselves. We may stumble mightily, but we strive to follow our heart.
Second comes trust in the notion that this thing we call love is a much greater force than we give it credit for. We have pondered love/eros/agape from ancient scripture to modern song, plus all the poems, plays, paintings, sonnets, symphonies, sculptures, novels and stories in between, and yet the well never runs dry. Love is infinite, maybe the only infinite.
Third is trust in mystery—the fact that, as Thomas Edison said, we don't know one millionth of one percent about anything. Staying humble and open to the unknown rather than trying to close it up makes life far more meaningful and limitless.
So those three are trust to the third power—trust cubed—and that would be plenty. Yet embracing it all is a trust that absolutely everything in our reality is connected to absolutely everything else.
And there you have it: a four-legged something on which we can float. (I fear I’ve planted you on a card table in the middle of a lake.)
Think of it as this. Trust squared simply means to let go of things. Ego. Fear. Doubt. Distance from others. Each of these weighs us down. Have faith that letting go of them is not pretending they aren’t there—they are; there’s no denying that. It’s just that letting go of some things frees up your hands and your heart to latch onto other things you may find more useful. Love. Mystery. Humility. Interdependence. The things that make it easier to overcome fear and doubt, for they strengthen you—which is job #1 of a faith.
Faith is holding all that you trust closer to you. And anything you trust is lighter than air. That’s why you float.
Indeed. Trust and love. It all starts and is sustained from that. I really MUST hold on to these truths in these perfectly horrid times. Thank you Rob.