Believe or not believe, that is the question
A more hopeful look forward
Fifth in a series rebuilding an infrastructure where faith and shunned values are restored on a personal level — think global, act local —and chronicling a personal history of my faith restored that opened up my world… aged 65!
For this I owe thanks to my family of origin — Mum who I reacquainted myself with since Dad’s passing, and second cousins in Dallas and London — and my family of choice — presently Quakers in Cambridge UK — as well as my current sponsor — not only reloading my original faith but also modelling with me what follows — who supported me steadfast through this transition outlined here.
Update 1: please follow-on the next episode in this series here.
Update 2: the West’s attitude is revisted later in the Note here.
To “all project plans fail on first contact” let me propose that “we plan, God decides” and ‘failure’ is in fact a simple a correction in trajectory… and what we choose as source of inspiration makes all the difference! On the lay side, let me suggest Susan Jeffers’ iconic 1987 Feel the fear and do it anyway. On the other hand, however, the French say “Aide toi, et Dieu t’aidera”, God helps those that help themselves. My first childhood coming-of-age saying was “God doesn’t ‘do’ coincidences”, that I saw in my travels in South Asian and Middle Eastern cultures and religion — see animation here — often misunderstood as fatalistic at best.
But here in the West we think ourselves too smart as we separated beliefs from our day-to-day: my previous post argues that is a mistake, yet it’s in rituals that we try to restore some sort of anchoring. Media, consumerism and entertainment are our new temples — “panem et circenses” was the Roman policy as the empire crumbled, “give them bread and entertainment” rather than fix the system, which was doomed by then — but look where that takes us… Are we able to address Climate Emergency, despotism running amok and failing capitalism? No! I argued in another series “that after the post-WWII boom, we’re backsliding as socialist experiments failed” and I propose now that faith is the only way to remedy that.
“[P]anem et circenses” was the Roman policy as the empire crumbled, “give them bread and entertainment” rather than fix the system, which was doomed by then.
In my current “hard reset” — thanks bro’ for that quip— I try to model my re-emergent faith in my personal relationships first, extending that to friends and family, and eventually to society at large as I’ll get re-engaged. But even then, I experience a split between friends and family … “same info, different hooks” I quipped, as scarcity mentality hits us in different ways! In my original web post I said — 15 yrs ago just before my previous ‘hard reset’ — that “[s]carcity mentality is the sneakiest oppression that keeps everything in place, as it turns allies against each other.” And that is what I would experience now, if I were not relying on my faith to look past that — no meaning that I don’t fall in that trap, I just own up to it and move on by surrendering my ego to God — and I must thank my sponsor and second cousins for their unconditional love.
So let me invite you to rewind my previous posts: What looks like a sunset in the banner picture will turn into a sunrise through my second cousin’s “three F’s” — faith, family and friends — and my struggle is a picnic compared to his! Thanks cuz for the inspiration, we love y’all!
