There are certain things I have come to accept are beyond human experience. There is quite a bit of faith in our ways. Even through extensive experimentation, we do take things on faith.
I used to resist faith. Possibly from a rebellious need to resist societies obsession with it. But we do need faith. In each other, in ourselves, in the way the moon waxes and wanes, the sun rising for each new dawn. We take these leaps of faith for granted, I feel. Because it simply always has been. We know it always will be. We do get little reminders of this faith. When we plant a seed and do all the right things, give it the proper soil, the correct amount of water, the right amount of light to make sure it can feel safe enough to germinate. But sometimes you do all of this, and the seed doesn’t germinate. It stays still. It was not meant to be, we say. We try again, and again. Maybe it is a bad batch, we say. We try again. This is faith. This time it will work. This batch will be healthier. But sometimes, even then, some things don’t come to fruition. It’s a difficult lesson.
I think it’s even more difficult for us practitioners. We are quite the skeptical bunch. We need experimentation, time-tested ways to create the right scenarios. And we are control-seekers. Otherwise we wouldn’t be practitioners. We move things. We move things that would not move without our little nudges. So, faith, for us, might be a bit of a dirty word. We say we don’t need faith because we have tested results. But even these require a bit of faith. Just as we have faith for the rising of the sun at dawn.