Scintilla Day 6- Faith

A photo by anne(♥)marie on Flickr.

Prompt: Talk about an experience with faith, your own or someone else's.

Even though she has every reason not to, my biological mother possesses rock solid faith. When I was a girl, she often brought me to daily mass, in addition to prayer group, and of course Sunday school. Somehow I was sent to a private Catholic school, despite our financial circumstances. Religion permeated the air we breathed.

Later, when my awareness grew, I was mystified. In college, I became downright perplexed. How could a woman like herself believe in a loving, benevolent, almighty Father? Her whole life has been nothing but struggle; she has survived a traumatic childhood, poverty, depression, encephalitis, and breast cancer. She has been in a nursing home since she was 44... forty-four! Do I need to say any more?

So one day I asked her. I’ll never forget our brief conversation.  I was 19 and had decided church wasn’t for me. For the first time I challenged her. “How do you know God exists?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “I see God every time you visit me.”

I swallowed. Was it that simple?

All these years later, I'm inclined to agree.  Knowing that I'll never fall- that someone will always catch me- is the sort of faith that sees me through my day to day life.  Yes, I sometimes say prayers- and send out wishes, intentions, or whatever you'd like to call them- to the universe.  But I also pick up the phone when I need help, assured that some earthly being will receive my call.

Faith and hope are inextricably connected. I experience them in a myriad of ways...

I have faith in the future when I look at my daughter’s unique hand print...

I have faith in love when I look into my soul mate’s starlit eyes...

I have faith in renewal, the cycles of life, each spring when my garden grows...

 I have faith in the mysterious unknown when I witness the sea and sky meet...

“Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking
                           and sings while it is still dark.” Rabindranath Tagore


* I'm participating in Scintilla, a fortnight of storytelling, with other writers mining the material of their lives. There's still time to sign up for daily prompts if you'd like to join us!