Have Faith

Early stage modification trials are in place with both Bank of America and Aurora Loan Service for our mortgage loans, but American Express is potentially complicating the outcome with their filing of a key derogatory against my gold account with them (seemingly not in conformance with the negotiated agreement we had). As usual, correspondence to address the issue and disposition are pending. On the positive side, the IRS approved the 1040X we filed for our 2004 return which resulted in a sizable (and timely) refund. Thanks is due the Tax Payer Advocate office in Plantation. Still, the ultimate conclusions at this stage in time are still impossible to predict with any sense of certainty. Yet I still "believe" things will work out. The facts supporting that belief are more nebulous than the belief itself. And yet. . .

Facebook has been a useful tool for me to organize my thoughts and start writing again (I'm more of a blogger than a twitter user), but sometimes an unexpected observation from acquaintences almost forgotten does help clarify things in an unexpected manner. An old HS friend describes his religious orientation as "Not superstitious". I like that because I think it addresses the core issues in what we really mean and need to consider when we make these generic statements about belief and faith. In this summer of change and challenge it brought to mind conversations I had a long time ago.

While an undergraduate at Columbia, I had slowly started to drift from attending services at the church I grew up in. I thought the pastor was some type of dispirited warped scholastic (his expression of faith seemed to be more in tune with the repeated performance of ritual than anything else). His family appeared to be a mess; his sons didn't appear to respect him; his attention seemed to be consumed by the small political intrigues of even smaller people, who led thoroughly unremarkable lives even by the standards of my hometown. So, I attended when Mom and Dad asked on religious holidays and began a mental walkabout among the questions in my own mind, which concerned themselves more with the vageries of one doctrine versus another and questions of text translation accuracy. I took courses in religious studies with Elaine Pagels at Barnard, Catholic Theology Post Vatican II with Ewert Cousins at Columbia, and spent some free time at the Union Theological Seminary Library exploring the different theorized editiorial voices in the Book of Job. It created a sense of smug satisfaction with the depth of my inquiries, answered nothing, and perhaps confused a third person analysis of the sublime and mystical with questions I refused to verbalize.

Somewhere during that time I spent an afternoon with Pastor B, who delivered the eulogy at my grandfather's funeral (with a delightful Musto Catholic/Protestant schism just barely contained for the day). Pastor B's eulogy was elegant and thoughtful, and drew me into starting a conversation with Pastor B, who I don't believe was more than 10 or 15 years older than me. So we talked on a long ago Sunday afternoon regarding the seemingly contradictory voices of the Book of Job. Pastor B in a nod to my geeky undergraduate presence and ego, complimented my scholarship, and said, "I would like to ask you a question first, if that's Ok". I agreed, and Pastor B asked me, "Do you think God exists?". I looked at him sitting there with his clerical collar and black shirt on (yet so different from other ministers I had known until then) and didn't respond fast enough for someone sure of that answer and he knew it. We talked further, but I left that day for a religious sabatical that covered four years and a parallel existence I don't believe anyone would characterize as christian in nature.

I'll probably write more on this, but when I next entered a church I was mainly convinced Pastor B's question could be answered yes because I had come to believe our sentience and complexity could not be viewed as the probabilistic outcome of evolution driving biological mechanisms. I also found resonance with the concept the author of our existence would not be succored by our petty sacrifices and attempts at embracing any moral code. Redemption of creatures who are both divine and depraved would best be achieved by the grace of their creator. Ironically, this belief, as Montaigne pointed out so many years ago, could not be argued definitively, and was forced to reside in the house of personal faith.

I think we're kidding ourselves if we believe we can progress to the arguing of the relevancy of various theological doctrines, if we can't answer some of the basic questions first. As for Pastor B, my understanding is he died of AIDS some years ago, along with his lover, an excellent ER doctor, who in one of those weird six degrees of separation moments, was also the instructor for the cardiac section of the paramedic course I took in NYC during 1979-1980. I suppose, with no irony intended, if the answers can be known, Pastor B could provide them now. Still, in the loss of two really talented individuals (one who I considered a good friend and sounding board) it's hard to see the hand of a loving God. I suppose I've come to believe the anthropomorphism we indulge in characterizing actions we believe should fall under the domain of an omniscent and onmipresent God say more about us than (him?). Which simply brings us back to the first question Pastor B presented me (or perhaps the type of God we would have).

So, while I wait for conclusions to reveal themselves and continue to lead my life, I choose to "Have faith", recognizing that choice is impossible to defend with a rigorous proof, and yet is still a reflection of of an intuitive core belief of mine.