October Newsletter

Fall has arrived! But, I must admit, it was not much of a surprise. Even if I forget the day or month, I still recognize fall. For me, the seasonal transition to fall is distinctly tangible. The crisp air and redolent fragrances seem to suggest the coming colors and the falling leaves. I can feel fall “in my soul,” so to speak. The air, the change in temperature, and the subtle shift in light are penetrating, even if I am not aware of them at first. Something stirs inside me, and when I pause to examine this “feeling,” I notice fall. For me, fall arrives from the inside out.

I think faith is kind of like that. Some great Christian thinkers (and I’ll talk more about my favorites in next month’s Newsletter) talk about faith as an existential or fundamental trust. Trust in what? Trust in God. More precisely, and in a Christian sense, we can think of faith as trust in the meaningfulness of life itself as it is disclosed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This isn't something we can objectify and intellectually assent to; rather, we sense it stirring within as we live our lives. We suddenly sense life has been meaningful all along, even if we didn't recognize it at first (and, even when we forget!). Faith, like fall, is something that manifests itself from the inside out. I can feel faith “in my soul.”

Yet, so many times I hear faith talked about as if it is some kind of proposition which can be separated from our lives and scrutinized for its truth status. Faith, in this way, becomes an isolated object. If we reduce faith to theory and leave it intellectualized, we then risk losing the flesh and blood which give it life. Maybe people don’t have faith, but faith has people. However we talk about it, faith cannot be reduced to a proposition and treated like another one of our possessions. We don’t have faith like we have a car, or home, or book.

I will be the first to admit that I love to reflect philosophically and theologically on the Christian faith tradition. Despite the lurking danger of “thinking too much,” my reflections have prompted me to think about faith as an embodied reality. It is a “feeling” that springs on us from within as we live and move and have our being. We can sense its penetrating presence, even when we haven't named it. Think of a beautiful sunrise that not only causes you a brief pause, but fully captures your attention. In those moments of breath-taking awe we don’t have the sunrise, the sunrise has us! Some sunrises we can sense “in our soul.”

As we move into the fall season, may we also live into faith as an embodied trust that we feel “in our soul.” May we find that life is always already meaningful thanks to the God we find in Jesus Christ; and may that meaning permeate the totality of our lives: thought, word, and deed.
____________________
For Further Reference

Christian "existential thinking" can be found in thinkers stretching back to Paul, Augustine, and Luther. For a 20th century "theological existentialist," see Paul Tillich and his Courage to Be or Dynamics of Faith.

The notion of faith as "feeling" connects with a tradition flowing forth from the 18th cenutry German Romanticist Friedrich Schleiermacher. See his On Religion or The Christian Faith. Please note, "feeling" in this sense is not to be confused with a reduction to our bodily sense-perceptions.