“In the period of preparation for loving God, the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know if anything real answers its love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such a belief does not help. The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no such thing as bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty.” (Simone Weil)

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about my troubled and tortuous ( as in “winding here and there”, not as in being tortured…. although…) relationship with the concept of God or the Divine. For the first eight years of my education, I was in Lutheran school. This started my confusion I think, because so much of that experience did not feel right to me. The people teaching me about God mostly did not feel kind or loving or anything like I’d imagine God to be. And the things they said you had to do didn’t feel right to me often. I never believed in Hell—the way they taught it was so obviously a way to get you to behave. And their version of heaven didn’t sound all that much like anywhere I’d want to go—certainly not if animals didn’t have souls. So after I was old enough to not have to go to that church, I stopped thinking about God at all. The whole idea just wasn’t an issue for me for years. Having fun, which mostly had to do with boys, was much more my focus.

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Then somewhere along the way “spirituality” started to be something that interested me, then stirred up a yearning in me. Sometimes in my bodywork/movement I would go deep into some larger energy that felt like Love, like what the mystics call God. I’m not quite sure when that started or why. But I’ve never found a group or theory or set of beliefs that I could totally say “Yes I absolutely believe that, have faith in it, know it as well as I know that blue jays are blue”. I WANT to believe, and I am open to the concept of the Divine, and I spend lots of time thinking about it, reading about it, writing about it, exploring it, and feeling that it very well may exist. But I’m never sure with that kind of solidness that I so often read about or hear others talk about. I long for that—the comfort of it, of knowing with every inch of your being that God or the Divine or some larger loving energy truly is there with me. That I have an eternal Soul—and that Tiger does too so that we will be together forever.

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The friend I was talking with said she thinks I do have faith—but that I compare it too much to others. That I go in and out of it, but that it does at times exist. She has a point there. When I am deep in movement, when I have a series of synchronicities, when a card reading is so on point that it feels like someone who loves me just whispered answers right into my ear==in those moments I do believe. And then moments later, my mind steps in and wipes that belief out. Another friend of mine said “But you do believe in love—you believe in that as much as anyone I know. What is that if not something to do with the Divine?” That too is true. If I could live every day with my heart engaged, loving, being loved, if I could love everyone and everything the way I do Tiger or the birds, that would be the greatest thing in the world to me.

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Another friend of mine said “I think if you had to go on one side of the fence or the other, you’d lean more toward belief. Your photographs plug right into some larger stream, and you feel it when you’re in it.” That is probably true too. I asked her where she stood with it all—we’ve never really talked about it before. And she said “well probably about the same as you.” Then she told me a story which broke my heart and which echoed so many of my own powerful synchronicities. A few days before the man she loved with all her heart died (suddenly, unexpectedly and in her presence) she saw a swan dying, hit by a car. Its mate was frantically beating its wings nearby, wailing. My friend was overwhelmed with grief. And thought of it days later as her own love died. On the anniversary of his death, she was at a yard sale, the end of the sale, everything almost gone. She almost didn’t even stop to look. But she did briefly and found in a basket a solid sterling silver ring that she couldn’t believe someone hadn’t bought. And as she turned it over she saw that it was two swans, necks intertwined. She said every year after that some swan symbol would show up around that time. After all our years as friends she’d never told me that story.

Switching gears a bit, that same friend and I went on an outing the day after this conversation. We didn’t talk anymore about our conversation. The outing was to be about fun, which I haven’t had all that much of lately. And it was. We went to an art supply store so I could get some colored pencils for a mandala book I want to start doing exercises in. On the way we saw a sight I SO longed to have my camera for. A big yellow tabby sitting outside The Wild Bird Store, looking in the large window, every inch of his body eloquently expressing “LET ME IN”. He was focused as a levitating saddhu and could have bent a fork with his attempt at mind controlling whoever could open that door. We laughed and laughed. Our fun time was too short, as I tired fast, which was frustrating. As I waited for her at the cash register, my friend was making a last decision about art supplies, I browsed through a basket of letter seals (to stamp wax) on the counter. Mostly just common symbols—a spiral, a celtic knot, a sun, a moon. And as I started to turn away to tell my friend to get moving because I was pooped, the last one I looked at was…two swan necks intertwined to form a heart. When I gave it to my friend later in the car, we both cried at the gift.

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As I thought about all this later, I thought, “you know if I was God sending someone all these lovely messages to touch their heart, I’d probably be tired of hearing that person say “but I still don’t believe in you”. And then I thought that maybe I just need to live my life with as much love as I can, and stop worrying so much about is there or isn’t there. Quit demanding that I be shown the truth to my satisfaction so that I can be all safe and secure in it. I do that with friends too it hit me. Lately in the aftermath of being ill, when terror grips me, I sometimes call my friends wanting them to make the terror go away. And if they don’t say just what I want them to say the terror escalates, and I reject what they are saying, reject THEM it probably feels like.

Maybe I”ll never know the answer for sure and maybe the terror will never go away. But I’m learning that maybe my path is just living and loving the best I can, and giving thanks for every moment that I do feel plugged in to a greater flow, be it the flash of a blue jay’s wings or the glow of evening sun on iris. And not to deny my longing, or insist that it be met or reject what is given in love.

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