Act of Faith

Yesterday I met up with a wonderful friend for a cup of coffee. She picked this obscure, tiny Chinese coffee shop that's tucked away in a back corner of a small Chinese plaza. I had to drive up and down the street 4 times before I finally saw it. But it was a nice quiet spot. The coffee was hot and fresh. The owner was nice. AND the place uses the highest quality toilet paper I have ever seen in any Chinese eating establishment: 3-ply Cottonelle!! The tissue paper itself was well worth the trip. But I digress...


During that conversation over coffee I said something that I only realized later as being "really cool". (I love it when that happens!) So, being the unselfish person that I am, I thought I'd share it with you here...

When I look at my life today, on the surface there is very little to suggest I am a god-believing person. I don't attend church. I don't read the Bible. I don't pray much. I don't listen to Christian music anymore (not that I have anything against Christian music...well, that's actually not true, but that's another blog entry for another day), AND because I am playing so much hockey these days and around hockey players quite a bit, I have picked up the bad habit of an occasional swear word or two :P

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not putting down any of those "religious practices". If there is one thing I learned, it's that faith is intensely personal and it manifests itself differently in different people. For me, at this stage of my 'quest', the most meaningful 'act of faith' is choosing to believe that my story has meaning, believing that Someone is writing a new page, and having the courage to want to turn the page.

Afer all, whenever you read a novel or a book, isn't every turning of the page an "act of faith" in itself? By turning the page, you are choosing to believe that the story is going somewhere, that it is building towards something. You choose to place your time in the hands of the author, "trusting" him/her to take you somewhere unexpected.

Another thing I learned about page turning: You cannot choose to keep looking at a previous page and turn to a new page at the same time. Perhaps in my case, it is also an "act of faith" to choose to take my eyes off the last page, and turn to a new one.