Faith isn't a dirty word

What does it mean to believe and does it matter what it is we believe in...

I went to a Catholic primary school, secondary school, and sixth form college. I was baptised, did my Holy Communion and got confirmed. I am not religious. I’m not sure if I ever was. I just went along with it. I didn’t have much of an opinion on it. I wasn’t ride-or-die for God. I was pretty unbothered, actually. As I always say, is a choice ever a choice if it is never questioned? I had questions about religion, but I didn’t really question if I was religious. I thought we all were. I grew up that way, I went to church, I thought that was just what people did.

I opted out of religion in my teens.

It wasn’t for me. I wasn’t down for the power, control, and incessant authority of it all. I wanted to create my own structure for living. I wanted to connect to who I was and not who I was told to be. I wanted my power to come from my own being and nature, instead of outsourcing it. So, I opted out.

I spent much of my childhood with eyes cemented on the pages of books that you’d find in the mind, body, spirit section. I fell upon them thanks to seeing them laid out on my Auntie Wilma’s bookshelves. I didn’t really know what the lofty concepts of spirituality and consciousness were all about, but they implanted something in me. I waited for the thoughts to ripen, to be made real, to have some colour and texture to them. These ideas laid dormant until they sprung into existence again as I got older.

I loathe labels, as sometimes a word allows others to create assumptions on who we are without analysis or asking how someone is actually defining that label for themselves. I guess, the closest label for me to describe myself as is spiritual and it’s not a label I care much for, as I don’t relate to many who proudly wear it. I’m spiritual in the way that I believe in life. I believe in myself. I believe in all of the living and non-living beings that exist here and I believe in something beyond all of that. “Beyond” might be what we call spirit, the universe, light, source, energy, what some call God but not necessarily in its man-made anthropomorphised image. I believe in magic. Fuck, do I believe in magic. I believe in hope and possibility, the good and beautiful in people. I believe in the unseen just as much as the seen. I believe in science, but I don’t need science to prove anything to me, if it is felt and witnessed. I don’t need a statistic to override human experience and testimony.

I just have faith.

When I even mention the word faith or say that it’s something I have, it’s sometimes met with eye-rolls and assumptions, that being “spiritual” is all oracle cards and astrology. I absolutely get down with both of them, but my spirituality isn’t a list of practices and things I do, it’s a perspective, it’s just how I see life. I was known as a “spiritual guide”, I’m a Reiki master teacher, Akashic Records practitioner, meditation teacher, I wrote a book about spirituality. All that stuff. And they’re just things. Things that you can believe in or not believe in, but for me, they are simply an example of a different way of looking at life, of expanding how we see it. I don’t place my faith in practices, they are simply vessels to me feeling connected to myself, others and what lies beyond. I don’t need them. I enjoy them and if humans created them, then they’re 100% fallible and worthy of curiosity.

One thing I refuse to do is convince. I am not convincing anyone to believe in what I believe in. I am not convincing anyone that the experiences I’ve had that don’t even make sense to me were real. I have no proof for you. If you don’t believe it, then you really don’t have to. But, what I have not a rice grain of tolerance for is disrespect. I do not believe in organised religions, but I will respect the people within them, as my issue is at the organisation level, not anyone underneath it. I won’t respect anything that causes other people harm. My issue is with indoctrination and those who perpetuate it, be it religious, political, ideological or otherwise, I am not going to judge those who have been subject and victim to that indoctrination.

I don’t enjoy moral superiority. We are all here to live in the uniqueness of our own lives. Who are we to “show people the light” or “wake them up” because who are we to believe that our way of living is “the best” or have the audacity to think that we ourselves have “woken up” or have indeed “seen the light”, just because we have chosen to live differently? Different doesn’t mean better. When it comes to my own beliefs, I simply ask for respect. If you wouldn’t go to someone’s church and laugh for the entire service, then why is someone doing moon rituals so funny?

When it comes to faith, and all of our differences, can’t we just see our shared humanity, despite it all? That we’re all here trying to figure it out, to find some joy, to cope with what hurts, try to make some meaning out of being human, to connect deeper to ourselves and others. Because, that is ultimately why I think we all need to believe in something. To have faith in something. Our humanity needs it.

I get it, I get how cruel this world can be, how seeing such brutal things shifts our sense of magic and hope. How easy it is to spend a day scrolling, swiping and getting breaking news notifications that convince us there’s nothing to have hope for. Yet, our proof of goodness, love and indeed faith, doesn’t exist there, it exists in the small moments in life. The everyday and everywhere stuff that holds so much possibility.

Faith is having confidence or trust in something or someone. We get so stuck in what we have faith in, that we forget the beauty and importance of the act of having faith in itself. Trusting in something has saved me. I wouldn’t be here tap, tap, tapping on my laptop if I didn’t have faith. I don’t know if I can accurately describe this as my “spirituality” or faith in myself, or even just my faith in life. Whatever it is and maybe it’s all of them, it allows me to continue, to persevere and, fight. I’ve felt faith slipping away too many times, but something in the day-to-day of life, whether it’s seeing a fox or a rainbow, stops me from losing it all together. Even when I am absolutely depleted and have no idea how to keep going, my faith in all of these things is why I might then try to seek the support or resources I need. To back myself.

Faith feels like a dirty word. People are called out for bypassing the very real things that are happening, when they say they have people or the situation in their thoughts, or they’re praying or meditating on it. People question how magic, spirit or God could possibly exist amongst such awfulness. I’m always an advocate for all things being done in a full spectrum way. If I’m holding someone or a situation in my heart, then I’m often doing something more than that. Supporting or taking some kind of action alongside, but sometimes, those thoughts and prayers are all someone can do, and that’s really okay. There’s an entire planet of us here, those that can do more, are doing more, and we don’t get to decide on what actions people have the capacity to do are “good” enough.

When faith asks us to trust in something beyond what we can tangibly see or rationalise, it can feel so incredibly at odds with what we are actually seeing. Yet, there can be space for both. Recently, I saw an unhoused woman outside of Sainsbury’s; my mum and I gave her some money. As soon as the money fell into her weathered yet hopeful hands, she said, “Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you God,” whilst looking up to the sky.

As someone who isn’t religious I spent a lot of time thinking about this. What moves some of us to thank what we can’t see or I guess, can’t “prove” (not that we have to) before thanking what’s here in front of us. Then I thought, if you believe that people giving you money or opportunities is through God, then, so it is. If this lovely human, believes that my mum and I are the answers to the prayers she may have been asking all day. All week. All month. Then, so it is. It’s fascinating to ponder on, isn’t it?

None of us have the answers, right? It’s easy for us non-believers to say, well that wasn’t God, it was about people. God had nothing to do with it. I myself, don’t believe in God but I believe in our interconnectedness. I believe in people helping others. I also believe in manifesting and not the version that privileged coaches sell in well-designed packages. I believe in the unknown. I believe in magic. I don’t even need to find the perfect way to explain what I believe in.

How am I supposed to know what compelled me to give her money? What was it that made me stop and talk to her? Why did I not stop for others that day? Was it the look in her eyes? Really, why did I stop? Why her? Why me? Was I subconsciously, unknowingly answering her prayer that day? Can you be the answer to someone’s prayer if you don’t believe in the same God that they prayed to?

Bruh. I don’t know.

I don’t know and isn’t that important too, to not always know or figure it out? Not all of us can do that, I know, but how does it feel to be in practice of it? I spoke about this in a letter here, where I wrote:

“There is such beauty in allowing questions to move through your body and travel within you without the expectation of it falling into an answer.”

What’s the role of faith in a world that feels like it can’t even carry its own weight anymore? It’s easy to just list all of the systems we’re entangled in. It’s easy to blame everything on capitalism. It’s easy to and I’ve been there myself, surmise everything as race or gender-related. It’s easy to see the systems that seem so impenetrable to dismantle as the whole of everything, instead of as a factor in everything. A factor. We are entrenched in systems, I firmly believe we will change them, but who knows when or how. It might not be in our lifetimes. Something has to exist beyond, “fuck the system”. Fuck the system and what…

Because will we just wait idly at the bus stop, screaming that the bus is awful and unfair, and never looking to see if there’s a taxi or bike on the other side of the bus who can take us somewhere else? Surely not. Personal responsibility still has to exist within the knowing that our systems are wildly unfair. We still have to participate and find ways to cope within it. We can’t shout “community. community. community” as the answer for everything, if we aren’t willing to do the work to both receive and give in those communities or if we aren’t taking care of ourselves as well as allowing others to take care of us. The same goes with faith. It can’t be everything either right? We can’t just pray, sit by a tree and set some intentions for a better life or world without having some personal responsibility that enables us to take action in whichever way we need to. It will be cyclical, we won’t always have the capacity to, but when we can, we can.

Religions and religious leaders have harmed so many of us. Cults have. Spiritual narcissists have. It has changed our cultural perception of faith. It honestly think it’s inhumane to cause people so much pain and trauma from a belief system to the point that they then lose their faith in everything else. The work to reclaim faith and not necessarily “replace it” takes time, work, support and healing. It hurts because we all deserve faith. We need it. Just maybe not in the exact way we’ve come to understand or define it.

Is there a space for faith then, especially in an increasingly secular and skeptical society? Hell yeah. I think we just need to make faith our own, question it and choose how we want to live inside it. It need not be going to church or reading a book on spirituality. It might just be the choice to believe in something, anything, everything. Who cares what it is. Faith is faith. It doesn’t have to be structured, explained or organised.

Life is achingly and hauntingly fleeting. Life can change in an instant. It can end in the same way. I was reminded of this last night with the unexpected and sudden passing of a loved one. I was also reminded of this while waiting for my mum’s medical test results where we felt so lucky to receive good news, knowing the immediacy that life would change in, should it be the opposite. When we hear and feel the most tragic and awful stories, why do we keep going? How do we keep smiling and get out of bed the next day? What’s it all for? Our bodies can just stop in a moment’s notice. The world can change overnight. We are not in control.

We grieve, we feel all of it, scream and rage. We fury until our lungs give out. We hold each other a bit tighter and remind people that we love them. We savour every day and moment. Then, we have faith right? Faith that we will smile again, believe again, notice the birds singing again. Faith that we will be okay. We will be okay. Faith that because we can feel life’s pain, it must mean that we are so wrapped up and held in all its spectacular love, beauty and joy, that we feel its loss so intimately.

Being human is the most precious of gifts, it’s deeply complex, often traumatising and yet so filled with magic. Our brains are filled with questions of why did this happen? Will the world ever change? Will we actually be okay? We see the worst of us and the best of us all in the same news cycle. Nothing makes sense. How else do we survive and make sense of it all without believing in something? Maybe it’s the “something” that trips us up. Finding our faith feels like yet another big old question that needs to be answered, especially when our belief systems feel non-existent.

I guess, all that matters is what feels true. Without being able to rationalise it, without checking in with anyone else, without being told what to believe in. But, just having an open mind, to allow our hearts to direct us to faith.

Believing in yourself can be a religion. Worshipping at the altar of your very own soul and living in devotion to what moves, engages and tantalises you is profound as fuck. Believing in other people can be a religion. Prioritising growing in community and loving people beyond just the people you know, is worthy of a sermon. Believing in the moon, stars, sky, trees, birds and fish can be a religion. It is nature. We are nature. We are connected. Why wouldn’t we praise the immense wonder of that? Believing in an ephemeral, unseen, weightless, magical thing that can go by any name can be a religion. There is too much that exists in the tangible 3D-ness of this world that doesn’t make sense or have any explanation, so why could we not believe there is something beyond us that exists in this same incomprehensible way?

I went to see The Secret Garden at the Open Air Theatre the other day and this quote from the play stayed with me:

The sun is shining. That is the magic.
Flowers growing, roots stirring. That is the magic.
Being alive. That is the magic.

I have faith in that.
I have faith in all of this magic that I can see, which makes me believe in the magic that I can’t always see, but I can ever-so-deeply feel.