“For all the peoples and nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine war and suffering be heard, but rather, may their moral conduct, merit, wealth and prosperity increase, and may supreme good fortune and well-being always arise for them.”
For the last 25 years this is the prayer that I have been aligning my values with and shaping the world around me to. I once heard a story, a long time ago, about true FAITH:
There was a man who had lived an exemplary life. He was generous, loving, kind, compassionate, and practiced his religion devoutly. One day, as he was praying to his God, his God spoke to him. “You are a good man, a man of principles, you are kind and generous, thoughtful and compassionate, but you are not yet a true man of Faith.”
The man responded, “How can you say that, what more do I need to do to prove myself to you?”
God replied, “You do not ever have to prove yourself to me. Nothing you have done, or can do, will ever change how I see you. Our relationship is eternal.”
“I don’t understand,” the man replied.
God lovingly answered, “Faith is like a hammock for which you are unable to understand or identify what it is anchored to. There are those who won’t venture onto the hammock at all, fearful of what they can’t see and have no perceivable control over. Then there are those who will pretend to be in the hammock, but in reality they have worked to maintain an infrastructure that will catch them if they fall. So too, there are those who trust the hammock, for the most part, but keep one foot on the ground ‘just in case’. True FAITH can be found in those who have both feet in the hammock.”
Every day is a celebration and a miracle in the lives of those with true FAITH. These individuals are connected and belong in ways that go far beyond what our five senses take in. The human spirit has the potential to be a conduit, and FAITH is that which allows the spirit to connect to something much bigger, enduring, and pervasive. “I believe” is the logical mind rationalizing the act of having both feet in the hammock.
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