Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Jason for Day 15

Faith

Not that it has to be the opposite of reason,
since one can reason one’s way to the outside
of reason, and not that it has to be god,
or God, or G-d, but that it has to be there.

You can have faith in anything you want.
Your mother’s love, your wife’s devotion,
medicine, Bob Fosse’s genius, video art,
zines, Claratin, whatever. But you have to believe

in something. You have to have faith
that neuroscience has answers you need,
or that it’s totally worth it to fast on Ramadan.
You have to find someone or something

to believe in. Faith is a lot like sanity.
Have you ever met a crazy person? They
have no faith in the world. They are compelled
by voices, or drives, or urges, or hallucinations,

and that’s the opposite of faith. That’s
immediacy. That’s response as pure
and simple as Pavlov’s dogs salivating
in tubes. But faith. That’s a lot like love.

It’s a lot like grace.

No comments: