Faith is a Big, Slippery Fish

Hey babes,

Happy FRIDAY! Happy LABOR DAY WEEKEND! What a summer it’s been. Truly gorgeous. Countless drives to the beach, lots of books (thank you ACOTAR for getting me back in a reading routine), dinners in Dimes Square, patio sessions, one hell of a birthday celebration - I feel really lucky.

And I’ve got so much fun stuff cooking for The Brightside. I’ve never felt more creatively energized and I can’t wait for all of the things that are coming this fall.

Today I’m hitting you with a reflection on faith - one of my favorite topics to write about and ponder these days. It seems to go hand in hand with last week’s piece about striking lightning - because I think to have the courage to strike lightning, you need a healthy dose of faith that you’re going to strike up something good.

Wishing you the best best best weekend.

XO

Faith is a slippery fish. It's easy to keep when the sun is shining but extremely difficult to find when you need it most, like when there's an unexpected power outage and all the lights go out. You have no idea if you even own a flashlight, let alone batteries. Finding both in the dark seems like an impossible task - I mean, come on, you know your house better than anyone - which means surrendering to the fact that you probably won’t find a flashlight - but you keep looking anyway, open to the small chance that you might stumble across something else, like a pair of dusty candlesticks that will do the job while you wait out the storm.

You could just go to sleep and let the storm pass - it might be easier - but faith is curious, and there's something alluring about having the lights out that draws you into yourself in a way that’s kind of reverent. Seeing a space so familiar to you cloaked in darkness can be inconvenient, but also has the ability to invoke wonder. The storm-invoked darkness is nature's way of reminding us of her absolute power, and there's a wonder there - even if chaos abounds and you stub your toe looking for that goddamned flashlight.

There's no rhyme or reason to the storms most of the time, especially these days. Sure, there are stormier seasons where the shit weather is a bit more expected, but lately, it seems like nature has a way of waging heartbreak warfare like we've never known (wildfires in Hawaii, hail in the summer). We live in a world where chaos rules and stability feels like an urban legend.

I think a part of faith is making peace with the storms and the bad weather.

Without the bad weather - if we just lived in a world fueled by blue skies and synchronicities and ease - wouldn't it start to feel like living in the town of Spectre? That sort of carefree lifestyle is what so many of us think we want - ease - but when the sun shines and shines and never takes a break, it almost makes you wish for rain (to steal a line from the beloved Lucius).

It's not that the faith goes away when the sun shines for days on end - but it’s easy to begin taking that warmth for granted and to forget to give thanks. And I think eventually, your humanness starts to rumble and to almost yearn for a little something to work through again. To bring it back to Big Fish (I’m always looking for ways to bring it back to Big Fish) – after tumbling into Spectre after a near-death experience on the road less traveled, Edward Bloom knows he needs to leave and face the challenges of the real world again.

The yearning isn't vain or foolish or unaware of the blessings bestowed in the time spent basking in the sun. It's just ... human.

Am I saying that faith & struggle must maintain a balanced ratio in this life to coexist happily? Absolutely not - and anyway, that sounds loaded with Catholic indoctrination, so I'm wary of staking that claim. And besides, I don’t know that I really believe in “balance” as a guarantee in this lifetime, in any context.

By definition faith is a belief in something that can't be proven - so even writing about it seems futile and is breaking my brain a bit. I can point to endless examples of moments in my life that have felt impossibly charged by magic I can’t explain, followed closely by moments of deep-sea leagues of hardship and mystery, and on and on the cycle goes. I'm not out here on a crusade to tie a silver lining around pain - sometimes things just suck - but in my 29 years, I’ve learned that things don’t stay that way forever.

Again, I’m not sure that true balance exists, and if it does - it’s certainly not linear. But when the proverbial sun goes out and you choose to move forward anyway, that's where the living happens.