Faith is a practice, not a belief. That is the tenet from which my cosmology, my religion, flows. Faith is not a static belief that you settle on and then forget. Faith is a practice. It is an active engagement, and not a passive surrender. To have faith is not to take the easy way out, because to have faith means to constantly wrestle with the world as it is and the world as you think it should be and the utopias presented by other people.
One must practice faith. One must practice the act of belief, or credulity, of saying "I don't know, so I will trust." Faith is also the practice of determining who and what to trust. It takes work.
One must practice faith. This means that one must put into practice the ideals of the faith. If you believe in radical love, you must not only profess it but live it. If you believe in nonviolence, you must not only profess it, you must live it. If you believe in respect, you must not only profess it, you must live it. You must practice these things, over and over again, because they are hard and you are human and you will screw up. Faith as a practice demands that we continue trying after screwing up. You do not get to be a child throwing a temper tantrum. "I can't do this! It's too hard! I give up!" after a try or two or even five.
Faith is a practice, and you have to keep practicing it knowing full well that no amount of practice will ever, ever make perfect. That is the faith of the practice of faith. Moving toward a goal you can feel but not see, blind but not groping because when you swing wildly you often hit things you weren't intending to.
Somehow this idea of faith as a practice was excised from American strands of Christianity. I'm not a religious scholar; I can't tell you when or how or why that happened, but I can tell you that it happened because I can look around at all the people claiming faith without ever putting it into practice. I can look at the ways that people find satisfaction in appropriating other faiths (Buddhism springs to mind, the appropriation of Buddhism by Americans is a real thing) and I can point to this idea of a practice that has gone missing from so many American churches. People want to practice; they find meditation and the active act of engaging to seek something to be more satisfying than passively consuming what is spoon fed to them.
But all faith is a practice, not just "exotic" Buddhism, not just Zen, or Taoism. All faith is a practice.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Lent is a powerful, powerful season. Lent is the lynchpin of Christian faith. And we all have some idea of faith as a practice, still. We practice self-control during Lent: we give something up, we stop eating meat on Fridays. These are simple practices. They are children's practices. It is a shame that these are as deep as our practices go, because there is so much more. Do you know why paczki, why pancake day, came to be? Because Lent is a time of paring down and focusing on necessities, and those necessities do not include the richness of butter. Do you know why meat is prohibited? Because Lent is a time of necessities and those necessities do not include the flesh of animals. We can live without these things, and so we purge our homes of them for 40 days. Eat your paczki, enjoy it, savor it, but then put it away for the season.
There are actually three practices for Lent, a tridium, like God itself. Fasting, justice towards the self, is the practice that has survived in our world, although only just. It seems somehow ironic, and also somehow utterly fitting, that in America the only spiritual practice that would survive is a bastardized version of justice towards the self. But there are other practices, for Lent, that we are called to redouble our efforts toward: Justice toward God and justice toward neighbors.
So fast, and be just to yourself. But also give alms, or cook for your neighbors, or volunteer. Practice justice towards your neighbors, those other human beings that inhabit the spaces you do. Practice. It takes practice to treat other human beings justly, it takes practice to de-center the self in interactions with others. So take this time to practice.
And also pray. Or meditate. Practice justice towards God, or the divine. Have you ever contemplated the beauty of a wood violet in the dark of a forest floor? Or the sun as it breaks a horizon line? These sound very Buddhist, right? Have you ever prayed a rosary? Or walked the Stations of the Cross? The feeling I access when I look at the wood violet, or finger a rosary bead, is the same. Marvel at creation, and also your fellow beings. Hold them in your thoughts, and honor them. Meditate. Ask he interwoven strands of life to hold you up. Pray.
Faith is a practice, and now at the start of this season I will redouble my efforts to practice my faith.
