For many years, I've had a secret ache to be one of those people who can have faith. Well, with part of me, I have. With the rest, I've hoped never to succumb.
I come from a family where religious beliefs and having a faith* was an indication of stupidity and neediness. That thought pattern applied to other things too, including dog-owners, do-gooders and anyone who thought differently to "us".
When I was a teenacher (oh, what a gift of a typo! I was full of ache as a teenager!) I as afraid to go into churches in case that feeling I got in my belly was some kind of religious revelation, and then I'd be condemned to be one of the ignorants, one of the stupid masses who believed. It was probably just the adrenalin of that fear in itself.
I still can't imagine a real, existing deity with a beard and robes, or even a face, but I do now feel connected to things in ways I never did before. For lots of reasons, one of them being my morning ritual which gives me the wonder of a daily sunrise and the experience of floating in a bit of nature and really feeling it, I have started to feel part of some greater whole.
If I were to try and personify it, it's a bit like being in the presence of a very large, loving parent, who's rooting for me every step of the way with their eyes so filled with love that even big mistakes or ugly behaviour don't change a thing. When organised religions say that 'God loves you unconditionally', I think I understand. I feel like I am being very well looked after by the whole universal mishmash of things, and that all I have to do is to do what I want to do. To jump, and know the net will be there and even if it's not, there'll be something. If I crash my face on the concrete, then that's just where we'll be.
And that 'God is everywhere' thing? Absolutely, now I get it... but not as a separate, judgemental father figure, not a god... what I feel is that I'm a part of things. I'm an insignificant nublet in a great big pie. I'm a drop of sea-spray that's white in the air for just for a moment before it plunges back into a thundering wave. All I have to do is to get on with it.
So who am I grateful to? Everything and nothing. I'm grateful up into the sky because the sky is beautiful and I feel good when I look up. I am grateful to individuals when they are lovely or kind or funny or attractive. I'm thankful in a very non-focused way, too, like heat off a summer road, when I get to see dogs playing or acts of love or best of all a person on their own laughing into a mobile phone. That makes me so happy. I think 'I get to experience this. How brilliant.'
I'm thankful when I get to be part of something. I like to think of gratitude being tangible, and flowing off and up and spreading out and maybe condensing again and making a light film on someone's cheek, or a mist on a pond. But that's just a way of thinking, not a truth. It's not right, it's pleasing.
Today, I have so many specific things to be grateful for: for good transport, professional people who did a great job and remained human and warm; for lovely Juliet, who trekked all the way over to Ealing and managed to look after me and inspire me at the same time; for my beloved friend, Pudding; for the man at the bus-stop who beamed and blossomed like a flower at a simple 'good morning'; for kind and patient strangers who let me have a bit of themselves, just for a limited time.
Wherever it goes, whoever it touches, and whether I'm right or wrong, it's all fine by me. Thank you.
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