Have Faith in the Light

Dear Dreamer,

Going into the New Year, I am filled with hope, but I cannot pretend I’m not shaken by what I see. The specter of war looms ahead and I wonder if we will call it into our reality or draw the line.

This is a time when it could be so easy to fall into despair, to let your fear grab you by the throat and choke you to your knees. There is so much duplicity.

Do you know what I mean?

The kind of duplicity that feeds off of suffering and discord. The person who takes advantage of crisis, fuels it or creates it. When your tragedy becomes their opportunity. When they arrive as if cavalry, as if to save the day, as if they were looking out for you, and you lay bleeding while they graciously extend one hand and hold a knife with your DNA on it in the other.

Can we hold ourselves steady in the face of such greed? It has a wide playing field and many fans.

Can we cup within our hands the light of hope, protect it from the winds that threaten to blow it out?

We must. We are not powerless. We’re just not omnipotent. We must focus on what there is we can do, and not on what we can’t — to have faith.

Faith is believing in love, its effectiveness and its power. It’s knowing every true act of love has a purpose, even if it doesn’t wind up doing what we think it should.

Faith is knowing that we’re in this together, that what we can’t attend to or have the talent for will be picked up by someone else.

Faith is knowing there’s a larger song being sung, a bigger story being told than just the chapter, section or paragraph we can read. That there are many writers, a diversity of creators, adding to the story of an unfolding humanity, who have the same force and passion of life flowing through them, too.

Faith is steadfast loyalty to the belief that a good work is being done, that we’re a part of it, that we make a difference every time we choose to not only imagine a better way of living but desire it for ourselves and others. That we can change things, including the course of destruction that is occurring in our lives and to the earth and children.

Faith is knowing we have a voice, and for as long as we use it, the opportunists who slither around podiums and social networks and human frailty will never have the last word.

Faith is the commitment to be bigger than ourselves and cognizant of our limitations. No one is asking us to carry everything on our shoulders. We should not despair when we can’t. We can do our part.

You can lift your candle and have faith in the light that falls from that one flame. You are only one, but you are powerful, because you are one — one of many who will make a difference in whatever way our skills and talents call for.

Faith doesn’t distinguish us from others. It unites us.

So I will nudge my shallow and rapid breath to a deep inhale and stand in the midst of this storm. That racing storm front can turn in a heartbeat or run me over. I will be here.

There is a power within the center of our being, even as our own turmoils rage around it. Stand from your strength.

You won’t stand alone. We have each other. We have the light.

Demian Yumei,
~Keeping the Dream

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