I understand that faith and reason can clash and create uncomfortable tensions—those tensions play
out in my life, and I can feel them in my bones. But this work has forced me to see that it’s our fear of
the unknown and our fear of being wrong that create most of our conflict and anxiety. We need both
faith and reason to make meaning in an uncertain world.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the terms having faith and my faith in my interviews with
men and women who are living the Wholehearted journey. At first I thought that faith meant “there’s a
reason for everything.” I personally struggled with that because I’m not comfortable with using God
or faith or spirituality to explain tragedy. It actually feels like substituting certainty for faith when
people say, “There’s a reason for everything.”
But I quickly learned from the interviews that faith meant something else to these people. Here’s
how I define faith based on the research interviews:
Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.I also learned that it’s not always the scientists who struggle with faith and the religious who fully
embrace uncertainty. Many forms of fundamentalism and extremism are about choosing certainty
over faith.
I love this from theologian Richard Rohr: “My scientist friends have come up with things like
‘principles of uncertainty’ and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and
theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution
and clarity, while thinking that we are people of ‘faith’! How strange that the very word ‘faith’ has
come to mean its exact opposite.”^3
Faith is essential when we decide to live and love with our whole hearts in a world where most of
us want assurances before we risk being vulnerable and getting hurt. To say, “I’m going to engage
Wholeheartedly in my life” requires believing without seeing.
DIG DEEP
Get Deliberate: Letting go of certainty is one of my greatest challenges. I even have a physical
response to “not knowing”—it’s anxiety and fear and vulnerability combined. That’s when I have to
get very quiet and still. With my kids and my busy life, that can mean hiding in the garage or driving
around the block. Whatever it takes, I have to find a way to be still so I can hear what I’m saying.
Get Inspired: The process of reclaiming my spiritual and faith life was not an easy one (hence the
2007 Breakdown Spiritual Awakening). There’s a quote that literally cracked open my heart. It’s from
a book by Anne Lamott: “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”^4 Her books about faith and
grace inspire me.^5 I’m inspired by and thankful for When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd^6 and
Pema Chödrön’s Comfortable with Uncertainty^7 ; they saved me. And last, I absolutely love this quote
from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist: “... intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the
universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know
everything, because it’s all written there.”^8
Get Going: When I’m really scared or unsure, I need something right away to calm my cravings for
certainty. For me, the Serenity Prayer does the trick. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen!
How do you DIG Deep?