When President Trump stood in front of St. John’s church holding a Bible, the question of faith was lifted front and center for many people. Certainly, that was so for me. But, like many, I found myself asking how we can understand faith — especially in a public context — when we’re witnessing so much injustice? To be at all able to move forward in times of great difficulty means drawing on one’s own deepest experience for strength. It means, I believe, relying on a renewed kind of faith.
America — and, indeed, the world — is experiencing a crisis of faith. The trust we placed in our institutions, our representatives, and our public culture has been badly shaken. But the challenge we’ve been given is facing the possibility that in the chaos and sadness of these crises we can find a more profound connection: to ourselves, to one another, and to our essential values like equality, justice, and love.
Moments like the one we’re currently experiencing are rife for despair, which feeds on our insecurity, our fear and sense of helplessness. Despite this, over the past few weeks I’ve heard many people speak about finding something inside them they didn’t know they had. Perhaps they remember to stay more connected to their deepest values, or to the immediacy of love, or to the need to live a meaningful life.
Often, we equate the word faith with dogma, or a rigid adherence to a belief system. Sometimes we even think it entails being silenced when it’s questioned. But from a different perspective, faith is the simple act of offering your heart to someone or something. It isn’t something that can be commodified, such that if you don’t have enough or the right kind you will be condemned. It’s not for show. Rather, faith is about connecting to our own inherent capacity for wisdom and love. In this sense, the deepening of faith is a journey fuelled by intelligence, discernment and self-respect.
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We may be tempted to think that faith is simply the belief that everything will turn out just fine, according to our own private timetable and definition of “just fine.” But we’d be mistaken. The murder of George Floyd — like that of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and too many others — brings into sharp relief the tragic reality of racism in the U.S. There is no superficial cure for this problem; certainly, only having faith that it will all be okay will not make it so.
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The Buddha teaches that the human mind is capable of experiencing both tender compassion and hostile malevolence, inspiring the highest good and the greatest wrongs. Our society reflects that same seeming paradox. After protests in Minneapolis, Sanford Middle School requested 85 bags of food to help families after local stores were looted and burned. They wound up with 20,000 bags. Take a moment to think about that. The organizers of that charity drive, along with those who donated, recognized a singularly important idea: recognizing all the pain and injustice, we not only can but must set forth to do whatever is in our power to help make this a better world.
Acts like these guide us toward a deeper definition of faith, which we might consider an acknowledgement of possibility — for hope, for kindness, for compassion — that allows us to engage without a promise of definite, immediate reward. This is what gets us out of bed, out of despondency, to see if life can be different.
One of the many crucial lessons we can learn from this moment is that faith is a dynamism. It reminds us continually to look for what might yet be rather than allowing despair, discouragement or sullen withdrawal to lay waste to any sense of possibility.
Our country has a long way to go before we’re able to truly heal these wounds. But every long road invites a first step. By embracing this open possibility that is faith, we can take that first together right now.
Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer and industry leader, a world-renowned teacher and New York Times bestselling author. As one of the first to bring meditation and mindfulness into mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, Sharon’s secular, modern approach to Buddhist teachings is sought after at schools, conferences and retreat centers around the world. Sharon is co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, her seminal work, Lovingkindness and her newest book, Real Change: Mindfulness To Heal Ourselves and the World, coming in September of 2020 from Flatiron Books.
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