Keeping the Faith

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi


Keeping the faith

Chaos theory was all the rage a few years ago.

The (lay) physics world was fascinated by it. Fractal geometry. Initial conditions. Small changes, small actions making all the difference in the world. The butterfly effect.

Movies emerged. Books appeared. The secular world, floundering for something “real” to believe in, finally found something that kind of made sense of God.

It was all faith, really.

Not to say the mathematics of chaos theory aren’t interesting – damned amazing, actually. Branches of trees follow the same geometry as branches of our veins as branches of our rivers. Come to think of it – and I did think about it, a lot – damned weird.

But what did the mathematics mean? What did it refer to? Did it reflect the thing out there scientists wonder about and we interact with and call “reality”? Did anything reflect that?

No one could say.

It was all faith, really.

Same goes for the actions we take to re-version ourselves. Or to save the world. Or not.

We each believe in our personal heroes – Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Muhammad Ali, or any of them – the ones who represent for us the things we want to be – the version we want to become – and we can point to actions they took that changed the world and say, see, it can be done. But you have to be someone great to do it.

(Subtext: And I’m not.)

(Sub-subtext: So it doesn’t matter what I do.)

But what did our heroes’ actions change? What effect did they have?

They changed us. And millions of people like us. One person at a time. And all because our heroes had faith in their actions, and in themselves.



Re-versioning takes a lot of faith. Especially when you’ve questioned all of the things you’ve done in the past and the dreams you’ve won and lost and the people who’ve come and gone and the ideas that you believe might maybe be the ones that, this time, will take you out of yourself and into the world and become real enough that you believe, that you have faith, that will result in actions that matter to more than your mother and your cat.

It's all faith, really.

Sometimes, when we’re re-versioning, things get dark. It’s difficult to reinvent. It’s difficult to honestly, lovingly say: ok, where are the holes in me? Where are the bugs in this version that are stopping the flow of information/action/effectiveness/love/faith? And, instead of going deep into therapy – which, sometimes, some of us have to do anyway – re-versioning says, forget how the bugs got there. Just fix ‘em.

And in our darkest re-versioning hours, we ask: But what difference will it make? What if this version has as many (but different) bugs as the last one? (It will.) What if I have to create version 2.99999? (You will.) What’s the point of that, anyway?

The point is the path. The point is what happens while we build version 2.99999.

Once you get older, with enough time under your belt to actually have friends for decades, a funny thing happens. People – sometimes people you’ve known lightly – will say, “I remember when we did X, you said…” And they go on to describe some experience you had together and some words you (evidently) blurted out and how much it meant to them and thanks and for the life of you, you won’t be able to remember even knowing them that long, much less anything of the experience or the so-called “wisdom” that popped out of your mouth.

You never know when what you do will change the world.

It’s not the Big Things that do it – the achievements and the wins and the stuff (house/boat/car) and the times your mother says I’m so proud of you – although those things, too, affect the world a little.

It’s the small stuff. Both good and bad.

And you have to have faith that, if you move and think and love and act and talk from that honest, open, exploring, believing, trusting part of your soul – the one that says, yes, you are here, yes, you are part of this, yes, you are integrated, somehow, someway, into the human race, and yes, what you do every moment does matter – if you act from there, the world sighs and gathers you in its arms and passes on the word and someone somewhere listens from their trusting part of their soul and acts accordingly. And you’ve changed the world.

But you never know it.

That’s the part that requires faith. That’s where chaos theory comes in – where we have to believe that the smallest breath of air, the smallest words we utter, the tiny, effervescent touch of kindness we offer to a bird, a child, a person in pain, ourselves – goes out and says, hey. There is kindness in the world. There is honesty. There is the way to be the change you want to see.

I could do the math for you, if I had a PhD in calculus. But we don’t need the math. Besides, even the mathematicians and the physicists and the chaos theorists aren’t sure if the math reflects anything that’s out there “really.”

All we need is faith. Because the world really needs a kind word from your heart.




Thanks, Anthony DiMaio

*****

Who are some of my heroes? Gandhi, because he believed non-violence and love could conquer violence and hate (and it did – his beliefs freed India from one of the world’s strongest governments); Martin Luther King, Jr., because he believed in a dream that would happen whether he lived or died (and it did and is still growing); Muhammad Ali, the world’s biggest, strongest, toughest boxer, because he defied his war-mongering government and followed his Muslim beliefs and refused to kill another human being, going to prison instead of war – even though it cost him the Big Thing: the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship (and it did – but he showed them and got it back later).

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