I Gotta Have Faith

I kinda sorta (unintentionally) misrepresented myself…over there to the right of this post where I wrote an explanation about the title of this blog. At the end I wrote that I planned on using experience, intuition and faith to guide me. And while I absolutely 100 super duper percent had every intention of doing so…

I kinda sorta forgot about faith.

Faith that despite my fear of looking in the stern, my truth is there all lit up and waiting for me. And it is up to me to center my Self in that.

The realization of it hit me like a bolt from out of the blue. I'm, honestly, not sure I even know what faith is or what having faith means, but I decided I already must have it (whatever "it" is). So I tried to feel faith right there beside me (with courage as my wing woman on the other side) and have an encounter with the gargoyle-ish monster.

In the meditation that followed, I turned around, walked to the stern, and sat on the floor of my lifeboat so that he/she/it and I could look directly into each other’s eyes (it was still under the rear bench). After several clunky, awkward and, yes, fear-filled minutes (I think for both of us) our eyes tentatively connected with each other. He/she/it told me that I was looking at my deepest, darkest fears about myself and others, but it could not find the thoughts to articulate any more than that.

I asked it to come out into the light so we could sit on the benches and take each other in with our eyes. It obliged me. What emerged from under the bench were two clear and vibrant eyes surrounded by a black, amorphous, undefined shape.

I had absolutely no idea what to make of this entity, and since it was having trouble telling me anything further, I accepted that we would not be going any deeper in our discussion for today (at least we were eye to eye…it’s a start).

At the same time, I started growing very concerned for both of us because the sun was quite bright and we were sitting vulnerable and unprotected. My Irish skin can’t take that kind of sun exposure and my counterpart was (excuse me for saying this ) basically a black blob…not good either.

After I finished putting SPF 75 on myself, I leaned over to put some on my new sailing partner. The touch of my hands on its “face” brought all my senses to life. I could smell and taste its hot decaying breath, hear the rattle of its inhale and exhale, see the blackness and decay of its skin on its now revealed form, and feel rough calluses all over its body under my fingers. But, most importantly, I felt its sadness and feelings of complete and utter abandonment…by me.

This isn’t a he, a she, or an it. This is a me: a compilation of all those ugly, or unacceptable, fearful human parts of me that I don’t want to own, so I pretend they don’t exist.

My heart went out to me. Without a second thought, I reached across the seemingly cavernous divide between us and put my arms around my deepest darkest fears.