Lessons of Faith

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately. Not in the religious sense. In fact, I think it was all those religion textbooks with faith in the title that had me thinking it was a throw away word, one of those words that people say over and over so that it has become meaningless.

Lately, I've been trying to restore the meaning for myself. As a teacher, I always send my students to the Oxford English Dictionary when I want them to reconsider the meaning of a word. So I followed my own instruction and found this definition listed first: "Confidence, reliance, trust (in the ability, goodness, etc. of a person; in the efficacy or worth of a thing; or in the truth of a statement or doctrine)."

This is the kind of faith I've been considering. Confidence, reliance, and trust in oneself, in others, in opportunities, in the universe.

One day, I was placing an order at Amazon, and I needed to purchase something else in order to get into the $25 free shipping range. Given my recent ponderings, I typed "faith" into the search box. I was certain it would yield a bunch of books I wasn't interested in. I should have had more, well, faith. One of the first books that came up was Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World. Taylor's Leaving Church had been recommended to me before, so her name jumped out at me. Plus the book had a lovely cover. (I've also had a thing with birds lately, but we'll talk about that later.) So I started to read more about the book. An Altar in the World is about finding the sacred in the mundane, the holy in the simplest of our everyday activities. I immediately added in to my cart, and I devoured it in a couple days. Not since reading Lauren F. Winner have I seen myself so clearly in the pages of a book. I passed it onto our pastor, one of the people who had recommended Leaving Church to me, and today he recommended it at a congregational meeting. His wife was sitting behind me and whispered, "I LOVE that book!" So, I've started a bit of a trend - all because I typed "faith" in a search engine.

But this isn't the only time this trick has worked. I was talking to someone about faith, perhaps in a more religious sense this time, and she said, "You need to get a bracelet that says, 'I'm just enjoying the journey.'" Something about that suggestion struck me. Later that night, I went to Etsy, and typed "faith" in the search box. One of the first things to come up was this necklace from Daisy Metal Creations.

I was dumbstruck. It couldn't have been more perfect. It seemed to speak to all the different types of faith I've been considering. So I bought myself an end-of-the-semester present.

Is it weird that faith is using the Internet to teach me a lesson?