Believing

So what do we do in this life if we don’t believe?

Believe in something. Believe in God. Believe in Buddha. Believe in Chocolate. Believe in furry bunnies. Believe in Music, as Mac Davis once admonished us to do.

Believe in something.

Those who believe in nothing live dark, dreary lives in which their days collect like muddy water around a storm drain. Those who believe in nothing live sad hours which go by slowly and excruciatingly. Those who believe in nothing are empty, husks of skin and bones waiting for the coming of the end, which will look disturbingly like the rest of their days.

I knew a young man once who said he only believed in what he could touch and see. Although that was something, inevitably it was nothing because what you can touch and see can deceive you. It limits your brain. It makes your heart constrict.

This young man was a scientist, and a darned good one. He fixed an experiment in gravity once by using rubber bands, an elegant solution no one else thought of.

Still, he was sad. He was angry. He felt he lived for nothing, despite his ambitions in physics.

It made me sad. This young man had such potential, but he truly believed in nothing. He had few friends. He was a failure in romance. His scientific journey was interesting but ultimately led him nowhere.

It worried me, too, because this young man was my son. He had once played music with me in church, had (at the age of 10) decided to be baptized Catholic. For a few years the Faith was a beacon and a joy to him. But when he hit UC Berkeley and started dealing with college students, I guess the fashion was to question everything and believe in nothing.

I loved him anyway. I somehow knew he would find his way.

He graduated with honors from Berkeley, then attended Purdue for his Masters. That’s when the miracle happened.

He met a lovely young woman while attending Swing Dancing lessons. They took up with one another, then married.

He went to Michigan University in Ann Arbor for his Ph.D and fell in with a crowd of “Traditional Catholics”–they attend Latin mass each week. His latent Catholicism blossomed. He went from believing in nothing to a rich, complex system of faith which informs his life and elevates his spirit.

And his life has been blessed. He has a lovely wife, a beautiful child, a faith community in which he belongs, a good job, a happy heart.

To see how dark his life was when he believed in nothing, compared to the light and joy in his life now (though he tends to lecture me on how to be a Catholic!), is to understand the power of faith.

Faith in God. Faith in Life. Faith in Joy.

Believe in something. Let it fill you with happiness.