The gospel portrays him as a man with a heavy secret – ‘Mary has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit’ (Matt 1:20). Joseph lives his life among people who think one thing while he knows something quite different. He knew something not by the normal way we know things – through seeing, touching or hearing – but by an interior conviction that he had received and which was so strong he was able to go to extraordinary lengths to live by it. We call it faith.
Many wise men have called us throughout the ages to move beyond the world of sense and thought – the world that seems so inseparable from our daily lives – to a world of stillness where we become aware of the ‘I’ which is more fundamental than all my experience. All my thoughts and worries will pass away but the ‘I’ that is me will not pass away. I can easily have different thoughts and worries tomorrow. We have to separate our thoughts, experiences, feelings from the I.
For example, let’s say I am a Zanu (PF) supporter and I have been brought up in my family and among those I mix with to think of my group as the real Zimbabweans. We are the ones who liberated the country. The opposition supporters are people who threaten my life and that of my family. They want to take away from me what I have. I go through life with a fixed thought that these people have to be guarded against and kept out of any positions where they might change the way things are.
These are thoughts and positions people take – but they are also free not to take them. A person can separate himself or herself from thoughts, ‘fixed’ ideas or prejudices. A person can become awake to the fact that the one I am seeing as a threat may well see me as a threat and may ask is this really the way to live?
To move from my position of ‘security’ – where I know who I am because I know who my enemy is – to an awakening of the larger reality of our common humanity is a big step. It is what we can call faith. I may not experience others as my brothers and sisters but I know they are. This is faith. We must not confine faith to the religious. It permeates all life.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis