Here’s a little peom I wrote a few years ago when I was just starting to voice my ideas about faith. I turned away from faith because when I thought of ‘having faith’ I immediately connected the idea with the concept of ‘blind faith,’ a sort of no questions asked belief that has justified everything from the Spanish Inquisition to the continued presence of Rush Limbaugh on the airwaves.
I wrote this poem when I started to look at what faith meant to me rather than what I percieved it to be from outside of me, from others everywhere else. That’s when I started to understand what Zen Master Linji meant when he said, “If you meet the Buddha [on the road], kill him.” I began to apply this idea to the meaning of faith. Like the Buddha, faith is not a static object with set parameters. As much as I want to know faith, I can only know it through my heart, not through my over-analytical head.
Am I?
A sock with divine purpose
To warm the frozen foot?
A watch that reminds the masses
It’s time to zip their boots?
A mosquito stuck in amber
That holds clues to early life?
A blanket statement rendered true
By a believer of only lies?
A hawk?
An owl?
An eagle?
The soaring portly bumble bee?
My faith can show you nothing more
Than my belief in me
2007
Jane's Dynamic Unwinding Compass 
Jane, what a wonderful poem that gets to the heart of the idea of faith, which is fluid and ever-changing. How can it not be?
Thanks Karen! I’m not only excavating faith but also my file cabinet which means a lot of stuff I’ve written in the last 10 years is finally seeing the light of day and it’s so nice to be seen and acknowledged so thank you, old friend.
Peace.