Notes on a Time at Sea
1. Faith is a very strange thing, at least in my experience. People report experiencing "the loss of faith," which I take to mean that they had this thing called faith (however they understood that concept) at one point in time, but then at some later point in time no longer had it. Under that definition, I have never experienced any loss of faith. There has always been this thing, this presence, this sense of something that is far beyond me, and far beyond the collective us. That has never waivered, never gone away. What has changed, and changed fairly radically, is understanding of that presence. There have been periods of my life where I have believed to understand that presence in rather clear and explicit terms. And there have been other times where, despite the continued and sustained presence of the presence, I feel like I have no idea what it is, or what it means. For folks who believe that the proper orientation to this inchoate thing we call "faith&quo