ON BUILDING OUR FAITH

To be patient, kind and secure is our real nature; anything else is being false to ourselves. - Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," October 12

I believe there is a difference between being false to oneself and being untrue to oneself...but I'm hard put to define that difference.

Maybe being false to oneself is akin to going along with our friends' new "in" thing when it leaves us cold, and being untrue to our self is defending that to our self.

Is that a distinction without a difference?

For whatever reason being untrue to myself seems to me to be a much deeper offense to my inner self. Being false to myself seems like the sometimes expedient "go along to get along" of daily life...which inevitably winds up biting me in the butt.

I'm taken by the word "secure"  in the first part of the sentence, "To be patient, kind and secure is our real nature...." It surprised me that I can believe so completely in our endless supply of patience and kindness but rarely think of having that same endless supply of security. Of course we do. If we have even a smidgen of God in our heart, we've got security.

Now back to my reasoning mind, also known as my common sense: I just learned that my compressor has died and gone to heaven. It's going to cost $6,000 to get a new one, and I don't even know what a compressor is. I confess...I don't care what a compressor is. What concerns me is where I am going to find $6,000. To pass on. To replace something I didn't know I owned.

I was patient and kind to the man who broke the news to me, but my sense of security was dicey at best.

I remind me, this is how we build our faith, our trust in the Father within. But I do sometimes wish he didn't have such high standards for me.

Thank you.