I love to leap across the shadows
to dance with the doubt
to break the bonds of yesterday
and run into the newness of tomorrow
as a child swings to reach the tree tops
I run not away
but to
not casting away all that was
but opening to all that can be
unconcerned with the emptiness or fullness of the glass
but drinking with joyful thirst all the water there
I am fully alive and flying with faith
soaring above the clouds
creating what will be
from what is not yet
and meeting God
in me
and all around me
I dance with the doubt
so I can
fly with the faith.
The very essence of faith is uncertainty. If we know - then it’s not faith, but fact. Uncertainty is the doubt that shadows faith. Faith and doubt are intertwined like darkness and light. It isn’t the doubt that we should fear, but what we do with it, or allow it to do to us, that immobilizes us like a deer caught in headlights or springs us free from our self-oppression. Leaps of faith are just that, a giant jump, our feet lifting from the solid earth, stretching across a chasm of unknowns, in the hope of landing safely on the other side. And, in that moment, in that mixture of heightened anticipation, we have not destroyed doubt, just passed through it.
Blessings,
Chaplain Diana
to dance with the doubt
to break the bonds of yesterday
and run into the newness of tomorrow
as a child swings to reach the tree tops
I run not away
but to
not casting away all that was
but opening to all that can be
unconcerned with the emptiness or fullness of the glass
but drinking with joyful thirst all the water there
I am fully alive and flying with faith
soaring above the clouds
creating what will be
from what is not yet
and meeting God
in me
and all around me
I dance with the doubt
so I can
fly with the faith.
Diana Wilcox ⓒ 2010
The words above came into my head last week as I was preparing a sermon based on two of the Lectionary readings: Epistle - Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 and the Gospel - Luke 12:32-40. After praying and asking to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying, the words "dancing into doubt" just floated into my consciousness.
The very essence of faith is uncertainty. If we know - then it’s not faith, but fact. Uncertainty is the doubt that shadows faith. Faith and doubt are intertwined like darkness and light. It isn’t the doubt that we should fear, but what we do with it, or allow it to do to us, that immobilizes us like a deer caught in headlights or springs us free from our self-oppression. Leaps of faith are just that, a giant jump, our feet lifting from the solid earth, stretching across a chasm of unknowns, in the hope of landing safely on the other side. And, in that moment, in that mixture of heightened anticipation, we have not destroyed doubt, just passed through it.
Blessings,
Chaplain Diana
