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Glimpses of Faith
I never believed in Santa Claus.
I distinctly remember my mother telling me when I went off to school in second grade, “Don’t tell the other kids there isn’t a Santa Claus. They probably believe in him, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings.”
You might be thinking, “What a horrible childhood! You never believed in Santa Claus?!” But it was never a big deal to me. I understood that while they believed one thing and I believed another, the end result was the same. We all got presents at Christmastime.
Faith can sometimes feel a bit like Santa Claus, especially in an age where seeing is believing. As an adult, it’s difficult to accept a concept that is defined by its inability to be seen or proven. Santa was far easier to pin down: white beard, red suit, fat belly. Yet people from all walks of life insist that faith is real.
So I began to wonder… what does faith look like?
Mid-twenties, recently unemployed, Chad Jones was on his way to cash his last paycheck when his car ran out of gas. He was stranded on the side of the road and at his absolute lowest point.
“And literally, it’s one of those moments you see on TV,” Jones said. “God, where you at? If You’re there, why don’t You just give me a hand and get me to the gas station?”
Within ten seconds a stranger pulled up next to him and offered help.
“Just because it’s not in a package that you can buy at Walmart doesn’t mean that you can’t see it,” said Jones, Islamic lay leader at Fort Meade, Maryland, as he sat back in his office. “I think that’s the point. You just gotta be willing to look for it.”
David Cooper was going through seminary with a wife and two kids. He was working a part-time job and pastoring a small church, but still $5,000 short of a basic budget for the year and had no idea where the money would come from.
Cooper said that out of nowhere a group from another, larger church approached him and asked about his finances.
“They simply said, ‘We’ll take care of it,’” said Cooper.
Now Deputy Installation Chaplain at Fort Meade, Maryland, Cooper said, “So often individuals say, ‘I don’t know why, but I just know.'"
“We know it’s there; we know that there is something beyond us,” said Cooper. The best illustration he could think of was a scene from the movie X-Men 2.
“Magneto had been imprisoned in a plastic jail cell,” said Cooper as he leaned forward. “There was this gap between the edge of his jail cell and the exit.”
Cooper’s voice rose and he spoke more quickly.
“He stepped off of his platform that was his jail cell onto this small, circular piece of metal that was floating in the air. He had nothing there to hold him up except that, but he took that step,” said Cooper.
Sisters Lawrence and Bagley, missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Severn, Maryland, knocked on the door of a woman they recently met and were greeted with enthusiasm.
“We go over there and try to build a relationship with her,” said Bagley. “We want her to see that we care about her. Not to preach to her, just to let her know that she’s loved and needed.”
“It’s not enough to believe something if you’re not going to do anything about it,” said Lawrence.
Lawrence said that in a previous visit she noticed a shared interest in art with the woman and thought it would be a nice gesture to give her a personal gift.
“I decided to give her a sketch of Mary Magdalene and the Savior for Easter,” said Lawrence. “My hope was for her to be able to look at that picture and to reflect on what the Savior means to her and help her feel God’s love.”
Gen Kelsang Chogden, Resident Teacher of Kadampa Buddhism at Kadampa Meditation Center in Baltimore, Maryland, said she is on a journey of her own toward the capacity of universal love and compassion.
“Buddhism looks like a religion, but it’s actually very sophisticated psychology,” said Chogden. “It’s taking charge of our mind, learning to watch our mind, and using the tool of meditation to recognize, reduce, and eventually eliminate all negativity that could cause us to harm ourselves or others.”
“Even those things we don’t understand yet, we will be able to understand,” said Chogden.
Chogden compared Buddhist teachings to trying to teach calculus to second-grade children.
“You can’t do it because second-grade children don’t understand calculus. But calculus exists; it’s the same thing with higher realizations in Buddhism,” said Chogden.
Chogden said the idea is to practice what you do know and eventually a higher understanding will follow.
“It’s an individual process and it may take many lifetimes,” said Chogden. “What we do in this lifetime is establish a very steady, stable, ongoing practice and develop a close connection with our qualified spiritual teacher.”
“I want to be found by my spiritual guide in my next life early so that I will have my entire life to practice and attain more realizations,” said Chogden.
And so my question is answered, and the answer surprises me a little… faith looks like Santa Claus. Not the jolly old elf, but the idea he represents. It’s people striving every day to help and encourage others by showing kindness and love.
It’s nice to know we still all get presents at Christmastime.