Friday, June 29, 2007

Finding a Balance and Finding Faith

There’s little secret that I have recently been struggling with my work-life balance. Hence the absence of the blog for the past couple months. It’s gone a bit too far. I understand that. But I had faith in what I was doing, about how I could help my company, and what I could learn in an exciting opportunity. And I look back with joy and regret. ‘

My brother and I were talking about happiness in a fishing boat on a beautiful day this spring. And he mentioned that the joy and fulfillment of one’s life rests on several pillars: work, love, friends and family, community, and god. He pointed out that I was lacking several key pillars. But the one that most eluded me was god. And my struggle there has always been with faith.

Faith. It can lead to good and evil. It can lead and mislead. What is faith? Well an online dictionary gives us two important distinctions:
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence

The more interesting definition is the latter, when faith lacks evidence or logic. But of course it is a sliding scale. How much evidence is definitive evidence? When does a logical conclusion turn into an educated guess into faith and then blind faith itself? The next week or two, I want to examine faith. It turns out that all the pillars depend on it and that sometimes faith in something wrong turns out to be right.

And even this man who resists faith has begun to discover that faith appears in some of the oddest of places. Perhaps I am a more than a man of the cloth, but a man of faith too… Are you?