BELIEFS

Beliefs drive our dreams, our passion and our purpose.

The word belief comes from be, to live, and lief, to love. So to be-lieve is to be in love. If you believe in God, you love Him. If you believe in yourself, you love yourself. If you believe in your spouse and your children, you love them. But there's a difference between religious and non-religious beliefs. The former is about believing that God exists. The latter is about doing what you believe in. You can do religion, of course, but it's more likely you'd say, "I believe in God." than "I believe in religion." Saying "I believe in golf." doesn't mean I believe there is a game called golf. It means, "I believe in playing golf." And if you believe in baseball, well, you better love the Yankees!

Several years ago I read a story in which the main character said, "We could bear the poignant truth that birds sing beautifully for a time then become a pile of lifeless feathers if we could embrace the possibility that there are other worlds to sing in." The story is by Paul Villiers and is titled Information Please. A few years later, I read a story about a bird named Jonathan Seagull who discovers there are other worlds to fly in.

Information Please is a true story and Jonathan Livingston Seagull is make believe. Either way, truth and fiction dance in all good stories. Both inspired me to think deeply about what matters in the here-and-now of life in this world and the there-and-then of life in the next world. The link below will take you to a story that might encourage you to do the same. But it's not fiction. It really happened... to me. It's a memoir of my efforts to build a bridge between my need to know, in a rational, objective way, and my need to believe in an emotional, subjective way that there are other worlds to sing in...