the business of faith: calling all you angels.

"Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.  Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.  Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil." - Proverbs 4:23-27


Over the last couple of weeks, the issue of faith has come up a lot in my daily interactions with people and every time I have sat down to write a new entry, its always on the forefront of my mind, but I always choose a different topic because I always think I am not ready to talk about or that I can't even talk about it because I wouldn't know where to begin. Being from a pretty religious family, I certainly remember mandatory church Sundays with my grandmother while growing up  where I thought I got nothing out of the whole experience but lost playtime. As I grew older and mom started forcing me to go church, I was determined not to get anything from the experience if it killed me because I didn't want to be there. On top of that, I went to a catholic high school where not praying before each class period was the odd thing to do. With each church related experience, the further away from the whole experience I pulled away, until eventually I became jaded by the whole idea of faith. 


I want to say I blame the plenty of hypocrisy I experienced but to me its not even a good enough reason. Yes there are hypocritical Christians, but why should I let them determine my experience? During family gatherings, the issue of faith and belief if guaranteed to come up and for as long as I can remember I have always cited that faith is a personal thing. That my relationship with God, my faith and my belief is my and God alone, no one else should tell me what I should and should not do to be a "good Christian", what music to listen to, what to watch what to read, because those things to me do not affect my faith or lack there of. 


I have always been hesitant of talking about faith,church and stuff,  on most days I think I am a non believer, on my better days I wonder about my faith. I know that faith is a journey,  a personal one that is not easy and one that should be taken out of a person's free will and not forced or done to make other people happy. I have going to church ever since I can remember, less in the past couple of years because of college and just being disillusioned with the whole idea. I know doing to church doesn't make you a believer, it certainly wasn't that way for me, but I think its because church is an extension of your faith. I resent people who tell me, that church is the only way to pray. If my catholic education taught me anything its that prayer can happen anywhere, at anytime.   At the momemt I am not sure where I am in my faith but that's for me to find out as time goes by.