A Statement of Belief

It's Sunday. I have friends and relatives who are religious. Some of them are even in positions of leadership in their communities of faith. Not all of them mark Sunday as their day of rest and reflection. I respect them. I respect their faith. I even admire it.

There was a time in my life when I longed to add my voice to those of my brothers and sisters in faith and affirm that I believed what they too believed. There was that time in my life when I was captivated by mystery and ritual without superiority or judgement. There are still times when I can be drawn into those beauties and desire a greater faith.

Mostly, I don't desire it. Instead, I can affirm that my beliefs reach beyond what I have learned from experience, reading and research. I can affirm that hope persists in the face of both true hardship and of mild disappointment.

I can affirm that I have beliefs and to you, my brothers and sisters who read the written word, I can confirm these solemnly and in all the elegance and pedantry of a graduate-degree vocabulary:

-- I believe that there is a cure for ignorance, for stupidity, for dismissive thought and lack of thought. This cure requires a respect for reading and thinking and talking. This cure requires a courage to ask questions and often to utter the words "I do not know" or "I was wrong about that."

-- I believe that there are circles of care we have to nurture for the good of all even when they are difficult. These are private: the bond between parent and child, brother and sister, old and young, reader and writer, music and ear. These are public: the support for schools, safe roads, health care, good manners and ever watchful eyes.

-- I believe in love's mysteries, whatever form they may take for each of us, but I am still a proponent of caution. Be careful with your love, your affection and concern. Ensure it is wanted, appreciated and welcome. The balance needed to feel and act, to act and feel is one that we can seldom perfect. A gentle word may often be better than a sudden embrace. An embrace may be needed to keep the coldness at bay. We have impulses we need to keep pure of heart to see clearly what is required of our love.

-- I believe in recovery. Mistakes can often be corrected, compensated or learnt from. These are lessons of self-awareness and the awareness of others that is fed by empathy and a need to achieve some understanding. In understanding there may come peace if not forgiveness.

And from these statements of belief I draw some kind of strength to attempt to explain the phenomena of life with more fluency, to communicate the experience of being human more completely and to connect more meaningfully to you, my bothers and sisters of the written word.

This, I confess to you, is my prayer for our languages, our literature, our arts, our sciences and our lives on this planet.