Let Us Have Faith

I began my day calling my spiritual big brother on the phone, to engage him in a 30-minute existential conversation, even before I had my morning coffee. During the conversation, we talked about the current state of the country, including the massive education and government layoffs in California. I mentioned to him that it seems there is no secure job nowadays. Only a few years ago, people talked about three areas that would probably offer security: healthcare, real estate, and government. That isn’t true any more.

And then my big brother e-mailed me this quote, from Helen Keller’s poem, Let Us Have Faith:

Security is mostly superstition
It does not exist in nature
Nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing
To keep our faces toward change and
Behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

Later in the day, while my beadmaker friend and I watched the movie Akeelah and the Bee on TV, she reminded me of this quote from the movie, originally written by Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”