The shuffle of faith

You can’t fit everything you could possibly need in a backpack — and yet, it’s all you’re going to have. (Image from Pixabay)

Every day, I wake up and look at the coronavirus statistics reported by The New York Times, trying to make the number of new cases decrease with the power of my mind.

Y’all, I’m so sorry—for the most part, it doesn’t seem to be working. At least, it’s not happening as fast as I would like it to.

I’m frustratingly powerless. The recent mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder emphasize the scope of this lack of influence. All I can do is what I can do in my own little life. And even that is not going the way I planned.

This powerlessness has an inherent paradox. Even though I know that all of my plans and intentions can be destroyed in an instant, I still have to make them. Even though I have no way to ensure that an attempt to create a particular outcome will be successful, I still have to try.

My life is a weird collaboration between God and me, in which I’m writing a melody to unknown lyrics, or dancing to music I can’t hear. In the moments where I’m not sure where my part leaves off and God’s begins, it can be confusing and frustrating.

How do I know whether I’m making the right choices? how do I know whether I’m headed on the path that will take me where I want to go? I don’t. I escape this by realizing that there are no “right” choices. And there are no other paths, really. The one I’m on will always be the one I’m on, by definition. I only get the one life.

There’s a sense of peace that comes from knowing that I can’t fix everything and I’m not responsible for what other people do. But finding that line is always a challenge. What can I do? What kind of contribution can I make to the world? How can I help others who are hurting? How can I avoid causing harm? How can I be the best steward of the influence I do have?

I don’t expect to find definitive answers to most of these questions in my lifetime. It’s hilariously terrible to see that even that which I undertake with the best of intentions, such as creating a school that is meant to be a joyful, safe, accepting place, can cause trauma. I empathize with all the parents out there who brought life into the world only to find themselves maligned and and resented by their own offspring—for the egregious crime, perhaps, of requiring a reasonable bedtime.

There’s really no way to win—or, the only way to win is to accept that there is no way to win. All we can do is accept reality as we perceive it to be, which is the closest we can come to accepting it as it is. It’s all we’ve got, and there’s a certain freedom in that.

In the moments where I must make a leap of faith—trying something that I’m not sure will work, that I possibly have no control over whatsoever—the game I’m playing is not to push as hard as I can to force the end result I want. Instead, it’s to sing that song whose words I don’t know, to dance to that music I can’t hear. I hate it. But I’ll do it. What other choice do I have? We’ll call it the “shuffle of faith”—dragging myself along, going through the motions, and eventually getting there. Wherever “there” is.