Tom Ellis
Jul 31, 2023

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Thank you for sharing your “dark night of the soul” which is an integral part of the spiritual path for all of us. Only spiritual children equate faith with belief, but beliefs are just our own (culturally and personally specific) interpretation of faith—not the thing itself. Rather, faith is what we have in common with sunflowers and all other living beings: the incomprehensible, but fully reliable, inclination to keep on keeping on, which, when further cultivated, evolves into loving our neighbors as ourselves, and seeing, as William Blake once put it, that “Everything that lives is holy.”
Beliefs are simply maps, and all maps are incomplete; faith is the territory itself. Forget about what you “believe” or hope for yourself. Instead, trust in God, no matter what.

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Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis

Written by Tom Ellis

I am a retired English professor now living in Oregon, and a life-long environmental activist, Buddhist, and holistic philosopher.

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