lost and found

Any object you have in your mind, however good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost Truth

~Meister Eckhart

  

My faith had been unwavering for over three years.  It was a faith without object, purpose or design that had erupted laughing at its own undisclosed secret, a word that finally sprang to my lips with nothing whatsoever to say.  

Still it oriented to the mystery of my own existence, a gentle “yes”, clear and present down to the depths of unknowing, from which it presumably came.

At first I celebrated it like a newborn baby, marveling at this wonder of wonders that had alit with such grace into my world.  But over time I learned that it did not depend on me for survival, and would just casually touch into it from time to time with a furtive glance from my heart’s eye.  

Then, one day, I lost it.  I panicked like a mother waking up in the middle of the night searching madly for her baby under the covers.  But it was gone.  I entered that space between two breaths where you momentarily cease knowing how to breathe.  And there I was, holding my faith as limp as a corpse in my arms.  I felt dizzy and confused.

  

Suddenly I saw myself.  And I looked every bit as silly as someone who'd been searching all over the room for the proverbial nose on her face and asking herself, perplexed, “Now where was it that I put it?” when it had never been apart from her in the first place.   

I started to laugh.   

I hadn’t lost my faith at all.  I’d lost my certainty in a brief disconnect with the object I’d mistaken it for.