Great Faith

I am and have always have been fear-based. Among the long list of my weaknesses, this is perhaps at the top. I lose sleep as a result of fear, it drives my anxiety, and it is the sweetest nectar for the demons that get between me and that elusive state of inner calm. It is my constant, unrelenting companion, and it gnaws at my soul.

Traditional psychological wisdom holds that the antidote to fear is courage. Courage is holding the fear as your guidepost while you take action toward resolving the thing that is feared. While courage is certainly the most direct medicine, it is often difficult for me to find it on the shelf. There is another antidote that I have been trying to ingest that some suggest might work just as well. That antidote is faith.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition it is often held that there are three elements needed to make spiritual progress: great faith, great doubt and great perseverance. In the world of autism treatment, we face the deep need for all of these. We need faith to overcome the fears that surround us: the fear that our children won’t learn to speak or have friends, that our interventions won’t work, that we won’t be as good as we can be, that we won’t be able to get that report done on time, that our supervisors or the parents with whom we work won’t like us, that the economy will threaten our jobs, and on and on.

Many religious folks will tell you that the problem with the word “faith” is that it is a noun. As such, it is something you either have or don’t have; it is something you can somehow possess. This is problematic because faith is really something you do, not something you have. (Arguably it should be a verb; harden the “th” sound as in “tithe” and pronounce it as though it were spelled “fathe.”) One does not “have faith” but instead one actively “fathes”. To fathe is to actively believe that one can do or accomplish or have or be or overcome the thing that is feared. Whatever obstacles fear engenders “faithing” can overcome.

Faith often teases truth to the point where those who are strongly wedded to truth and its kissing cousin reality become dismissive. When I feel most troubled, I cannot bring myself to believe things that I wished were true but that I have no evidence to believe are in fact true. I can, however, make “soft plans” coupled with the belief that somehow, either operating within or outside of the box, I can get to the other side of whatever I fear.

Parents of children with autism “fathe” their way into seeing their children as gifts, celebrating each small victory of learning along the way. PCFA staff “fathe” their way into finishing their reports, confronting their supervisors, trying new interventions, facing crowded freeways, and instilling confidence in their supervisees.

Faith, I believe, must become as natural as the breath. If absent, it requires intention to revive it, but it should become our constant companion in order to combat the fears that plague us. So when the fear rises up within us, we “breathe” the belief that we can do the thing that is feared, and this faith transforms the energy used by fear to the energy required to take action.

It is always this brief suspension of “realistic” thinking that allows us to take the leap to become just a little more than we are. It allows us to have the courage to love better, to confront those who hurt us, to receive love and the other gifts those in our lives try to give us, and to see the world as filled with potential and awe. Faith is a true antidote to fear; it can still the demons inside us and guide us toward a sense of peace.