“Like the watcher of a doe sipping water from a stream, we must approach faith holding our breath lest we startle her wild presence.” – Beverly Lanzetta
Faith as a wild, unpeopled presence becomes felt over time. Her covert movements in cold, dark mornings are sensed as a slip of shadow over there. A bolt through the dark right here. A still, listening, unseen ear pricked for doubt or fear. One twitch and she flees.
And yet doubt, Great Doubt, is often what sends me her way. It leads me beyond the woods, down into the dank rocky ravine where no trails lead. Step by slow step in slippery blackness. Following only the essence of Silence. Neither holding breath nor breathing hard: both drive her away.
Soft, tender without desire, without wanting, seems to lure her back. The soundless dance resumes. She leads the way through the doubt, the fear, the unseeable, the unknowable. She watches curiously when I, now, cross into the essence beyond even her terrain. Who say that they have her, know her, or circumscribe her by any means has missed her entirely.