Breaking protocol: how I found faith in flexibility
Do we need hope, or faith?
Last week I recorded a podcast with psychologist Dr. Ute Liersch. We spoke about hopelessness and the merits that it can have (as I wrote about here last week.)
I then asked her what her perspective was on finding hope.
‘I don’t like the idea of hope’
Oh, alright then, this could be bleak…
‘I prefer the idea of faith.’
Personally, for many years I found it very very hard to have any faith in life. This lead me to try and control things through pushing too hard, exhausting myself and ending up in a little heap of despair.
Can you relate? 🧐🫠😉
I remember being introduced to the concept of faith by my therapist.
She had a sign up on her wall that said ‘Serenity, everything will be alright.’
I used to look up at that sign in disbelief.
Is that serenity?
Living with a faith that everything will be alright?
But what is faith?
When people talk about faith and spirituality the concept of religion is often close behind.
Growing up in the 1980s in North West England we heard a lot about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. I was at the Grand National in 1997 when there was the bomb scare from the provisional IRA. The threat of being persecuted because of your religion was always lurking at the back of my mind when I thought about religion. As far as I could tell it was an incendiary excuse for violence and war.
I thought it best not to enter in to religion. Unfortunately, that left me with a spiritual chasm because having faith; a sense of a power greater than myself, of meaning, of purpose, I believe is fundamental to handling our human tricky things.
Each tough thing that we encounter: rejection, abandonment, betrayal, abuse, loss; each of them is an injury to the soul.
Each one threatens to fragment the very essence of our unique being.
It can snuff out light within us that is ours at birth.
I think that faith is free from religion, although religions may offer pathways into that faith.
Reminds me of a story (queue wafty music as we go back in time).
I got married in Ireland in a Catholic Church by a wonderful priest. I’d always found churches quite terrifying places, when were you meant to stand up, sit down, walk up the aisle, accept bread or not?
I don’t know, I just felt out of place at them. So going to chat to the priest when I wasn’t a christened being, let alone a devout Catholic, felt daunting.
My husband and I had to meet him before we married to talk through what it meant to get married in the Catholic Church and what it meant for our children.
He reassured me,
‘Jacky, I know that you are not religious, but I can tell that you are spiritual and you will have your own way of bringing spiritual teachings into your marriage and to your children.’
That helped me relax a little, maybe this church thing wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The night before the wedding we had a wedding rehearsal. The church was set on a beautiful hill in a small village called Glencullen in the Wicklow mountains.
Incidentally, it is next to a very famous pub called Johnnie Fox’s which is the highest pub in Ireland and has hosted many a famous face - and also the entire congregation of our wedding when they should have been in the church, but that’s another story.
Everything was in order, all the guests had made it from various parts of the world, dresses, cakes, flowers, we were in good shape.
As we walked and talked through the how the service would run we came to the Gospel reading.
The word of God.
To be spoken by the priest.
The priest read the order of service from the altar and then made his way over to me and in his quiet, unassuming air asked me,
“Are these orders of service all printed?”
‘Yes! All done and ready to hand out tomorrow, why?’
“The Gospel. You have your aunt reading the Gospel. Normally that’s to be read by the priest”
I sucked in air and it hung in my lungs, suspended. I figured that this would be a big deal, so what now?
My mind ran through the options: Well, we could just not have the order of service and no one would be none the wiser, my aunt would understand surely. Or we could ask her to read something else or…
As I busily went through the rolodex of options the priest winked at me,
“Well, we’ll go ahead as you have planned it. If we get struck down by lightning so be it, we’ll see.”
We didn’t get struck down by lightning.
In fact we had one of the most glorious September days I think Ireland has ever seen.
During the ceremony the priest declared,
‘God’s gift to Jacky is David and God’s gift to David is Jacky’.
That seemed like a very pretty icing on the cake kind of statement, but I have held the depth of those words to heart at some very difficult times.
Father Eamánn role modelled faith to me in those few times I met him.
There was no drive to control proceedings from him, even when they went against the doctrine of his church.
The greater objective of joining to people in love, in providing communion through acceptance, guidance and generosity showed me a faith that everything will work out, if those values were kept at the heart of what we do.
The priest's quiet wisdom that day offered more than just permission to break with tradition – it showed how faith can work in real life, beyond rules and regulations.
Perhaps you've felt that tension too: between what you're "supposed" to do and what feels authentic to you. Between rigid control and trusting surrender.
When life presents its inevitable challenges, do you find yourself, like I did, trying to control every detail? Or have you found your own way to that serenity my therapist's sign promised – that deep knowing that everything will be alright?
What if faith isn't about perfect adherence to rules, but about holding true to deeper values? About trusting that, even when we step outside the lines, grace can still find us?
That’s it for now,
‘Til next time
Jacky ✨