FAITH

Faith is a tricky thing. It can be found and lost many times in a person's lifetime. Sometimes it's lost and then someone comes along who helps restore it to you. Some people lose it permanently. Some people seem to never have it while some don't want it and, in fact, scorn it as a weakness. People without it live in quiet desperation wanting it but not knowing how to find it. Others have it, but it's misplaced. They give it to someone or something that doesn't warrant it or need it. Faith can be placed in a person, an institution, a religion, one's family or one's self. Without it, life is scary, full of uncertainty and rootless.

I remember when my sister and I were kids and a neighbor down the street invited us to attend church with her family. We were friends with her daughters and went to school with them and played with them after school. My mom said it was okay if we wanted to, so we went.

It was a Lutheran church. St. Stephen's Lutheran Church on Chatsworth Street in Granada Hills, to be exact. We went to the regular church services with the grown ups because we weren't enrolled in Sunday School, since we weren't members yet. The services were good, so Cyn and I decided to try going for a while and see.

You know, it's really a lot easier when you're a kid and haven't learned to analyze, criticize, make comparisons, and add logic to a religious experience. You just accept the experience as it happens, as it is. No questions asked.

Pastor Sorenson was the shepherd to the flock at St. Stephen's. What a preacher he was! He was wonderful. When he did the sermon, there was rapt attention from the entire congregation. No one was bored or inattentive. He never talked down to anyone or made any member of the congregation feel bad. He never seemed to judge anybody, but got the point across about whatever the subject of the sermon was that week. But this isn't what made me so look forward to the services every week. What was so wonderful to me was what happened inside the church when he performed services. When he came in and began, I could feel the tingle of energy build and I could see the energies growing around Pastor Sorenson and watch them fill the church. The light was always so bright and golden around him, just like the haloes you see in the old paintings except that these were real. As he would continue the service, his aura grew and grew until it filled the church. At the time, I thought everyone else could see it too. I do believe, however, that everyone could feel it. I'll bet that this is why his Sunday services were always so well attended.

Well, as they say, nothing this wonderful can last forever. He was transferred to a different church. A more important one, I heard. I guess he deserved the promotion, but it wasn't the same after he left. The magic was gone. Sunday school was no comparison, and the pastor who followed was really not in the same class at all. I stopped going to church after that because it
didn't hold the same feeling for me anymore. The church didn't fill with golden light anymore, and the sermons were more threatening in nature, more about warning you about doing wrong and the punishment to be meted out for doing wrong instead of being about God's love and acceptance of you. I always left feeling bad after these sermons.

It took me many years after that to ever experience anything close to what I felt at St. Stephen's. I eventually learned that I could, once again, see auras and feel that magic. That what I had seen and experienced back then was real. When I could see auras again, I had restored my faith in myself, God, life, and my fellow man. I remember how I felt when one of my students said "Do you realize that when you teach your aura fills the room?". I remembered Pastor Sorenson and felt honored to be included as one who could do that. I also had a moment of enlightenment about what made Pastor Sorenson so special. He didn't try to do it, it was just who he was. The same as I never tried to fill a room with my aura as I taught. I was just doing what I love to do, share my knowledge and enthusiasm with interested students. I had finally come full circle, back to the beginning. I had found my faith by doing what I loved.