From the latest essay by Rhyd Wildermuth:
Again, worlding is what we do and is not dependent on what we believe. This make the question not “what is true?” but rather “what do we include?” We already live in a world full of gods and spirits, but for the disenchanted mind, these are so distant in the background and so excluded from our consciousness that we can say “they don’t exist” without any feeling of falsehood.
But what we’re really saying is “I don’t include them in my worlding.”
This brings to my mind the thoroughly argued (perhaps argued to death) question of faith–a word which I don’t even like, to be honest. It’s been so thoroughly bashed and abused that it feels most compassionate to lay the poor word to rest for a few centuries until some fresh wind stirs it to life again.
The damage done to the idea of faith is one reason why I believe the Protestant Reformation was an unfortunate mistake. The dispute over faith and works has resulted, on the whole, in an idea of faith that cashes out to “belief without proof.” Enter the apologists and the atheists, arguing ad nauseum.
At this point, I prefer Conan the Barbarian’s approach: “What god do you pray to?” As the Weird Studies guys point out about that clip, the phrasing is important. “What god do you pray to?” Not “what god do you believe in?”
Years ago I was talking to an academic historian friend (a Christian) who said comparative religion scholars had often misunderstood world “religions” by looking at them through a Christian lens that centers beliefs. It is important to understand, he said, that the day to day life of most practitioners is more about diet and calendar than any set of doctrines.
Getting back to Rhyd’s essay: The relevant point is not whether I (squeezing my eyes tight like a child wishing for a Red Ryder BB gun) believe in spirits. Rather, I ask myself, “do I include them in my worlding?” Do I worry over intellectual questions about spirits of the land or do I build them a shrine in the backyard and make offerings? “I will shew thee my faith by my works.”
There is a place for those intellectual questions, to be sure. But before all else, it is the orientation of the heart in day-to-day practice that matters most. In place of the word “faith” I would substitute “acting in trust.” That phrase holds together what the last few hundred years of disputes in the Christian west has pulled apart. When I build that shrine, I am acting in trust; I am building my life and structuring my dwelling in relationship with a living cosmos. Living in that way, the intellectual questions take their proper place.