Mystery – Faith:

If This Card Chooses You – You long to uncover the solution. Do you have faith that there IS a solution? What is your tolerance for the mysterious? Given how the universe works, you may need to crank it up a notch. Do you dream of apocalypses? Religious iconography? Are you a mystery fan but irritated and underwhelmed by most “solutions”? How much uncertainty can you tolerate? Are you afraid of the dark? Chronically underslept? Fear being alone? The Mystery card warns, you have a profound need for faith in your life.

The Faithful Are Rewarded – Untrusting people are untrusted. George Bernard Shaw said it best: liars can’t believe anybody. Everyone knows this, but even so we often rush to trust where it isn’t warranted, then enter a cycle of disappointment, yearning and ill-placed hope that drives our mood still lower. We need somebody and something to rely on. How can we find them?

“People don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel.” Recall your childhood – the people you loved and trusted and the people you were scared by and nervous about. You were developing a “gut instinct.” Who were the friends that stayed with you in the face of adversity and who were the ones who dropped away?

Love always makes the difference. It is the magic salve that soothes and heals life’s inevitable bumps and scrapes. People who offer real love you can have faith in, people who offer something else – status, belonging, self-serving rationales – disappoint us. Faith gets stronger the more it is proved. We may hope for a good day, but we have faith that the sun will come up.

Faith Is Trust & Belief in the Worthy -– Sometimes the mysteries of life are deliberate confusions to keep us confused. Why can’t our politicians ever inaugurate the policies that are the reason we elected them in the first place? They try to convince us that “secret cabals” and “unknown enemies” are at fault. They want us angry and befuddled so we won’t place the blame where it belongs and demand accountability. Secrecy serves the purposes of darkness. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Warriors demand transparency & accountability. Outline your beliefs and begin to act on them. Some mystery is endemic to existence but when people sharply change direction we can still track their path. Less smoke and mirrors and more step by step upgrades are something we can all agree on.

Warriors grow in the level of mystery we can absorb. Algebra has logical answers, quantum theory does not. We solve the puzzles that mystified us as children and keep solving until we come to the puzzles no one can solve. But we keep trying! The limits and un-limits of physics and space are constantly being mapped. We are not content with the label “here be dragons” placed across the unknown. We no longer believe God resents and punishes exploration, science and development. A vaccine was developed against a mystery illness in just one year.

No Hope Without Faith – Insoluble mysteries often have to do with motivation – the spring-work of the soul. Why do we make ourselves miserable? Artists teach us that these questions can be “solved” by posing them differently. Depth psychologists tell us that the shallow reasoning of our surface mind is far less important than deep memories and drives we can uncover through emotional and analytic spelunking. Warriors love mysteries. Develop faith. Never give up.

Models & Mentors – “Faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong.” – 1 Corinthians 16:13

“Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there till some light returns” – Anne LaMott

“If we fight with faith, we are twice armed” – Plato

#Haiku: Mystery

Can’t
“Get to the bottom of”
World, thought, faith, time or Love; it’s
Bottom-
Less