A Former Member Asks the Minister for a Favor
She says her family
shuns her. She says
it has something to do
with God. She says
the cancer has gone
way too far. She says
when her brother died
the family pastor said
he went straight to hell
and “Let that be a lesson.”
She says, “Will you do
my funeral?” A light rain
falls on the lake,
circles in circles.
On “Faith”
Faith is a noun. It’s a person, place, or thing.
An online etymology site tells me it came into English in the mid-13th Century.
The word means, the site tells me, “duty of fulfilling one’s trust.”
The word comes to English from Old French: feid, foi, which meant “faith, belief, trust, confidence, pledge.”
The word came to Old French from Latin: fides, which meant “trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief.”
The word ultimately derives from from the oldest known ancestor of English, Proto-Indo European: *bheidh- which also gave us the Greek word for faith, the one that appears in Christian scripture, pistis.
The dictionary notes that the word in its theological sense dates from the late 14th Century. Meaning this: What religions today mean by faith, as in “you gotta have faith,” did not exist as a concept when the Christian scriptures were written.
I’m just sayin’ . . .
See for yourself: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=faith
David Breeden earned an MFA degree from The Iowa Writers' Workshop, a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, and a Master of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School. He has published several books of poetry, translations, and essays. His blog and sermons can be found at www.FirstUnitarian.org
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