Faith II

 Lots of churches have things in alcoves, windows, walls, that sustain the imagination that props up faith.  But such faith will not be sustained in times of emptiness, and when your life simply is not working out at all.  Yet many an adult runs to church or to their shrines to pray to someone to fix things.  They want a faith that appeals again to their feelings and imagination.  They say that they are bearing their cross, but they want someone to take it from them.  Jesus bore his own cross until he could not, but never asked anyone to help him.  He died alone, abandoned in feelings and imagination.  But he did not lose faith.  The contemplative knows this faith.  So does the Saint.  You let go of solutions and be in the emptiness.  It might be like Mary, the mother of Jesus or Mary Magdalene, at the cross of Jesus.  They had faith in this darkest of times.