Faith: Real? Or Make-believe?

Sometime in the past nine months I purchased a squirrel-proof bird feeder, which I hung outside of my living room window. Its globe-shaped, barred exterior has 2-inch circular openings that allow birds access to the inside cylinder full of birdseed. The cylinder has four small round openings, each with its own perch below it. The bars of the exterior are narrow enough to keep squirrels out, but believe me, they still try.

The squirrels crawl up my window screens and leap out onto the globe, causing it to swing back and forth as they try, unsuccessfully, to reach the seeds inside. Until recently the only birds I saw inside the bird feeder were small birds: finches, chickadees, tufted titmouses.




A funny side note. My mom will NOT say "tufted titmouse" because she hates the"t" word so much. Hey mom: tufted titmouse, tufted titmouse, tufted titmouse! Ha! I'm cracking myself up here.













Yesterday I postmarked my Guideposts writing contest submission, due June 24. I'm a procrastinator at heart, so I spent many hours over the weekend writing...obviously not on this blog.

OK--four paragraphs of rambling finally bring me to the thought that sparked a blog entry.

Only in the past two weeks have cardinals visited my bird feeder. Being medium-sized birds, larger than the previously-mentioned birds, I assumed they couldn't fit through the openings. I was wrong. They fit fine and now beautiful, red male cardinals and their plainer-looking female companions frequent my bird feeder several times a day. Gorgeous.


Writing a piece for Guideposts, a faith-based magazine, has me in "faith" mode. However, seeing the cardinals reminds me that I have a faith that's both real (to me) and make-believe. As I've said before, I'm a cradle-Catholic, baptized as an infant, confirmed in middle school, mass-every-Sunday (except that one Sunday I lied to my parents) growing up. When I attended a Catholic university, I became agnostic. Go figure. I later married in the Catholic church and carry on my childhood tradition.

Yet, something inside me yearns for mystery bordering on the magical. I like to think that God is speaking directly to me and I know the secret language. Somehow I'm special. That's how I started the idea that whenever I saw a bright red, male cardinal, God was saying hello.

I know that's make-believe. My non-believing friends will eventually point out that all faith is make-believe, something we conjure up to make ourselves feel better, less afraid.

My believing friends will lean towards saying there are no coincidences, though most would pressure me to find a place in scripture where God spoke through cardinals. Especially in the Mideast.

So...faith: Real? Or make-believe?