To know what faith is, one must look at the relationship between mind, body, and soul. It is a forever giving and receiving triangle relationship that is complex and abstract at the same time. Faith is built on the foundation of connection between you, your home, your communities. The aforementioned interconnected realms of faith work in a complicated spiral relationship that has no beginning or an end; it is always giving and receiving. For example, let us look at the womb of a mother. The baby has the necessary surroundings for it to survive and thrive well. Baby feels the love of its mother right from the time of conception. The relationship sprouts from the faith that the mother is in union with the child, always providing the protection it needs. This is the deeper knowing faith that I wish to share with you all today. The kind of faith that coexists, it is neither taught nor explicit, it merely exists. The only change such faith brings is growth in humanity.

Faith in oneself is an act that starts at birth continues until death. The child begins to make sense of the world, gathering information from its senses to feel stable, safe, and secure from its surroundings. Montessori (1995) asks us to look at the child as a point of union, a link joining the different epochs of history, the different levels of civilization. "She continues to explain this by asking us to use children as our vehicle; for little can be accomplished with adults" (Montessori, 1995, p. 66). We must yearn to get better at believing in oneself just as a child does in every bit of experimentation and exploration to move forward. For an infant learning to walk, every choice and step is a calculated stream of analyzed thoughts taken with a massive leap of faith. Every action leads to a stronger faith in its ability or a learning point to strive for better. This inner work is what one must do to create a better understanding of what and how one thinks. Often as adults, we focus much on the strategic challenges and the pleasures both of which bring temporary solutions and relief, but faith in oneself is that core upon which we neither fall nor rise, we learn to thrive rather than survive. Of course, prayers, attending Church provides us relief. However, without the inner faith in one’s abilities, no religion or spirituality can sustain long. One great way Jesus teaches us to work on our inner faith is explained well in Mathew 6:6 “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your unseen Father. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” This is the step we need to work on creating a space in our mind, our homes, to pray in silence. When we create silence, our Lord speaks to us. For those of us who need to silence our thoughts, I recommend the five freedoms of Virginia Satir, who is known as an American author and family therapist. She is well known among psychologists, and her methods are still used by family therapists and counselors across the country to help people rebuild the faith within oneself in their clients.

When children believe in themselves, they are now ready to dive deeper into their surroundings. This stage brings forth new learnings and discoveries. The child builds interest and is innately thirsty, not for things, but for education and knowledge, through which exploration of the surroundings unfolds. When we spend time diving deeper into the inner dynamics of our home and the closest people we chose to live with, we tend to infuse curiosity, friction leading to new learning and growth, and thus the relationship starts to emerge. As the bond matures, safety, security, empathy, love, care, comfort, and compassion begin to unfold naturally within oneself. Faith in the home and your surroundings significantly impacts our mind, our health, and our soul. "A mother has to feed its child and, therefore, cannot leave it alone. To this need for food is added their mutual fondness and love, uniting two things, both combining in solving the children's problem of adaptation to the world, and this happens in the most natural way possible. Thus, Mother and child are one." (Montessori, 1995, p. 105). Faith in surroundings or home is that of the relationship between the mother and child. An infinite giving and receiving founded on love, safety, and security. We must remember when we experience a surrounding of severe adversities in our childhood, our faith in surroundings becomes unreliable, unsafe, and insecure. Thus, one grows up feeling dangerous, vulnerable, with a lack of love and empathy for oneself and those around. This in turn leads to harmful behavior to self and those around. Thus, going back to faith in oneself becomes crucial for us to change our past beliefs to create new ones. This is the interconnected realms of Faith we must choose to work on for our faith to solidify.

The term freedom within limits presents a contrast; hence let's call it successful freedom to avoid any confusion. This concept is adopted from Montessori education. Successful freedom is when one thinks, speaks, and acts out of conscious interest leading to growth and love for oneself, those around, and the surroundings. Disciplining the mind and body is key to experience freedom. Just as there is no up without the down, there is no freedom without boundaries. Freedom without discipline is dangerous and results in harm. Buddhist monk and author Buddharakkhita (1985) explains in the 163^rd verse in the Dhammapada, "Easy to do are things that are bad and harmful to oneself. But exceedingly difficult to do are things that are good and beneficial." (p. 47). Let us take a look at how we learn the sense of freedom from childhood. Maria Montessori (1995) says, "We betray the idea of freedom when we allow children to do as they like when they have not yet developed any powers of control. They lose their thought process to become disorderly and lack control and become lazy” (p. 205). Self-discipline leads to freedom, and Schmidt & Schmidt (2009) clearly define true freedom as being free to do what we ought to do within limits of responsibility. It is a commitment one must make to the communities to see, hear, and understand freely but act and speak with accountability.

Successful freedom is a conscious act of accountability that is gained through education, growth, and, most importantly, from strong relationships with oneself, others, and the environment. Successful freedom leads to a deeper understanding of the world and the people within it. On the other hand, people who lack self-discipline, misunderstand freedom, which can lead to criminal behaviors, addictions, abuse, and ultimately cause immense harm to humanity. Recent events of racism and bias behaviors towards George Floyd and the Black communities are inevitably the result of misinterpreted freedom and severe lack of empathy, love, and faith in humanity.

Personally, growing up well versed in the Christian faith, the unconditional love of Jesus Christ helped me build a foundation to walk on, as a teenager who left home at the age of 15. My faith has helped me learn the Bible or follow prayers or attend Church and immerse in community work regularly. Most importantly, trust in my Lord is the forever flowing eternal fountain of love that I rely on when adversity hits in daily life. My faith allows me to bring my best out, enables me to experience the best of humanity, trust in people despite how people act and speak, believe in nature, and the works of life around me as we go through this adamant virus. There may be practical ways one can be spiritual without religion. Still, for me, my faith in the Lord allows me to practice self-care, learn to appreciate adversity, appreciate the differences and similarities in those around me, rely on the force within rather than matters that are outside of my control. My relationship with the Lord is that of the mother and child, in union with each other, and ever-growing.

The importance of faith in some form is necessary for humanity to sustain within us. Religion is one of the most popular ways people choose to model their spirituality. However, faith is what leads to spirituality and religious beliefs. Without faith, neither will sustain. Thus, faith plays a significant role in today’s world to help us adapt, resolve conflicts, and empathize with matters outside us. Faith begins at childhood, at home, growing to our surroundings and thus make a more significant impact on our communities. Let us do the inner work to know what our innermost feelings are so that we can bring our best out and release the unwanted. Let us take a moment to check in with ourselves and ask what is that we have faith in. Having faith in faith is the mere beginning of humanity within us. Are we still children wearing adult costumes stuck in a childhood stage that we cannot come out of? If so, can we promise to do the inner work necessary to build a community that our children can grow into filled with compassion and love for one another irrespective of race, color, age, gender, or creed?