Faith is more than just believing in something or someone. We know how faith feels and live in our body. We also know what it feels like when faith abandon us.

The common question about faith is how do we cultivate it. This is as famous a question as the one that asks how do we build trust; in ourself or in others or in others to us.

The question on how to build trust has been answered for me but the one on faith has eluded me so far… until now.

I recently read a book titled “Laughing All the Way to the Mosque”; a quaint ‘little’book by a Canadian Muslim journalist by the name of Zarqa Nawaz. Btw, this book was given to me by a dear childhood little sister-friend by the name of Nik Sunita (or Intan as she is to me). What a wonderful easy to read, funny and thought provoking little tale right with up there with the best of its kind of genre like Tiziano Terzani’s “A Fortune-Teller Told Me”; another journalist but Italian. Hmmm, now that I made that connection, i wonder if journalist writes the best stories compared to novelist? Ok. Enough of my rambling.

In Zarqa’s book, there was one passage that gives me a part of the answer to the question about cultivating faith. I admit it is not a full answer yet, for me, but a good one to start my quest.

In the book she wrote,
“Having faith is more than just believing; it is about living with fear and self-doubt and working through those feelings until they bring some sort of answer.”

That is how she thinks faith can be cultivated.

As I admitted earlier, I don’t think this is the whole answer I am looking for yet I think there is a lot of truth in what she says. I will take it for a test drive and maybe by doing so, in the journey of testing it out, an answer I am truly satisfied with will emerge. I have faith that it will.