Faith was my first language
Faith was my first language. Before I learned to read, before I understood the complexities of culture, identity, or religion, I was immersed in a world where spirit was woven into everyday life. I grew up in a small apartment in Manhattan with an Indian father who was a swami. Ours was not a typical household. Prayer, meditation, chanting, and discussions about consciousness were as common as conversations about school or the weather. My father spoke of God's as if he were speaking about a beloved friend's. To him, the divine was not an abstract idea or something reserved for temples and ceremonies. God was present in the food we ate, the breath we took and the people we met. As a child, I absorbed this understanding naturally. I learned that life itself was sacred and that there was an intelligence moving through all things. Long before I could explain faith, I was living inside it. As I grew older, however, I became fluent in another language—the language of questioning. I...