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 traveled to India searching for answers about my father, his path, and what it meant to dedicate one’s life to spirit. Instead of finding certainty, I found more questions. I explored different traditions, sat with shamans, attended ceremonies, sought mentors, and wandered through many landscapes of belief and doubt. There were times when I wondered if I had lost my faith altogether.

Looking back now, I see that faith never left me. It simply evolved. As a child, faith was trusting the prayers my father taught me. As a young woman, it was having the courage to question everything. As a single mother, it was finding the strength to keep going when I felt alone. As a healer, it became trusting that transformation is possible even when the path forward is unclear. Today, faith feels less like certainty and more like surrender, not giving up, but relaxing my grip on the need to control every outcome.

The older I get, the more I realize that faith is not about having all the answers. It is about cultivating a relationship with mystery. It is the quiet conversation between the human heart and something greater than itself. Sometimes that conversation happens in prayer. Sometimes it happens in meditation. Sometimes it happens while walking in nature, sitting with a cup of tea, or moving through heartbreak. The form changes, but the relationship remains.

People call it by many names, God, Spirit, Creator, the Great Mystery, Love. The name matters less than the connection. My father spent his life teaching people how to nurture that connection. As a child, I thought he was teaching philosophy. Now I understand he was teaching a language.

After years of searching, questioning, leaving, returning, and beginning again, I realize that faith is still the language I speak most naturally. It was my first language, and maybe, when all is said and done, it will be my last.

~Shanti Freedom Das