Faith, Hope, and Love. I've come think that many of the most important nouns in our language ride on the backs of verbs to get to where they're going.

In my preparations for a couple of Wisdom Weekend Retreats on "The Gift of Uncertainty" in the past couple of years (a topic next up Feb 5 - after a second "Meaning and Purpose" weekend Dec 4), I came to an important realization. I began to understand deeply that the noun "Hope" rides on a very sturdy verb that carries it sell. And of course it doesn't take much to see that the same is true of "Love." There is love because of loving. It was a bit more of a mental leap, but one that insisted on being taken, to see that "Faith" is the same.

In challenging times, we hold on to hope by engaging in the spiritual activity of hope. And there is no love in the world apart from the sometimes easy but often arduous activity of loving. We make the ideal real by what we do, inwardly and outwardly. We hope. We love.

But faith? We don't have a homonym verb for the noun in English, and that's too bad, because I've come to suspect that a proper form of faith, as a cherished possession that we can carry through life, is dependent on faith as an action or doing, an active becoming and being, that can carry us through life, like a sturdy camel whose strength we need for the journey.

So I'm going to create for myself a stipulative verb form to remind myself to continue to hope, love, and faith through this day. I hope you will, too. And if you do, I will love that, while faithing us both forward.