The conch shell

The conch shell sitting on my grandson’s shelf catches my attention and reminds me of the one that I had when I was a child. I am surprised that I didn’t notice it before. I have been living in this room for some three weeks now and remembered my own shell just in this moment. I wonder about the timing.

I notice it just as I am searching for a metaphor, a thought that encapsulates the idea of faith and the notion that if we succumb to grief, it is actually a crisis of faith. C.S. Lewis in “A Grief Observed” muses about his own faith and wonders if it is a house of cards or a rope that seems to remain strong in our minds but becomes questionable and fragile when we find we need its support.

A young woman I visited last week was struggling with a similar question. Racked by an unexplained and undiagnosed pain, she worried most that she was losing her faith. She questioned why God would put her through this pain, and worried that she would cease to struggle to be a good person. I tried to comfort her with the though that our faith, not unlike our muscles, is made stronger by exercise and that questioning God or our faith can often facilitate and stronger connection to it.

I am reminded again of the conch shell that seemingly appeared at just the moment that I needed inspiration and I think about the emerging neuroscience that explores whether human beings are hard-wired for some kind of belief in a reality outside of ourselves. Humans, it seems, are hardwired to find meaning or explain that which cannot be explained.

I muse on the conch shell. Is our faith the outward manifestation of the shell, the temporary house that we pick up and carry for our protection?

Is the shell the symbol of the inner spiral that we travel, making our way down smooth cylindrical pathways, up and down in the dark, before finding our way into the light?

Does it represent the more transient reality of memory, the fleeting connection that we have to our past and to our family?

Or is this faith a mystical experience of inspiration? Is this hard wiring a reminder of the interconnection of wonder and awe as it manifests itself in the universe of being?

In this moment, all of these worlds collide and I am content, touching that which I cannot explain, and feeling connected to my sense of faith. My house of cards, my rope to salvation seems many threaded and strong.