The Human Experience: Faith

Building one's faith is personal, but maintaining one's faith can take a village. 
Visualize this... we are born and growing (discovered faith and building it) in the village we are fed, and cared for and loved - all those things that make living easy. We then step out of the village and BLAM the lion is there, the bandits, the bad guys... yes we have faith and we know we don't want to be one of those bad guys and we so we run from them and run right smack dad into the lion... guns, bow and arrows... no we don't have them... we cry out to the more experienced .... no... more likely, they are, PREPARED villagers... bring me a gun, a bow, and arrow... they come and kill the lion. We are safe again... learning process. Never leave the village alone again... or at least grid up.

As we get older we can become sick - perhaps infected by a small bite we incurred from the lion... and as we heal we slowly we start preparing for another journey we must make outside of the village - why we gotta go? because as we got older, we became an 'older' one, and we now have responsibilities that match that title... going out of the village to take care of business...

It is expected of us to know how to move around the bad guys, and bandits and we are expected to be girded up at all times and or have a buddy with us... but we've been sick and contagious and many have moved away from us so as not to catch what we have... so for this time of healing, we have been basically alone... or so we have felt...

Maybe we've just been impatient - maybe we haven't looked long and hard enough for the ones in the village who have learned to deal with the infectious ones without becoming sick themselves... maybe we just didn't TRY to heal fast enough... Maybe we are humble and we SHOO people away for fear of infecting them... they try but we resist....

who knows... bottom line is this... we are now alone so we found ourselves outside the village.... ill prepared.

The bandits come, they walk with us for a while... although we are a little putt off, we continue to walk with them... our heads are down and we clutch our gun, but... they don't seem so vicious when in fact they simply pick our pockets... why beat us up... where is the honor in that (honor exist between thieves "So you beat up and robbed a sick man... big deal" their friends would say), so they just gently pick our pockets and so we are thinking hmmm... not so bad.

Then we come across the assorted other bad guys who continue to take our dignity in such a nice way - They make love to us, laugh with us, feed us, seemingly are THERE for us... shoot...we don't even realize that we are down to only the clothes on our backs - and NOTHING MORE ... our guns have been emptied along with our quiver... not to mention self respect and dignity.... we have no idea of this until we come to the lion!

We call out...

Oddly enough, our voices are not loud enough to reach the villagers who have, for the most part gone on without us.

We are heard however by the bandits and bad guys who now own all our essentials...
They quickly come to our aide...
They rescue us...
hmmm
Confused ...
Yeah... me to.

However, I'm attempting to solve the riddle as we speak....

in the background...
Mama is on the train now, coming from the village to me....
She is COVERED by a literal and symbolic STEEL Armour... her quiver is full and her gun is loaded... WATCH OUT!!!