my son is has a slight hearing impairment and so i learned sign language.

one of my favorite signs is the sign for the word “believe”.

it actually is made like this...

it combines two signs. the sign “think” and the sign “to marry”.

and the sign is very philosophically accurate… “to believe” is “to marry our thoughts”.

it is one thing just to hang out with our thoughts, to date our thoughts, to be friends with our thoughts. but it is something entirely different to marry our thoughts. to make a living commitment to those thoughts 24/7.

the thoughts that we marry become “believe”…

i also like to think of it as our thoughts going into our hands.

because what we believe becomes what we do everyday. or the corollary… what we do everyday shows what we believe.

so when liz asked me to do a little “what i believe” speech for this first village square night, i thought of all the nice things i wanted to say about what i believe which for me included everything in both the old and new testaments of the Bible. it became quite a lengthy speech, it was beautiful, inspired, it was also epic in length and scope. but at it’s heart, it was wrong…

for when i thought about the sign language word for “believe” i had to start over. because what i do everyday is the only real proof as to the thoughts i had brought home and married.

and that was hard to face because some of the things that i do echo a belief system that doesn”t always fit with what my mouth says “believe”.

so i am starting over on my essay of “this i believe” for liz, for the village square blog, but mostly for myself. i am writing first what i do everyday and then seeing how that embodies each particular belief that i have faithfully married.

and our hope is that you will find some time to write a “this i believe” essay some time in this village square season of faith, politics, and our neighbors… it is important to your faith, to the political system, and to us, your neighbors.

we want to know… what beliefs find their way into the work of your hands?

what beliefs have you brought home and married?

write your essay and send it to the village square and you may have a chance to stand up here and read it for us.

it will be kind of like a wedding, a marriage of your thoughts and your actions. only no rice will be thrown and nobody gets to register at target…

but we do all get to celebrate the richness and fullness and the more perfect union that is to be formed when “we the people” believe…

______

Lea Marshall is my dear friend, who has probably never voted for the same person for president or governor or maybe anything else. Despite her incorrect voting behavior, I expect you can see why I love her. Lea also believes very deeply in lower case letters. — Liz Joyner