It's going to be okay...

Faith is what carries a person when every logical step has failed.

It is what remains when the bridge between the present and the future is incomplete, when what is necessary or longed for is not yet within reach.

Faith is not certainty.

It is not control.

It is the quiet understanding that something must be done despite the absence of a clear path.

A seed in the dark does not know the sky.

It moves instinctively, pushing its roots into unseen spaces, feeling out the world before it rises.

It does not reason its way toward light.

It does not deliberate.

At some point, the roots find what they need, and something shifts.

A sprout begins to rise, pushing against gravity, against resistance.

It does not know what it will find above the soil, only that it must go.

That first breach is dangerous.

But the alternative is stagnation, suffocation, decay.

Faith is the willingness to break through.

It is a submission not to failure, but to movement.

There is fear in it, but also inevitability.

Moments arrive, and all we do is move forward.

Homeless in Paris: A Lesson in Faith

My first test of faith in my work came when nearly 10 years ago

I was leading a counter-poaching operation in Africa.

I thought I was going out there to catch ‘bad-guys’

For six months, there was structure.

I had a team, hand-selected, deployed into the jungle with medics, trackers, snipers—people who understood survival, movement, and control.

The operation was remote, cut off from everything except the sat phone.

It was the pinnacle of my career so far.

At 25, I had been given a team, total autonomy, and decisions that held real consequence.

Faith, in this world, was built on hierarchy.

It was reinforced through structure, repetition, and belief in the greater good.

And in a system where control is paramount, it is easy to start believing in personal importance.

I thought what I would see are poachers looking to build wealth.

What I found were people looking to survive.

Before I left, I was offered a different experience to come back to.

A friend with an idea: to live on the streets of Paris, without any support, stripped of money, stripped of safety nets.

The experiment was simple.

To exist with nothing and see what happened.

I thought It would be easy.

When I came back to the UK, I handed my partner their Christmas presents.

There was hesitation in the moment, as if the weight of what I was about to do had begun to settle.

They held the gift, looking at me, and all they said was, 

Why? 

But there was no answer that would satisfy, only the need to go.

At St. Pancras, the train was already boarding.

We ran for it, carrying nothing but what could fit into a coat.

A passport, a return ticket, a few euros, a spare set of socks.

No phone, no way out of the experience except to endure it.

The shift was immediate.

I went from being the one others relied on to a body in the cold.

From a structured system with a mission to sheer unpredictability.

I thought I would see darkness and a way to survive.

What I found were people helping each other to survive

Faith gets tested fast.

The first night, the frost came early.

We hadn’t learned about the benefits of cardboard on concrete,

hidden away in a cul-de-sac for shelter.

The city was alive around us, but we weren’t part of its rhythm.

The world did not see us.

There are things the body adjusts to.

Cold, hunger, exhaustion.

But there is a shift in identity that does not settle so easily.

We stole food, hid in warm spaces, begged for money that did not come.

One night in the 19th, I ran out of a supermarket with a kilo and a half of tinned ravioli, adrenaline beating through me.

My friend took one look at the haul and said, 

Cold-tinned ravioli isn’t going to be much of a meal…

…And we don’t have a can opener.

The weight of the experience didn’t set in until I returned.

When I came back to St Pancras, I went to collect my stored bag.

The man at the counter took my passport, left to retrieve it, then paused.

He looked at me, at my clothes, my face, the state of me after two weeks on the street, and held the bag just out of reach.

I don’t think this is yours.

For a moment, I did not exist.

The person who had dropped off that bag, who had walked into that station weeks before, was gone.

The body standing in front of him was something else.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

The jacket I was wearing had molded itself to me, fabric stiff with dirt, pockets instinctively filled in a way that made sense for another life.

Clothes had stopped being an expression of self and had become entirely functional.

I had adapted to a rhythm that no longer served me, and now it was obvious that I no longer belonged to the world I had returned to.

It was something as small as a bag, as a man behind a counter, but it was enough to make the reality of it known.

Faith and the Systems That Shape It

Before we enter them, systems already exist.

They do not wait for us to understand them.

They shape our understanding from the moment we step inside.

Institutions build faith as a mechanism of control.

Career progression is a promise, the military frames duty as purpose, hierarchy ensures that belief in the structure aligns with personal interest.

These systems function on information asymmetry, rewarding participation with selective knowledge.

And sometimes, these systems serve a greater purpose.

Society, in every form, embeds faith within its structure.

Not all of this is negative.

Faith in systems creates cohesion.

But clarity matters.

The ability to see the wider structure, to assess whether the system serves its purpose, is what allows real choice.

Faith in the unknown is courage.

Faith in a system is submission.

One requires agency, the other requires acceptance.

Understanding the difference is what defines whether faith is a necessity or a trap.

Others

Throughout history, artists have tested the limits of faith.

Tehching Hsieh spent a year locked inside a wooden cage, Santiago Sierra paid workers to endure painful and degrading conditions, Marina Abramović placed her body in front of an audience and allowed them to do as they pleased.

Each of these works relied on faith—not just from the artist but from those engaging with them.

Faith that the experience would reveal something essential.

Faith that something meaningful existed beyond the surface of the act.

Faith is a tool, a weapon, and a risk.

It is what allows the artist to create without knowing where it will land.

But it is also what systems use to control, to dictate the boundaries of what is acceptable, to convince people that there is only one way forward.

Proof

Faith does not require proof.

It requires movement.

It is what pushes the seed through the soil, what forces a sprout to rise against gravity.

It is what drives the hand to cross the road, what compels a body forward when there is no certainty of success.

And it is what sustains art when it is untethered from expectation.

The movement toward meaning, toward light, toward whatever must be made visible.

Art, at its best, is an offering, not a transaction.

A recognition.

A way of saying, I see you.

You are here.

It is going to be okay.

Not because the path is certain, but because the act of moving forward is enough.

Poets Corner

untitled faith

The light that guides the soul
To the flame that never dies,
With belief that this was written
By the pen held by a poet,
this stanza,
this lie.

A presence,
Passing by.

More to come

I love you loads

R