Advent Calendar 9

Faith.  A good thing that this calendar doesn't require tangible objects - for faith, all you can do is symbols.  A cross, or a candle, or a St. Bernard.

As a term, it's kind of religion-lite, at least in some contexts.  Faith-based initiatives.  A Sunday radio program, Speaking of Faith, now further secularized into a show called Being.  Communities of faith.  

But what interests me is the intersection between faith as another name for belief, and faith as in something you keep.   One has to do with a willing suspension of rationality and the other with steadiness.  In the searching-for-a-deity context each meaning makes sense.  And so, but maybe less so, when it comes to loyalty in the way partners, loved ones, and persons with government power treat their partners, lovers, and the governed.