You want to believe but you can't

This place between longing and disbelief is not the barren ground you think it is — let us look at what is actually growing there. The wanting to believe is already a kind of faith — to yearn toward the sacred, to feel the pull of the more even while your mind withholds assent, is not the absence of faith but one of its truest forms, the longing that reaches before certainty arrives, for the reed need not be certain of the reed bed to cry for it. Belief may follow practice rather than precede it — many did not believe their way into practice but practiced their way into belief, taking up the devotion before they were sure and finding the doing opened a knowing thought could not reach, so you can begin gently with the practices of the faith you wish you had. And you may be demanding a certainty faith never required — if you imagine belief as total sureness beyond doubt, you measure yourself against an impossible thing, when real faith is trust held amid unknowing, so release the demand and let belief be the humbler turning of the heart. What do you long to believe, and what stops you?