My faith is in God. If it's a little statue of Buddha or whatever

Host: The evening had settled like a blanket over the small coastal café, its windows misted from the warmth inside and the salt air outside. The waves crashed rhythmically beyond the shore, a quiet heartbeat under the hum of conversation and the faint chords of an old guitar coming from the radio behind the counter.

Jack sat at a corner table, nursing a cup of black coffee that had long gone cold. His face, half-shadowed by the flickering candlelight, looked worn — not with age, but with the kind of fatigue that comes from asking the same questions too many times.

Jeeny sat across from him, her hands wrapped around her mug, the steam curling around her fingers like whispers. She was watching him the way one watches the tide — with patience and quiet knowing.

Host: The air was filled with the scent of espresso, sea, and something else — a faint tremor of nostalgia, like an old prayer half-remembered.

Jeeny: “Ronan Keating once said, ‘My faith is in God. If it’s a little statue of Buddha or whatever works for you, brilliant.’”

Jack: (smirking) “So basically — pick your miracle and hope it shows up.”

Jeeny: “No. Pick your meaning. That’s the difference.”

Jack: “You sound like one of those people who believe all religions are rivers leading to the same ocean.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they are. Just different currents. Different ways of learning how to swim.”

Jack: “Or drown.”

Jeeny: (smiling gently) “Depends on how tightly you hold your own truth.”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the windows, and the candle on their table flickered, casting shifting shadows across their faces. The light made Jack look older, Jeeny more timeless.

Jack: “You know, I envy people who can just believe. Who can wake up and say, ‘God’s got this,’ and actually mean it.”

Jeeny: “You don’t believe in anything?”

Jack: “I used to. I believed that hard work fixed things. That logic could make sense of pain. That people were predictable. Then life happened.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that was your faith — in order, in reason. And maybe it just shifted.”

Jack: “Shifted into what? Cynicism?”

Jeeny: “Cynicism is faith in disguise — just wearing armor. It’s what happens when belief gets bruised.”

Host: Jack’s eyes fell to the candle flame. The wax had begun to pool, trembling at the edge of collapse.

Jack: “You think God cares about bruised faith?”

Jeeny: “I think that’s the only kind He trusts. The unbroken kind’s too fragile to hold anything real.”

Jack: “Then why do people fight over it? Over whose faith is better? Which name for God is correct?”

Jeeny: “Because we confuse God with identity. But faith — real faith — doesn’t ask to be right. It just asks to be felt.”

Host: The waves outside grew louder, a sudden crash that filled the silence between them. The sound was vast, ancient, as if the sea itself had joined the conversation.

Jack: “So you think a prayer to Jesus, a chant to Buddha, a whisper to the stars — they all reach the same place?”

Jeeny: “Maybe they don’t need to reach anywhere. Maybe the act itself is enough — the reaching. The asking. The remembering that we’re small and connected to something bigger.”

Jack: “That’s comforting.”

Jeeny: “It’s honest. You don’t have to prove your faith for it to matter.”

Host: She took a slow sip of her drink, the motion calm, deliberate. Jack watched her, the way he used to watch the horizon as a kid — looking for something beyond the visible.

Jack: “You really think it’s all one truth, then? That God could speak through Buddha, or Buddha through God?”

Jeeny: “I think truth is bigger than language. Bigger than names. Maybe God doesn’t care what we call Him — only that we’re listening.”

Jack: “That’s poetic.”

Jeeny: “It’s human. We’re all just trying to make peace with the mystery.”

Host: The radio shifted songs — an old tune, soft and simple. Something by Keating himself, his voice low and raw, singing of love and loss and belief.

Jack: “When I was younger, I prayed before every game. Crossed myself, looked at the sky. I didn’t know if it worked, but it made me feel… anchored.”

Jeeny: “And now?”

Jack: “Now I just stare at the ceiling and hope the roof doesn’t cave in.”

Jeeny: (gently) “Maybe that’s still a prayer. Just a different kind.”

Jack: “You mean hopeless hope?”

Jeeny: “No. Honest hope. The kind that doesn’t need a name.”

Host: The candlelight wavered again, and for a second, Jack’s eyes caught its glow — a fragile gleam of something like belief, though he’d never call it that.

Jack: “You ever doubt your own faith?”

Jeeny: “Every day. But that’s what keeps it alive. Faith without doubt is just habit.”

Jack: “So you talk to God?”

Jeeny: “Sometimes. Sometimes I just sit in silence and listen.”

Jack: “And He talks back?”

Jeeny: “Not in words. More in the way the light changes. Or the way the world softens when you stop fighting it.”

Jack: “You make it sound easy.”

Jeeny: “It’s not easy. But it’s simple. You just have to stop needing proof.”

Host: A long pause. Outside, a car passed on the wet road, its headlights slicing through the glass. Inside, the candle burned lower, its wick bent but still alive.

Jack: “You know, when you talk like that, I almost believe there’s something out there listening.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s all faith is — the almost. The space between doubt and peace.”

Jack: “You really think whatever works… works?”

Jeeny: “I think if it brings someone closer to kindness, it’s holy enough.”

Jack: “So a man could pray to a statue, and you’d call that divine?”

Jeeny: “If it makes him love better the next morning, yes.”

Host: The rain began, soft and constant, tapping against the glass. The café owner dimmed the lights, and for a moment, everything seemed to slow — the rain, the music, even the ache inside Jack’s chest.

Jack: “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me. I keep waiting for faith to feel like thunder. Maybe it’s just rain.”

Jeeny: “It’s both, Jack. Thunder to wake you. Rain to cleanse you.”

Host: The camera would draw closer now — two faces in the dim glow of a dying candle, reflections of each other’s quiet wars.

Jack: “You know… I think I envy people who can see God everywhere.”

Jeeny: “You don’t need to see Him everywhere. Just somewhere. Start there.”

Jack: “Like here?” (gestures to the table, to her)

Jeeny: “Like here.”

Host: The waves outside broke one final time — loud, clear, magnificent. The candle sputtered, then steadied again, its small flame refusing to die.

And in that fragile light, they both sat — the skeptic and the believer, the storm and the calm — bound not by certainty, but by the simple, stubborn act of reaching.

Host: Faith, after all, was never about finding the right god —
but about finding the right silence between two souls who still believed in trying.