Is Faith an Illusion?

A wise man once said
Faith was like smoking a cigar
Faith was like listening to a symphony
Faith was like butter.
That unbelief were like cigarettes
That unbelief were like a gramophone
That unbelief were like margarine.

Yet, I still perceived doubt.

T. S. Eliot wrote Ash Wednesday.
The greatest confession of faith in history.
There were no apologetics.
It was simply put, that God was known to Eliot
In the moment he wrote it,
And Eliot cried out to our God
Saying for him never to forget.

That is faith.
We are at one point wretched, worthless sinners.
And afterward we are cleansed.
We may cuss, smoke an occasional cigarette
Or write a blasphemy in our books.
But, we know God
Because God is in our lives.
We know ourselves before God
And we know ourselves after God.
And we say,
“Because I do not hope to turn again.”
For in that is the emotionally weighted truth
That before we were exiles,
Hopeless, and suddenly we find life.
And through our lives we increasingly
And bitterly
And sweating and crying and hoping against all hope;---
Our prayer intensifies, 
To where it was first a whimper
And then it transforms into a heartfelt cry of belief.

That is what faith is.