Taking a Leap of Faith

The phrase is used so often -- a leap of faith.  We're told that life -- and particularly the spiritual life -- requires us to take a leap of faith.  It's not entirely clear, though, just what people mean by doing that.  And it can be really hard to do something if you don't know, really, where you're going.

In his classic book Thoughts in Solitude, the Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton wrote a poem which I have always thought to be one of the most fully honest prayers I've ever heard.  (Alongside Meister Eckhart's famous assertion about the two word prayer "Thank you.")  Here's what Merton had to say:

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

I have no idea where I am going.  How's that for an honest prayer?  I have no idea where I'm going, which is true for all of us, isn't it?  Even when we think we know where we're going, the truth is that we really don't.  As the Scottish poet Robert Blake famously put it in this poem, "To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" -- "the best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley."  That translates as, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray," and, as they say, ain't that the truth!

So ... where we know it or not, whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not, every choice we make is a leap of faith.  We never really know what'll come next.

Yet there are times when we know we're taking the kind of leap for which that phrase is usually used.  We can clearly see the chasm before us, and we can't see the other side.  Truth be told, we aren't even entirely sure that there is another side, or, if there is, that it's within jumping distance.

Bridges are good for this.   At the congregation I serve we have an annual "Bridging Ceremony" at which we recognize our graduating high school seniors, and mark their transition from "youth" to "young adult."  I've shared reflections about bridges, noting that bridges are good for getting us from here to there in our lives.  I've shown the picture of the Golden Gate Bridge at the top of this post, with its far side obscured by fog.  You know it's there, of course, yet from what your senses show you, you could be forgiven for not really knowing for sure.  This adds to the power of the bridge metaphor.  Not only can a bridge get you from here to there, not only can it provide a way to cross an perhaps otherwise uncrossable chasm, often you have to start across it on faith.

In the Jewish tradition there is a midrash on the story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to escape their Egyptian oppressors. It is said that when Moses raised his staff and commanded the waters to part, nothing happened.  At least that's what the Israelites saw.  Moses told them that the waters had parted, that there was now dry land they could safely cross to the other side, but it seems that he was the only one who could see it.  Out of the crowd, a child came to stand at the edge of the water.  She trusted Moses, and if he said the water had parted, she believed him even if she couldn't see it herself.  So she took a step, and felt the water sloshing around her ankles.  She took another step, and then another, yet all she could see, and feel, was the water reaching up to her knees.  With another step it was up to her waist.  In no time it was up to her chest, then her neck, the over her chin and just under her nose.  The people on the shore were shouting at her to stop her madness, but Moses encouraged her to go on, and she trusted Moses.  She took one more step, now even her nose was submerged, when suddenly everyone could see the waters parted and the dry land path Moses had told them about.  It was her faith, her willingness to take step after step without knowing for certain where those steps were taking her, that was the real miracle performed that day.

Having faith that the bridge -- or dry land -- is there even when you don't see for certain where it's taking you (or even if it is taking you somewhere) -- can be hard.  Acting on that faith is harder still.  Yet if you trust the bridge (either literal or symbolic), even though it's scary to do so, you can take that step.  Using a different metaphor, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Take the first step in faith.  You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."  Here too, an encouragement to trust the bridge, or staircase, even if you can't see the whole thing.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going, but I trust that I am not going alone.  However you may name or know the Love that Merton called "God," his prayer may well describe the heart of the spiritual journey.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Slowing Down and Doing Less

I hope that anyone who's been reading these reflections has found something helpful in them.  I know I got a lot out of writing them.  There are few things in this life that I find so soul-satisfying as the opportunity to explore ... well ... the myriad pathways of spirit that move in and out of our lives and that we travel even when we don't know it.

At the same time, though, there is a saying that I've always loved that says, in essence, the more you know God, the less you want to talk about God (or, at least, the less you need to).  The first line of the 1st Chapter of the Tao te Ching puts it like this (from the translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English):

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

In Chapter 81, the author says:

True words are not beautiful.  Beautiful words are not true.

Of course, in between there are 80 chapters of beautiful words telling about the Tao.  Go figure.

The Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton was aware of the paradox of his life -- he was part of a silent order, yet he was also a prolific writer.  This tension was something he danced with from his earliest days as a monk.  The more words, the less quite. The more time and energy he devoted to his conversations with the outer world, the less time and energy he had for his conversations with his inner world.

In our culture we are so concerned with our busy-ness, with our productivity, with what we're doing in our hours and minutes.  Yet the wise ones who have preceded us -- and those living among us now -- have always maintained that it's not in the doing, its not in the noise, that we'll find the deepest truths we seek.  Instead, it's in the spaces, the in-between.  The 11th Chapter of the Tao te Ching puts it like this:

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful.Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there.

It was, after all, in the "still, small voice" (or "gentle whisper") that the Prophet Elijah recognized his God.  According to the book of 1 Kings, it wasn't in an earthquake, or a raging fire, or roaring winds, and most definitely not in an extended dissertation.  It was in the quiet, the stillness.

To be sure, there is something that we could call "extrovert spirituality."  Not everyone experiences their most rich encounters with the sacred inwardly; for some, it's in reaching out that they connect most fully.  There is a dearth of attention paid to this type of spirituality.  In fact, Nancy Reeves wrote her 2008 book Spirituality for Extroverts: and tips for those who love them precisely because she'd never seen the topic addressed at all.  I will admit that I still have a lot to learn about this approach to the spiritual quest.  Perhaps someone reading this will share their experiences with me.

For myself, though, I recognize the same paradoxical tension as did Thomas Merton.  I love words, my stock and trade is words, yet I know that I need the silence.  To paraphrase the Psalmist, "As a deer pants for water, so my soul longs for silence."  And perhaps I need to remember advice St. Francis is remembered as telling his companions, "Preach always.  When necessary, use words."


Pax tecum,

RevWik