Tag: Risk

Aging, Change, Contemplation, Courage, discouragement, Fear, Illness, Risk, Stillness

Here’s to the Crazy Ones!

Revkathy

It’s true, isn’t it? Without the risk of going too far, stepping out of our comfort zone, we will probably never know just how far we can possibly go. But oh, the complete comfort of that comfort zone hems us in completely. We cannot move. We cannot take a step into new life. We cannot know what we might have accomplished. We cannot free ourselves from the bondage of fear.

I’ve been there and I have a notion you have, too. In fact, I can recall many times when I could not overcome my fear enough to take a risk. One time in particular has haunted me for almost 30 years. I wonder what my life would look like today if I had taken that particular risk — moving to a new state, to a new position, to a larger city, to a different house on a different street. That one single refusal to step out of my comfort zone has troubled me to this day.

Risk-taking is not easy. Change is difficult for some people, and some of us can convince ourselves to avoid change at any cost. Huge changes, even tiny changes, simply frighten those of us who have convinced ourselves that we are not risk-takers. Yet, I can think of so many persons who have decided that changing their lives — maybe even changing the world — is worth the risk. I will never forget one of my seminary professors whose words in a chapel sermon changed the course of my life.

Is what you’re doing worth giving your life for? Because every day you live, you are actually expending your life a little at a time doing whatever it is you’re doing.

– Dr. Paul Simmons

I left the chapel that day, walked across the campus to my office and resigned from my job, setting my sights on enrolling in classes to complete a Theology degree. A risk! A big risk that I was determined to take for two reasons: 1) I actually believed I could change the world; and 2) I was young, bold and unafraid. I’m not so young anymore, and the courage and boldness to change is small in me. It feels like being stuck, and I think it’s the first time in my life I have felt so thoroughly stuck. A brand new mantra for my life is this: “Stuck is more harmful to me than risk. I am not afraid to take a risk!”

Still, there is a part of me who longs to change the world, at least my corner of it. There is this alter ego inside me who actually believes she can change the world. That is the part of me that believes injustice can be conquered, wrongs can be righted, equality can be reality and liberation can emerge out of any form of bondage. Crazy? Probably, but I know of many kindred spirits who would be all-in on changing the world — Malala Yousafzai, Emma Gonzalez, Greta Thunberg, Crystal Echo Hawk, Amanda Gorman. Men are on the list of risk-takers, too. One in particular died in 2011 at age 56, but left behind a lasting legacy that was an example of what a human being is capable of doing.

The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

– Steve Jobs

I have given thought to those words, as well as something else Steve Jobs said when he was dying of pancreatic cancer: “Death is mankind’s best invention! I looked in the mirror every day wondering if what I am doing today is fun for me. If the answer was no for several consecutive days, then I have to change something!”

Yes, I am stuck right now, and for several days I have had to admit that what I am doing every day is not fun for me. Nor is it anything significant enough to change the world. So I do need to change something. I’m not sure what sort of change I need to make or how risky the change might be. STUCK! No matter what I decide to change — big risk or small risk — it won’t be easy. And I have to look into myself, into my soul, and ask myself if I am able to take a risk or even willing to take a risk. Truthfully, I know in the depths of my being that refusing to take a risk right now will leave me stuck, maybe even permanently stuck. I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t like the stark reality of that. Small risk or big risk — I know I need to change something in order to truly live!

Like the little goldfish in the small bowl, I’ll skip the bigger bowl and shoot for the ocean.

– Rev. Kathy Manis Findley


I used to be “one of the crazy ones,” always taking risks and most often taking big ones. The visual goldfish metaphor is one that described me well throughout my years. I was not one to leap from a small fishbowl to one that was a little larger. I was much more likely to take a brave, risky leap out of a fishbowl and into an ocean! Until now! Until aging and illness and displacement took its toll. I’m definitely not as young as I was in my former and more courageous days. I am not as physically well as I used to be, and I am not living in the town that was my home.

I am facing a three-headed enemy — age, health and displacement. In truth, this enemy does have enough power to keep me stuck, depressed and disheartened. At this moment, I don’t yet know what I plan to do about it, but I do know it will probably call for a leap, a risk, a change and maybe doing something a little crazy.

At this moment, I’m not up for crazy. I need a little contemplative time in my safe space to look deeper into my soul. I’m not at all sure what will come out of my time looking at soul things —maybe some extra peace or maybe renewed hope, new thinking, fresh courage, some sort of healing. Maybe even a little craziness that helps me consider some risky changes in my life. What I am sure of is that I do not enter my soul-searching space alone, for God has walked with me on every step of my journey. I cannot plan anything right now, but there is someone who watches over me who is making plans I cannot make.

‘For I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord.
‘I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you.
I have plans to give you a future filled with hope.
When you call out to me and come to me in prayer,
I will hear your prayers.’

Jeremiah 29:11-12 NET

I will take risks again someday. I will reclaim the “crazy” part of myself that was never afraid to risk going too far. I will embrace change, inevitable change, with more courage than I have at this moment. I will take another big risk one day soon that will remind me how far I can go and how high I can leap. Like the little goldfish in the small bowl, I’ll skip the bigger bowl and shoot for the ocean. Until I can do that, I’ll be in my sacred space with the One who has never left me and has never let me walk alone.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

You Do Not Walk Alone, Elaine Hagenberg


Change, Chronic illness, God's Faithfulness, peace, Risk, Trust

Inner Warrior

Revkathy

E28E6B69-1115-4DCB-A2DE-9F83713B5505

I got in touch this week with my inner warrior. She was in me all along, in a deep place inside, just waiting for the summons that I needed her. If you have read many of my blog posts, you know that I have been terrified at the thought of having a kidney transplant. For almost five years, the frightened part of me was able to put the transplant possibility away, tucked in a place inside that kept it off my mind. When I did consider transplant — like the times when my nephrologist told me that it was by far the best treatment for me — I reasoned that it was not something I was willing to do.

Why would I want to change anything? Dialysis has been good to me and, most of the time, I have felt well. So I have struggled with the transplant decision, but at the same time, I went through the medical evaluation that kept me on the transplant list. My nephrologist has insisted for years that I would feel better and live longer with a transplant. I remained unconvinced, and then I participated in a webinar that pushed my decision. The physician who was presenting said something that got my attention. He said that patients with end stage renal disease must be on dialysis, and dialysis is essentially end of life care that includes palliative care. If a patient has an illness that cannot be cured, such as end stage renal disease, he explained, palliative care keeps the patient as comfortable as possible by managing pain and other physical challenges, and by providing psychological, social and spiritual support. He went even further by saying that patients who stop dialysis live about two weeks on average.

I have been on the transplant list for five years, and in that time there has been no movement toward a transplant. The last time I went to the transplant center to update my medical evaluation, they told me that a transplant was not likely to happen in the next two years. I was okay with that. Nothing to get anxious about. The transplant decision was not going to happen in the near future. 

And then, out of the blue, I hear from an old friend who tells me he is contemplating the possibility of being a living donor for me. That was March 12. As of Monday, April 15, he had completed the thorough donor evaluation at Piedmont Transplant Institute in Atlanta, and by Wednesday of that week, Piedmont had called me in for testing.

My heart began to race this week and has continued, on and off. I would describe my current state as much, much more than anxious. I texted this week with a friend of mine and shared my fears. She told me about her multiple back surgeries and about how frightening surgery was for her. Then she said this: “I was really afraid before each back surgery, but I somehow dug down deep to a warrior place inside of me.”

Oh my! How well she described my current emotional place! I am certain that, indeed, there is a warrior place inside me. I reached it this week after the racing heart episodes eased up a bit. It is a surprise to me that now I find myself in deep peace, with a sense of calm. Not always have I been able to let God take control of my path. I am a person who will do almost anything to stay in control, to the point of fairly powerful wrestling with God for the proverbial reins of my life.

Not this time. This time, in this season of my life, I have taken a hands off approach, replacing my tendency to hold tightly to the reins with a sense of trust that has covered me like a soft blanket. I have thought in the last few days of the many passages of scripture about trust, but the one that stands out is the simplest one, the short one that we learned to recite as young children.

What time I am afraid, I will trust in you.

— Psalm 56:3

I am certain that there is a warrior place deep inside me. It brought me out of my year of life-threatening illness in 2014. It pushed me to get stronger. No doubt, it will be in play as I move closer to a kidney transplant. I am grateful that my friend reminded me this week of that deep, down warrior place. But I am also comforted in the assurance that, along with my inner warrior, there is in me a heart that can still trust God.

Change, Compassion, Gofts in Open Hands, grief, journey, Lent, Life Journeys, Life pathways, Lostness, Maren Tirabassi, Risk, Travel, Vulnerability, Wisdom

Rough, Broken Roads

Revkathy

5E982E74-6C78-42E3-BA27-C642528A9C0CI think often about roads, the roads that take people where they want to go, or not. I think with deep fondness about the terribly rough and broken roads we traveled in Uganda. The time was immediately after the horrific reign of Idi Amin that left the roads, and the entire country, in shambles. I remember the difficulty in traveling those rough, broken roads — washed out, bombed out, neglected for years.

I remember the fear of traveling those roads, the frightening military roadblocks, the pointed machine guns, the soldier’s demand for all that we carried in the vehicle and even the vehicle itself. I remember how some of our missionaries were left in the bush with their vehicle “confiscated” by the occupying army. I remember the roadblock murder of the dear Ugandan man who drove our mission’s supply truck.

I think of traveling a road in the middle of the night that led to my brother’s funeral, made rough by grief. I think of the rough road I traveled in leaving my home of 32 years for a new and unfamiliar place. I can never forget my rough road through serious illness and difficult recovery.

I think of roads that take people where they do not want to go — to war, to prisons, to rehabilitation centers, to the sites of natural disasters. I think about the roads in disaster areas that are simply gone.

I remember a song in a Christian musical of many years ago titled “Rough Old Roads.” It told of the rough roads Jesus walked. The song’s climactic moment gave us these words: “the road that was roughest of all to walk was the road that led to the cross.”

It is appropriate for us during Lent to recall the rough roads Jesus walked, rough for so many reasons: rejection, danger, soul temptation, angry crowds and lynch mobs, and ultimately the rough road that Jesus walked to the cross, to his death. To learn of his roads means that we get a glimpse of our own. The roads we all walk.

None of us can avoid walking the rough and broken roads that appear before us, but it is in traversing those roads that we learn who we are. Rough roads force us to take the hard and narrow way, and thus become who we must ultimately become. Roads can wind around so that we are lost, thus inviting us to take the risk of vulnerability required for an unknown and uncharted journey. Our roads teach and challenge us. When the road ahead of us is rough or broken, our commitment to stay the course results in wisdom. I call it wisdom from the journey. Our rough, broken roads make us stronger and more resilient. The rougher they are, the more we change and grow.

I could bore you with even more personal reflection about rough roads, but instead I want to share a moving poem written by Maren Tirabassi.* In the poem, she writes of broken roads and calls for a God who attends to all who find themselves on broken roads.

Here are Maren’s moving words:

I was praying this morning, God,
for all the people in Mozambique
and Malawi and Zimbabwe,
in the midst of the terrible losses
from cyclone Idai —
the deaths and injury and destruction,
the ongoing need for rescue

and I learned that the roads are broken.

I should have known —

the roads between towns
are impassable,
the bridges smashed, ports unusable.
Also those other paths —
electricity, telephone, Internet,
are gone as well.

And I went from that
flat-hand-on-the-newspaper prayer,
to the jail and my meeting
for spiritual care
and walked among others
with no access

and realized that journey
is not a parable for Lent
for these,
your children on the inside.

And so holy Valley-uplifter,
Rough-place-leveler,
I call you to attend
to all who suffer broken roads —

broken highways or heartways,
or sometimes minds that cannot
find a way out of whatever
dead end they are in,

and teach me to pay attention, too,
put my back against
every road block,
become an opener of the way home.

 

May God make it so. Amen.

 

*Maren served as a pastor in the United Church of Christ for thirty-seven years in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and is the author or editor of 20 books. You may read more of her creative and soulful writing at her blog, “Gifts in Open Hands” at the following link:

https://giftsinopenhands.wordpress.com/2019/03/21/10101/

 

 

Contemplation, Courage, Darkness, Discovering, Fear, Forest, life, Lostness, Nature, Spiritual growth

Finding Ourselves Lost

Revkathy

C61646A1-BE50-4157-A898-E77F1FF191AABecause I have no sense of direction at all, I have an irrational fear of getting lost. Do not tell me to go north or south. I will have no idea how to do that. You must instead say something like, “When you see McDonalds on the right, go past it. Then go past Wendys, Burger King and Barbaritos. Look just past Barbaritos, but on the other side of the road, and you’re there.” It’s a convoluted way of making sure I don’t lose my way. And if one of those fast food places were to close down, I’m lost. 

So as I am contemplating the fear of being lost, I find in my email this morning a meditation by Richard Rohr entitled, “Practice: Being Lost.” I wanted to slip right past that meditation, as I do not need or want to practice being lost. But something held me there, captive to this bizarre meditation that described being lost as a spiritual practice.

Psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin* highly recommends wandering in nature and experiencing the great gift of “finding ourselves lost.” He calls it “Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche,” and he means that we should find ourselves lost both literally in nature and metaphorically in the midst of life’s changes.

His words remind me that at least four conditions contribute to finding oneself lost: density that conceals paths, obstacles in the pathways that force you to detour, cluelessness about direction, and darkness. I would not like finding myself in a dense forest with boulders blocking some of the pathways, hopelessly lacking any sense of direction after a few detours, and knowing that the sun is setting and darkness will make everything even worse.

And yet . . . finding myself lost as a spiritual discipline seems to be beckoning to me to enter. As a lost wanderer, I might just learn to look deeply into the face of my aloneness and discover what truly gives me life and what doesn’t. I could discover inspiration, belonging, strength, resilience and wisdom in my own company — all by myself — not knowing which way to turn. Knowing only that God will meet me there and that I can “be” who I am, right where I am, lost in a discovering moment.

As David Whyte writes:

When wandering, there is immense value in “finding ourselves lost” because we can find something when we are lost, we can find our selves . . . 

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.*   

I would like to be brave enough to give it a try in some spring wood where the verdant trees form a deep, dark canopy of privacy over my soul and where aloneness takes over my psyche. A place where God will meet me, where I can fully embrace finding myself lost, and where I might just find a few sparkles of light along the way.

I have to admit that this is a terrifying prospect for me. Darkness in a dense forest, alone, lost and scared . . . I’m just not sure about that. So maybe I should settle for the swing in my yard that’s just on the edge of the woods. Safer. More acceptable. And God will meet me there, too.

*Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library: 2003), 234, 248-249, 263.

*David Whyte, “Fire in the Earth,” Fire in the Earth, Many Rivers Press: 1992, 8.

 

 

 

 

Courage, Creating, Dreams, peace, Risk

Dreamers and Misfits

Revkathy

image

In my younger years, I was a dreamer of dreams, big dreams, impossible dreams, dreams that I had to fight for. Without a fight, the dreams would not have become reality. I was brave and fearless. I would stand my ground in front of any person trying to thwart my dream. I would face off against any obstacle.

Where did all that bravery go? When did I stop taking risks? When did I give up on dreams? When did I lose my strong resolve to help create a better world?

Aging had a role, as did illness. Yet, I cannot help but believe that somewhere beneath this exterior reality, the old dreamer and misfit still lives. I cannot help but believe that I still care about justice and hope, hope for a better future. I am convicted and inspired by the words of Bishop Steven Charleston:

It may seem odd, in this age of doubt and disillusionment, that some of us still believe in a hopeful future, a time of justice, and the power of love to overcome every evil. It may seem odd, in this epoch of technology and consumerism, that we still believe in God, in a conscious and living presence that cares for us and helps us to care for one another. It may seem odd, but there is a perfectly reasonable explanation: we believe these things because we are odd. We are the odd ones out, the misfits and dreamers, the mystics and advocates. We do not follow the party line, but step over it, together, every chance we get. – Steven Charleston

The Bible calls us pilgrims and strangers, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people. Yes, misfits as Steven Charleston says, misfits that go against the grain of the status quo. Misfits that still dream in spite of those who want to maintain the world as it is.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

So I want to spend my remaining years stepping over the line, taking risks in the name of love, living out of a compassionate heart, challenging the world’s evil ways, dreaming of justice, being a maker of peace, and not counting the cost. I hope you will do the same, sisters and brothers. This world needs all the misfits who still care and all the dreamers who won’t give up.