Trust Fall

 

I was thinking this morning of something I used to do.

From time to time, usually in the confined space of our galley kitchen, when I was standing casually in front of Dave either cooking or talking or generally doing something else, I would collapse. I'd just let go limp and fall to see whether he could catch me before I reached the floor. 

It was a test of some kind, I guess, because we both knew I had trust issues, like a lot of us do. It's hard to relinquish control, after all. We work so hard to get it and when we do, don't want to let go. After all, who knows what would happen if we actually fell? It's true. 

Of course, we all know that whatever control we think we have is an illusion. We are, in the end, all subject to forces way beyond our control, but who wants to admit that, much less live it? 

But you know what I learned? It's freeing. It feels absolutely fabulous to the point that, even if I actually fell, it wouldn't matter. It would be absolutely worth that one moment of freefall. 

In time, I came to understand that the trust fall thing was just a metaphor for something else. What I really wanted wasn't just that single moment of freedom, but an assurance that there existed somewhere a kind of erasure when the bounds of what divided me from the rest of the created world, even from God Himself, slipped away. 

It was about more than trust.

It was about a momentary union with the infinite, a kind of flight that released me from all the strings I was trying to hold, all the future I was trying to weave, all the security I was trying to purchase with the precious energy of my life. We can't do it, though, and if we live long enough, we realize that. Eventually, what we work so hard building melts away in a single moment beyond our control.

That's why, I think, Jesus told us to build up treasures in heaven. He didn't mean not to live our life, but to live it with what really lasts in mind. Circumstances twist and turn, but the energy we invest in building up God's treasures, the world and people He made, well, that lasts. It shatters the boundaries that separate us not only from each other, but from Him.

I don't intend to erect or fortify one more barrier in this world. I have little time and no constructive energy for it. And, when I remember what it feels like to trust that God really does intend the best for every one of His creatures, I can fall into His arms with ease.

It's reassuring to remember, too, that He reinforced that thought in the last thing I was able to do for Dave while he lived - to catch him, to keep him from falling when he was too weak to stand on his own, and to tell him, "Don't worry. I've got you." He had done it so often for me, never failing to make the catch. Of course, all those catches were illusions, too. In the end, it was God doing the catching every time. 

Photo courtesy of Maestri Gallery

Standing in the Prow of the Ship: A Lesson from FDR

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to describe the porch at his "little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia as being as "high as the prow of a ship." He established Warm Springs not only to bring him a place to rest and rehabilitate in the face of a depression and wartime presidency coupled with the ravages of a twenty-five year detente with polio, but to provide the same for other polio victims. He described it, however, not in terms of a fixed place on earth, but in terms of motion, of vast strength, and of unlimited space. Not the usual frame of reference we expect from someone living with a handicap.

There is a lesson here, and it grows from two aspects.

The first is pretty obvious - FDR was crippled. He had no use of his legs for half of his adult life but before the affliction, he grew up in New York, close to the ocean, and before he became President, served as Secretary of the Navy. He knew well the feel of being on the water - not just a lake or river, but a watery expanse of biblical porportions, with no end in sight from any angle. No landmarks, no obvious road ahead, and no guideposts. Just water in every direction. That boundless view, along with his natural optimism, kept him from focusing on a world collapsing in on itself because of physical disability. Rather than looking inward and seeing his world shrink, he looked out and saw it without restriction. He saw is spreading out on all sides before him, split by the prow of a great ocean liner, steaming ahead into a future he not only welcomed, but helped engineer. 

The second is seeing, if only in retrospect, that FDR's disability could have been the single qualification that made him most uniquely able to guide a floundering country through the 30's and 40's. As a nation, we were faced with a brokenness we'd not known since the Civil War and had no idea what to do next. FDR did, every time he remembered his useless legs. He knew what it took to go on when the future looked hopeless. He knew that handicap and death were not the same thing. He knew that, even the boundless ocean has a shore somewhere, and had already developed the grit needed to hold firm in search of it.

Those of us who are aging have the same choice to make. We may not have polio, but we have other maladies and restrictions to endure. We can let the horizons close in, or we can board our own ship, raise our eyes to the horizon, and welcome each broad sunrise, engaged to the full limits of our ability, aware that storms will come, but so will the rainbow.

We are exactly where we're supposed to be. Every time we are given is intentional - a trust, a gift. Like FDR, we have something to do and the only way to begin is to take whatever step we are able, with or without legs that work.

Death is not the worse that can happen. Missing the life we're given is.

Photo 1: View from QM2 via Facebook group Queen Mary 2 Experiences and Advice

Photo 2: FDR sailing a yacht in 1933, photo courtesy of ebay

Being a Human

 Yesterday, one of my Philosophy professors lectured about being human - about how a bird knows how to just be a bird and a dog just a dog, but we are not nearly as good at being just a human because we can reason. It's the reasoning that puts a distance between the borders of our skin and the rest of the world, that draws a line around us and says: This Is Me. And because we are so aware of ourselves, that awareness interferes with our just being what we are. The same reason that makes us more than animals also makes us less somehow. It might be that the most successful humans are the ones who leave at least some of their reason untapped, trailing down behind them like a thread hanging from the bottom of their pant leg, forgotten, unaware, not missed.

It is a lie this reason, this awareness. It tells me there is more, something shining and bright hot, that feels like a spirit, and that this is what makes us most human beyond the flesh and blood we share with animals. Maybe it's not completely a lie - maybe it's partly true, but only partly because this bright center is also what makes me unhappy because it is always just out of reach. 

The leaves are coming down. Yesterday I kicked through a yellow pile of them lying next to a curb on the way to walking to the edge of a big lake whose border is so far away that it lies beyond the visible horizon. The leaves may mean that another year of growing things is dying, but they just might mean that dying things can be beautiful. Or they just might be lovely leaves.

The Earth is Full of Gods

 

The earth is full of gods.

 

Water folds upon itself, always in motion.

Gentle hands push one ripple upon another

And urge fish to break through melting glass.

 

Distant mouths blow clouds into layered piles,

Painting quiet blue beside stern gray,

Shaping sky into banner, promise, and mobile roof.

 

Living things all around expel in rhythm –

Warm whisper to fierce assault.

Farflung lungs exhale.

Rain drops tears.

Storms vent anger.

Stars glance beneath lowered lashes.

 

It’s all motion.

 

Fish glide.

Elephants rumble.

Bears lope.

Men stride.

 

There the mourning doves signal a new day

And I track fresh light against a far shore.

Leaving no traces of wind, a mighty hand turns our earth towards its sun.

 

The earth is full of gods who have not yet seen fit to withdraw their favor.

Though I have taken a million before, every step is unlike another other.

Each day’s secrets reveal themselves as benevolent fingers open one by one.

 

A day will come when I will not open these eyes,

But this isn’t the day.

The earth is full of gods

And they are kind.