On Leaping

Now, I know that two weeks ago I'd said I had returned to blogging. Unfortunately, I've been lax. Oh, Discipline, why are we not yet friends? Anywise, here's my thought for the week:

Most everyone has a cool cousin, someone super awesome at all times. Mine is a great out-doorsy type: he's rock climbed in Patagonia, ridden his bike down the Western seaboard, rafted the Grand Canyon several times, and led Outward Bound wilderness excursions for 50 days at a time. He told me story a while ago about a visit to Guatemala. He was backpacking around Latin America and visiting all the places I wasn't cool enough to see when I was down there for a month that same summer. One of the places he went was a system of caverns.

There are tour guides who take groups of people through these caves by candlelight. In places they wade through water, there are all sorts of creeping things about, and they squeeze through tight cracks and such.

Well that looks neat.

Cave spiders? Not so much.

At any rate, he said that they got to one point where the guide gathered them all together and had them blow out their candles so that they were in complete darkness. Then the guide took them each one by one to a place in the dark and said "Jump." He didn't say jump over or jump through or jump up or jump down. He just said "Jump." So my cousin jumped. He said it felt like he fell 8 or 10 feet and landed in water, which sucked him under and shot him into a river outside the cave.

I think about this story all the time. When I heard it, my first thought was, 'Isn't that a lot like faith?' We're lead to a place in the dark and we hear a voice we do not know say "Jump," and we're faced with a choice: to trust that voice without any assurance or vision of where it will lead, or to back away and stay in the dark, where it isn't comfortable, but at least we can feel the ground. What do we allow to rule our lives? Trust or fear?

They say that priests preach first to themselves, and it strikes me how much this story touches the nerve of one of my many habitual sins, which is to try to understand everything before committing, in the attempt to control all possible outcomes. If I can just see and understand all ends, I can choose correctly. It is a perpetual failure of mine to believe that I can choose my way to Heaven. But this thought neglects the leaping that is fundamental to the life of faith.

Goodbye, cruel world! (Why hello, nice ocean!)

Why is leaping fundamental to faith? Because it takes the ground out from under us. It is the surrender of the attempt at control. There will always be times that we meet with mystery, with our finitude, and need to make a choice, trusting in God's grace more than our own lights. That's why I've titled this entry "On Leaping," not "On the Leap." Despite what some of our beloved separated brothers and sisters may insist, there is no definitive personal proclamation of faith. Yes, you will leap, definitively, and then you will find that you must leap again. And again. And again. This is the life of faith, and if we continue to place our toes at the edge and trust that voice, it will be the life of growing in sanctity. Why? Because sanctity is nothing more than giving over our authority and control, and acknowledging Christ as the Lord of our hearts. Which is really the most freeing thing possible, because for such were we made. There is no freedom possible except the freedom for which we were made, which is the freedom to love. Anything less than love is a binding, a backing away from that edge, and a desire to remain in the dark where we can at least feel the walls, even if we can't see. And love itself will always be a leap in the dark, a trusting in the Mystery who is another person. So we need to ask ourselves: are we leaping?