The Courage to Be

(Just a point of personal amusement: I have to chuckle at how many of those old Paul Tillich texts-- or at least their titles!-- come back to be important now, personally, even if they are of only "historic" significance theologically...)

These days I'm reading for my morning devotional from a book given to me by a friend, Julia Cameron' s Transitions: Prayers and Declarations for a Changing Life. Ms Cameron is better known as the author of The Artist's Way. The prayer and/or declaration for this AM spoke to me, so I am going to share it here.

First this, from Anne Morrow Lindbergh: "It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security."

Then this from Julia: "I nurture a faithful heart. When difficulties, sorrows, and trials beset me, I consciously choose faith in the face of despair. Like the mountain climber who reaches the summit a step at a time, I hold an ideal in my heart. Despite the temptation to bitterness, despite the seduction of rage, I choose a path of temperate endurance, grounding my daily life in the small joys yet available to me. Learning from the natural world, I harbor the seeds of hope against the long winter. I count the small stirrings of beauty and delight still present in my barren time. My heart is a seasoned traveler. Moving through hostile and unfamiliar terrain it remains alert to encounter unexpected beauty blossoming despite the odds. In the arms of adversity, I yet find the comfort of tenderness to myself and others. I refuse to harbor a hardened heart. Decisively and deliberately, I expand rather than contract."

As I took this in, I realized that one of its truths for me is that it took little courage to experience the change(s) of last year, and much more courage to persist: to endure, to adjust my life, to re-discover my ground, to trust that God would provide for me, both substantially, and in a vision showing me God's own direction for my life-- the way out of the Pit, and back up the mountain! One step at a time; one day at a time.

I felt no loss of faith. I must say, though I lost much, and some more losses may still come, I felt no loss of faith. What I felt was a realization of a nearly daily demand to find the courage to live that day. Then, coming to the end of that day, assessing: what made living this day worthwhile? Yes, it was often the little things, incidents more than events, the tiny or quiet revelations of God's ever-Presence with me.

Now, as this year is unfolding, and more challenges are to be faced, there is also more clarity about what God's Vision for me might be. And there are indications that incrementally, God's Promise to me is being fulfilled. While still very much in the wilderness, the in-between, the "barren" time, in Cameron's words, even the hostile and unfamiliar and adverse space, yet my faith is secure, all the more because I've been allowed to see a little bit further down the road.

You might remember the experience that Lewis and Clark had in exploring the Great Northwest. So hungry were they to see the ocean and thus the end of their travels and travails, that when they reached their first summit, they were aghast at how many more mountains they were going to have to climb before they reached the Pacific! Moses might have felt that way, too, along his way. But when L&C finally saw the ocean, and Moses, the land across the Jordan, they were elated.

Well, I am nowhere near the ocean that way, and very far from God's Promising Land. But I have climbed a foothill or a even a mountain or two, and though there be more to climb, I keep going, faith-fueled, Spirit-sustained.

As Tillich knew, there simply are certain times in life when it takes real courage just to "be." But it is precisely these times when we learn that truthfully, it takes a courage to be ALL of the time!

Cameron concludes: "Today, I choose the softening grace of forgiveness. I allow the sunlight of the spirit to reach my shadowed heart."

May it be for me. May it be for you, as well.