Risking...

I've just been thinking about how often I have missed one of God's blessings because I have been afraid to take the risk involved in launching out into the deep, leaning way far off the merry-go-round horse, to snag that gold ring. Seems to me that for a while now I have lived in a comfortable misery. By that I mean, life has been at a low ebb, sort of like a sailing ship stuck in the doldrums, but it was familiar, like an old worn out bathrobe, or a pair of slippers with almost no bottom left. But to set sail, to hoist up the jib and catch the wind of the spirit, is to enter the new and leave the familiar. Sounds like it ought to be exciting, but right now it feels a good deal more like fear. Fear that something will change irreversibly, fear that the new may be more painful than the old, fear that God will somehow abandon us to the trade winds of the world and let us sail off toward an unknown horizon. To stay is to slowly die amidst decay and misery, to go is to risk great pain, and there is no third choice. A conundrum if there ever was one!

And so we sit and ponder, and at last hope that someone else will make the choice for us. It's about responsibility, and accountability, isn't it? If someone else were to decide, why then it is their fault if the plan goes awry. How unfair that is to them, how un-Benedictine, and yet it offers a certain hope that is really no hope at all.

So here we sit, hoisted on our own petard, and await the outcome. God go with us. I found these words this morning in the office of Prime from the Monastic Diurnal: "When the foundations go to pieces, what can the just accomplish? The Lord still dwelleth in His holy temple, still is His throne set up in heaven...For God is just and loveth justice, His face is turned upon the righteous." Ah, my sweet Lord, how much your words mean to me right now!