There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear
1 John 4:18 NRSV
1 John 4:18 NRSV
One
of the books that has most shaped my spiritual journey is Parker Palmer’s LetYour Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. In my years of ministry, I have routinely
shared it with people discerning what kind of work they should go into or
struggling with careers that have left them burnt out and empty inside. It’s a short book, and one could easily read
it in an afternoon, although reflection upon its words takes much longer.
In
one of its later chapters (you can read the entire chapter here, but I recommend reading the chapters that lead up to it first), Palmer writes about the kind of spiritual work we
resist the most: examining the shadow sides of ourselves. Any worthwhile spiritual
journey “will take us inward and downward, toward the hardest realities
of our lives, rather than outward and upward toward abstraction, idealization,
and exhortation. . . Why must we go in and down? Because as we do so, we will
meet the darkness that we carry within ourselves—the ultimate source of the
shadows that we project onto other people. If we do not understand that the
enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone ‘out there’
into the enemy.”
Palmer illustrates this truth with a story from his
own life. He attended a week-long
experience with Outward Bound and found himself at the top of a cliff side about
to rappel down. It was the challenge he
feared most. He stepped off the cliff
and immediately slammed into a ledge a few feet down.
The instructor explained, “The only way to do this is to
lean back as far as you can. You have to get your body at right angles to the
cliff so that your weight will be on your feet. It’s counter-intuitive, but
it’s the only way that works.”
Palmer
writes, “I knew that he was wrong, of course. I knew that the trick was
to hug the mountain, to stay as close to the rock face as I could. So I tried
it again, my way—and slammed into the next ledge.”
The
instructor explained things once again, and slowly Palmer leaned back and began
inching down the cliff side. At the
halfway point, the instructor at the bottom of the cliff alerted Palmer to a
hole in the cliff side he was headed for which meant he must change the course
he had worked so hard to find.
Palmer
describes what happened next.
“I
knew for a certainty that attempting to do so would lead directly to my
death—so I froze, paralyzed with fear. The second instructor let me hang
there, trembling, in silence for what seemed like a very long time.
Finally,
she shouted up these helpful words: “Parker, is anything wrong?” To this day, I do not know where my
words came from, though I have twelve witnesses to the fact that I spoke them.
In a high, squeaky voice I said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then,”
said the second instructor, “it’s time that you learned the Outward Bound
motto.”
“Oh,
keen,” I thought. “I’m about to die, and she’s going to give me a motto!”
But
then she shouted ten words I hope never to forget, words whose impact and
meaning I can still feel: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it!”
Then Palmer describes the miracle that happened next:
“I had long believed in the concept of
“the word become flesh” but until that moment I had not experienced it. My
teacher spoke words so compelling that they bypassed my mind, went into my
flesh, and animated my legs and feet. No helicopter would come to rescue me;
the instructor on the cliff would not pull me up with the rope; there was no
parachute in my backpack to float me to the ground. There was no way out of my
dilemma except to get into it—so my feet started to move and in a few minutes I
made it safely down.”
The fears we carry within us too often leave us
paralyzed on a cliff side or trying to climb back up the cliff. We will do almost anything to avoid the
difficult work of facing our fears and trusting God will help us move past
them. Our refusals to “get into” the
fears we cannot avoid causes great harm to ourselves and those around us,
especially those whom we love most.
Palmer writes, “there is no way out of one’s
inner life, so one had better get into it. On the inward and downward spiritual
journey, the only way out is in and through.”
Loving God, help me to face the fears I most want to
avoid. Help me to trust that on the
other side of my fear lies freedom and relief.
Amen.
Grace and peace,
Chase
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