Ready for Anything

"If your mind is clear and free from clutter, it is always ready for anything, which keeps it open to everything good." -- Sogyal Rinpoche

"For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything." -- James 1:3-4

I must admit that I am not usually ready for anything. But I want to be.

When I embrace the "testing of my faith", rather than run from it, whine about it, roll my eyes at it, wait it out, or "get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible", I find that the testing of my faith IS my life and it is increasing my capacity to experience life, which is what James means by having my "endurance fully developed".

You know, it is so much work to swim against a river, or even to cross a river, than it is to dive headlong into it and let it take you where it's going to take you...you'd think more people would just love the news that they can just "surrender and be" and they will end up where they are supposed to go.

And I am not talking about surrendering to the notorious "path of least resistance". I am talking about surrendering to the "powerful surge" of the Holy Spirit of God. Which is always, always, always bidding you to come.

In the old movie, A River Runs Through It, the McLain brothers worked themselves and their 3 buddies up into a frenzy about spontaneously stealing a neighbors boat in order to go down to the river, get in, and conquer the infamous rapids that no one has ever attempted. They spoke with stars in their eyes about how famous the 5 of them would be if they did it and survived. It was enough for them all to go play a part in stealing the boat, driving to the river, unloading the boat, and hauling it all the way down to the river bank. But then they took another glance at the rapids and rocks and waterfalls...

It was enough to make them all pause and reconsider. Forget the stories that would be told if they survived, forget the glory of having attained such a feat, forget all the work invested up to this point...they couldn't look at the risk and get in the water. Truth be told, they wanted to talk and act "as if" they wanted to do it, without actually doing it. They liked the appearance of being ready for anything, but weren't actually so.

Three of them decided it wiser to stay out of the water. The McLain brothers, however, looked at each other and found the mutual courage to get in the boat . By doing so, they surrendered their fates to the powerful surge of the river.

Some of you will need to exit the analogy right here, because you will not be able to get past the ultimate meaninglessness of risking your life physically for such a silly thing as going down the rapids of a river when it is dangerous to do so. And that is sincerely okay, because ultimately, you are right.

It is the inner capacity to willingly face your fears on meaningful and worthy endeavors that I am trying to talk about. You are, in every single moment of your life, on the shore of some great, meaningful, and worthy endeavor that can not be undertaken unless you are willing, like the McLain brothers, to face the danger and the fears, and surrender to the current of God's Spirit, come what may.

When was the last time you did that?

I would suggest, that the last time you did that, you felt the same as those McLain boys did on that river...afraid, exhilarated, out-of-control-with-no-one-to-blame-for-it-but-yourself, anticipating, focused, consumed...I bet you were fully engaged when you did it.

You know what is IMPOSSIBLE when you do this? Numbness, apathy, distraction, temptation, laziness, mind-wandering, pettiness, small-thinking, mediocrity, complaining about little things, gossip...basically, everything that most people are most of the time, is impossible when you willingly "get off the shore" and put your very life in the hands of Someone other than you.

Where the heck did I get the message, somewhere along the way, that living the Life of Christ was supposed to be a safe, well-planned, risk-assessed-and-managed life?

Every time I try to live a Christianity that makes sense, I find myself plummeting into all those things listed above that, for me, are equal to death. I become, at best, a Religious Zombie.

I am very blessed to be surrounded by a growing number of people who are learning to not just talk about the glory of diving into the river, not just take steps towards the river, not just look at the rapids and say "how cool would that be?", but they are swallowing hard and taking that illogical, crazy step into the boat that simultaneously pushes them off of the shore, and settling in to the Powerful Ride ahead, come what may.

Like those McLain brothers, they are disappearing over the edge of the waterfalls...and the only thrill those 3 friends of theirs who were left behind have is watch in awe and see how it ends.

What James said above could be said in the negative this way: "When your faith test is avoided, your endurance is given no chance to grow. So avoid the testing whenever you are given the choice to, and when your endurance is only partially developed, you will be weak in character and ready for almost nothing."