At the edge
It's scary and breathtaking at the edge of your life
Just you, the edge and the vast unknown
The echoing down the valley of your heart
the constant call to trust
Yet how quickly that edge becomes a settled place without an echo,
a niche to line and re-align till you feel satisfied,
lulled into complacency by the now safe edge
till your peace is undermined by a new awareness
out beyond the edge of who you have become
Noel Powis
Come to the Edge
Come to th edge
We might fall
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew
Christopher Logue
Taking risks. Stepping out. heading in the general direction of change and adventure.
We chatted about all these things. And how it really helps to know that god is with us on the journey.
Stephen shared a little cartoon from a therapeutic parenting book. It's a picture of some penguins and a cliff. The caption reads:
'Traditional parenting entails pushing our children off of cliffs to help them to fly. But we are raising penguins. Don't push penguins off of cliffs'
Sometimes, in church, there is a lot of emphasis on taking leaps of faith. Trusting god. Jumping off metaphorical cliffs. But we're not all eagles needing to be thrown out of cliff edge nests. Some of us are penguins. And we can be confident that God, our divine parent, is not in the business of pushing penguins off cliffs. If you are naturally cautious, there will be good things that you bring to the world by being you. Stephen shared the passage in the Bible where Joseph is told in a dream that it's time to go back to his country. But he doesn't go to Bethlehem, because he's afraid. He goes to Nazareth. And by doing so, fulfils a prophecy about where the Messiah would be from. God used his caution and his fear in the plan.
There is also a faith narrative that says we need to hear from God exactly what we're supposed to be doing. But it's often not that easy to hear from god. And maybe that's by design. Perhaps we can trust that as we listen to our own hearts and seek to live wisely, God will journey with us. Maybe god is not in the business of micro managing our lives, but of loving us and walking along side us, wherever the path may lead.
Wishing you all a fabulous new year.