Teetering on an Edge

"Life is a hypocrite if I can't live the way it moves me" - Christopher Fry

You ever have a moment when you feel as though your life is teetering at the edge of something that can only be described as a great mystery? There is so much clarity of purpose yet the fleshing out process is still in the cocoon phase and you long to discover the new life that awaits beyond the chrysalis.

I believe that my life has arrived at just such a moment. Something is about to happen; the spirit is about to burst through and its a matter of either stepping to that edge and taking a leap of faith or pulling back from the unknown and settling for the familiar. I think many of us (especially the older we get) opt for the latter. Life is not turning out to be anything like I once imagined it and maybe for the first time in my life, I'm okay with that.

In nature mentoring, it's about subtly nudging people to their edge. I too have found my edge and I believe that God is beginning to lead me beyond it... what lies ahead is yet to be seen. This I know for certain, there's a sense of two-fold surrender; a surrender of my beliefs about how I was supposed to be and a surrender to my deepest and wildest passions.

*How can I be certain that this new found calling is genuine and not just perplexity, feeling or justification for escaping responsibilities?

*I know that by taking this leap of faith that it is not an avoidance of responsibility rather something that becomes a challenge as I step into the unknown. This also feels deeply familiar to my soul. It's starting to feel like it did eleven years ago when a great shift occurred in my life that lead me to pursue ministry. I also have this enigmatic sense that the chapter in my life that I had been living is now coming to a close or is now over. It's weird to think that what was once meaningful has become empty. I think that the last way that I know this call is for real is that it always seem to be unexpected and unwanted, as I mentioned before we tend to like the familiar.

So I'm navigating the waters of my soul by imagining how I might feel if I don't act on this call as well as starting the process of picking up my foot and stepping over the edge and seeing how that feels as well.

Will I take the leap? Stay tuned to find out...

*Thanks to Bill Plotkin and his book Soulcraft for enabling me words to identify the genuine-ness of this calling into outdoor education/wilderness therapy.

Making Their Presence Known

There was a black bear that was spotted about 7 miles from here last Thursday.

I posted last fall about the cougar sightings southwest of us and now we have seen a bear. Now for me to complete the circle there needs to be a wolf sighting out this way.

New podcast today. Check it out by clicking on the "Play" button on the Gcast link in my sidebar on the right.

All That has Been... All That is Yet To Be

Now that I'm less than a year away from being 30, and my 10 year High School reunion is approaching; I thought it might be good to reflect on what has been and what is yet to be.

One of the ways I'm doing that is through the song that was thought to be our graduation song for the class of '99, Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) by Baz Luhrman. Here are some of my personal favs from the song:

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.