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.