(I'm doing a bit of an archaeological dig into articles and poetry written years ago. Somehow this article seemed to fit with the White Water Rafting of the previous post!)
Walking backwards off the edge!
I must be very careful of the illustrations I use when leading a
retreat! Recently I talked about abseiling as an picture of trust and
surrender. I was quoting from Parker Palmer whose own experience of abseiling
had been a salutary lesson in faith. It was a great illustration - written with
humour, yet taking seriously the spiritual challenge embedded in the physical
experience.
I suppose I should have guessed that someone would ask me if I'd ever
tried it myself! "Well, no actually, I haven't. I watch other people
abseiling quite often though - almost every day I walk past a recreation centre
where they teach outdoor pusuits. So I can see how safe it is and it looks like
fun!" Having put it like that I could hardly back out when my friend
admitted it hadn't felt like fun the one time she'd tried it and asked me to go
with her to have another try - this time as a conscious expression of trust. So
with a slightly sinking feeling I agreed.
Part of me hoped she would just forget about it. After all learning vicariously
from someone else's experience is good enough isn't it? Alas, she was serious!
A few weeks later we were booked in to actually do it!
Our instructor was great. He found out about us and our past experience
- one with a bad experience and one with none! He talked us through every
detail of the harness, the ropes, the helmet, the safety rope he would hold and
the way to walk backwards off the edge! The only thing left was to do it. His
final word was: "Trust the equipment. It will hold you. If you slip, or
even just want to pause on the way down I will hold you steady with the safety
rope. Trust me!" We assured him
that trust was exactly the name of the game!
And so I walked backwards off the edge (yes, that is me in the photo!) - leaning out into the harness,
letting out the rope at my own pace and looking up at the instructor calling
out encouraging words! It was a challenge - especially that first step over the
edge. But the equipment and the intsructor were trustworthy and once I knew
that from experience it was fun! We had two descents each and left feeling both
exhilarated and thoughtful.
Walking backwards off the edge is a crazy thing to do without the right
equipment and a competent instructor. When both are there, however, it may be
the best way down to a new level of faith. The Christian pathway isn't always
through green pastures and beside still waters. Often enough it leads to apparently insurmountable cliffs and
crevasses that seem to disappear into an abyss. We are used to walking forwards
seeing the next step and choosing it carefully. Walking backwards goes against
our strong desire to stay in control. What's more we are used to walking on the
horizontal plane. "I'm not designed for vertical descent," we gasp,
as life tips us totally out of our comfort zone. Walking backwards off the edge
disorients us. It gives us a stark choice: Trust and descend safely to a new
level of being or stay in control on the
familiar flat land.
The faith equipment that will hold us needs to be carefully put on piece
by piece before we reach the top of the cliff so that at that "first step
over the edge" moment we have confidence in what we are leaning into.
Walking backwards means our eyes are free to watch the Instructor who
encourages every trusting step and promises to hold us steady even if we slip.
Faith is a challenge - and the exhilaration of surrendering to it cannot be
felt vicariously.
While we were abseiling on one part of the wall a group of young
children were going down alongside us and we were told that earlier in the day
people in wheelchairs had been enabled to abseil too! Trusting, like abseiling, is not reserved for
the mature or the strong. Trusting is about leaning back and knowing you will
be held. Sometimes children and the disabled
know more about this than most of us!
(PS In case you are wondering: no I haven't been bungy jumping and I
have definitely decided never to use it as an illustration!)
