Dealing With the Fear Of Taking the Risk To Be Alive

"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are." Don Miguel Ruiz I spent some time this morning at the Federal Building for Immigration downtown San Francisco supporting one of my gay friends, a dear colleague in ministry and one of our leaders of Second Wind.  He appeared in front of an immigration judge this morning to tell his story in order to apply for legal asylum here in the States.  His request is based upon the real dangers of being gay in the religious subculture he lived and worked all of his adult life within in his home country.  When he emerged from the court room with his lawyer and we debriefed the experience, I asked him what it felt like to retell his story in great detail.  "It was cathartic in many ways but also very painful - remembering all the awful things I encountered when I came out as gay:  the ostracization from my church community, the loss of my pastoral occupation and reputation, my marriage, the pain for everyone including my kids who had to put up with ridicule from their friends and others, living with the fear of rejection every day, often experiencing it in painful ways.  But I feel good about how clearly and openly I told my story to the judge."  His son was there to speak to the judge on behalf of his father, too.  "I want for us both to be able to live here in this country and build our lives here," he told me.

Now my friend (along with his long time committed partner) waits for two weeks to hear the immigration judge's verdict.  And we wait with them as their friends and spiritual community who love them and are committed to the journey of life together.

And I'm reminded of the great courage and bravery he's manifesting to take the risk to be genuinely alive, the risk to express who he really is in spite of the consequences he's both faced and continues having to put up with even in this country.  I admire him for his honesty and his integrity to live with transparency and congruity.

It's not easy choosing to be alive and really live life in alignment and integration.  It takes risks.  We have to encounter our fears.  We have to be willing to fail from time to time but then to pick ourselves up and keep moving forward.  It's not easy.

Have you ever asked yourself what your biggest fears are to living the life you feel deep inside you're called to live?  What does the cage look like that might tend to keep you from being really alive?

Maybe that's why in my work with people I encounter so many who are simply trying to survive, to make it to death safely, not pushing the edges of their lives, simply maintaining the status quo.  It's easier that way - it appears less risky.  But notice I say "appears" because in actuality, it's more risky.  When you live your life out of alignment, not being who you really, trying to live someone else's life instead of your own, when you're not living your calling and purpose, settling instead for status quo, your inner spirit and physical body pick up on this lack of congruity and create what we call dis-ease - a restlessness inside, a lack of ease.  Experts remind us that this condition is a condition of stress.  And when you live with this state of stress for a long time it becomes chronic.  And chronic stress has been shown to be terribly debilitating to the body, leading to a susceptibility to disease and illness on multiple levels, including depression.  Our human systems are designed to experience maximum status when there's complete alignment between our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts, and our behaviors - when we're living within the integrity of our true selves, when we're using how we're wired with boldness and confidence and purpose.

As I listened to my friend's lawyer giving a thumbnail sketch of the process this morning and where it goes from here, I felt deep admiration for her as a professional who is so committed to helping people enjoy the opportunity to live life deeply and freely in this country.  I was reminded of the profound statement of mission and purpose Jesus stated when he began his ministry.  He quoted from Isaiah 61, applying the mission of God to himself:  "God's Spirit has anointed me and chosen me to bring freedom and liberation to the captives, to proclaim this as the year of God's redemption and favor for all."

In my opinion, this powerful and professional lawyer who is helping our friend and all her other clients has stepped into the legacy of the great prophets of old and Jesus himself who came to give all people the joy of freedom and liberation to be alive, really alive.

Filming the event this morning was another of my friends here in the City.  He and his wife (both leaders in our Second Wind spiritual community) are producing a documentary about gays who are trying to reconcile their sexual identity with their religious and spiritual orientation.  These two courageous people are sacrificing everything they have to travel the country (carrying their 20 month old daughter along) filming stories to highlight this tremendous need.  They, too, have stepped into the legacy of Jesus' mission of announcing the freedom and liberation to be alive, really alive, for all people.  I admire their persistent passion and boldness.

It takes courage to take the risk to be alive no matter what your orientation - "the risk to be alive and express what we really are."  This isn't about sexuality.  It's about being human on every level.  We all face it.  And it's risky business.  We have to take intentional steps forward every day, choosing to live deeply and purposefully instead of letting the days go by without any thought or awareness or momentum.  It's about choosing to live our God-given life, not someone else's.

But in the end, for those who are willing to take that risk for themselves and on behalf of others, the reward of living in alignment, of living with purpose and mission, of choosing courage and boldness instead of fear and intimidation will far outweigh the risks.  There's certainly stress in taking risks.  But this kind of stress - eustress - always trumps distress!  It's actually good for you.

I love the way George Bernard Shaw describes this kind of life.  This is the way I want to live.  This kind of life is the highest level of spirituality and it produces the most profound kind of transformation possible (Jesus' life showed this to be true).  Here it is:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a might one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.  I rejoice in life for its own sake.  Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

So here's to taking the risk of being alive and expressing what we really are, for our sakes and for others and for Life itself!

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Death, Resurrection, and a Gran Torino

[If you enjoy this blog, please SHARE it with your friends and others who might be interested.  You can click in the column to the right and choose how you want to share this.] A RECAP FROM MY LAST POST:  Remember Walt Kowalski (from the movie Gran Torino)?  Walt is living a lonely, isolated life in a world that looks so different from his past.  He's turned himself into a gruff, crude, angry old man who pushes everyone away.  His defense mechanisms (his ego defenses) are so strong that he's placed himself on a trajectory toward a lonely, painful ending.  His only legacy will be the perfectly kept, spotless car from his past - a Gran Torino - which has come to symbolize the way he wished life still was - something good from the past he religiously hangs on to.

Is there any hope for a man like Walt Kowalski?  Is the Gran Torino all there is?  Here-in lies the power of this contemporary story, especially in light of this Season's theme of death and resurrection.  There are two spiritual traditions centering on two powerful stories that both Jews and Christians celebrate this time of year.  Both stories have a lot to say about the important dynamics of spiritual growth and transformation.  Both center around the experiences of death and resurrection.

Notice THE STORY OF THE JEWISH PASSOVER.  There’s an existence of bondage and slavery in the foreign land of Egypt (with an accompanying loss of a sense of true identity and purpose) – there’s weeping and wailing and death and status quo and survival.  The people have gotten use to living with a certain frame of mind (with strongly developed defense mechanisms) and a corresponding way of life – victims, hopelessness, death – as the chart in my last post shows, fear-anger-shame.  Then there’s an appeal by Moses on behalf of their God to exit this life of slavery and bondage and enter their true Life (a life promised by God that will be lived out in the Promised Land).  And God will provide a way of escape.  How?  They must choose to trust in this Life-giving, Nourishing God by spreading the blood of a killed lamb over the doorposts so the angel of judgment on the Egyptian slave empire will “pass over” their homes; then they must leave their homes and follow Moses out of the country; then they must willingly escape across the Red Sea (once God divides it) in the face of the enemy army to “pass over” to the other side away from their land of bondage and into their resurrected new life.

Notice the process:  God promises – they choose to trust – they follow specific directions – they walk away from their old life – they go into the unknown, face pain and danger – and they finally choose to keep going, all the while learning about their reclaimed Identity, until they arrive at their New Life (the Promised Land) where they can finally live in complete alignment with their God-given identity.  Cross – Resurrection.  All along the way, their egos are dying on the cross as they follow God and God provides what they need to make intentional choices.  And the result is a resurrection to their New Life.  The point is, you can't have a resurrection to a new life without also choosing to leave something else behind.

NOTICE THE STORY OF THE CHRISTIAN EASTER.  In this Christian story, the Way of Jesus is all about the confidence with which he lived his life all the way to the end.  In spite of all the voices trying to tell him who he was, who he should be, whom he shouldn’t be, he developed a powerful security in his identity as God’s beloved son.  Only a really secure person can serve so unselfishly and compassionately and courageously.  Right?  That’s why the Gospel of John (chapter 13), when it describes Jesus in the upper room the night of his betrayal celebrating the Jewish Passover service, says about Jesus, “And Jesus, knowing who he was, where he had come from, and where he was going, took off his outer garment, took the servant’s pitcher of water and a towel, and washed his disciples’ feet.”

Only a really centered person, who has learned to move from a small-s “self” to capital-S Self, who has learned who he truly is, who God has called him to be, can face the powerful religious and political systems of his day and oppose them for all the right reasons – in spite of their vigorous persecution and vitriolic aggression against him.  Only a truly centered and secure person can deliberately break the unjust rules and boundaries of his time and proclaim a message about the Kingdom of God being a world of justice and compassion for everyone, knowing that this message, along with all of his courageous acts of love, will be dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

Here’s the way one author puts it:  “The way of Jesus involves not just any kind of death, but specifically ‘taking up the cross,’ the path of confrontation with the domination system and its injustice and violence.  His passion was the kingdom of God, what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers and systems of this world were not.  It is the world that the [Hebrew] prophets dreamed of – a world of distributive justice in which everybody has enough, in which war is no more, and in which nobody need be afraid … Jesus’ passion got him killed.  But God has vindicated Jesus.  This is the message of Good Friday and Easter … The way of the cross leads to life in God and participation in the passion of God as known in Jesus.” Marcus Borg, Jesus, pp 291-292.

The Way of Jesus shows what can happen when a person is so centered on God and God’s passion, is so centered on God’s calling and one’s true Identity, that they are empowered to let go of every image and defense mechanism that isn’t the truth about themselves, and then live with courage and boldness to love and give no matter what and no matter who they’re confronted by.

The power of the Jesus story is how it illustrates the Way to New Life, the abundant and joyful life, the divine life that we’re designed to enjoy.  Two powerful symbols that describe this Way:  the Cross, and the Empty Tomb; death and resurrection; the laying down of the ego, in order to find, to reclaim the Essential Self.

It’s interesting how so many of us want the new life without the pain of the cross.  We expect there to be a “silver bullet” that suddenly launches us into our true Selves without having to go through the “grave” of the ego.  We are constantly tempted to project a certain image of ourselves in order to protect ourselves – so we make choices to protect that image at all costs.  Instead of living out of our core truth, instead of having the courage to be who we really are, to live in alignment with who God has created and called us to be.

BACK TO “GRAN TORINO”

So how does this way of the cross and resurrection, this sacred portal and thin place, get lived out by Walt Kowalski in the movie “Gran Torino?”  What happens with the central metaphor of his prized and perfect Gran Torino, that symbol of escape from the real world into his safe, secure, predictable fantasy world?

Walt has spent multiple decades shining and polishing and nurturing his Gran Torino – he has invested himself in this car because it has come to represent the way he wished life still were.  That car has become his ego defense mechanism and he continues massaging it, hoping for a better world.

But haven’t you noticed that often the very things we do to get what we’re really looking for are the very things that keep us from getting it?  Walt’s anger, shame, and fear – and the ways he lives those feelings out – are not helping him get what he’s really seeking – autonomy, security, and positive attention.  His Gran Torino is a powerful symbol of misguided focus.

Until that prized Gran Torino one night almost gets stolen by who Walt thinks is one of the local gang members – and then finds out that it’s his next door neighbor’s teenage son.  Which then catapults Walt kicking and screaming into the whole life of this Asian family who has been to him up to now a foreign enemy.  As they respond in humility and kindness and graciousness, mortified over the shame from their boy’s actions, Walt begins to get to know them.  In ever so slight ways, he lets his guard down and his heart opens up to this new world around him.  He ultimately begins trying to mentor this boy who has no father at home, bringing him into his world as well as going into the boy’s and his sister’s world.  Walt begins to see that there’s another way to look at and experience life in this new reality – that there are people who can see him for who he really is – who accept his grumpiness and crudeness as just an exterior he’s gotten use to using that in truth masks a gentle and kind heart, a grandfather’s heart.

Their love and kindness pursue him in spite of his angry attempts to deflect them.  Love wears him down.  And what he begins to feel, he begins to like.  What he sees of himself when he looks through their eyes, he begins to like.  He finally finds his true Self evidenced by his final act of selfless giving.  True to what Jesus once said, "The one who gives up his life for my sake will find it."

In the end, Walt’s Gran Torino, the very symbol of his insecurity, becomes a symbol of his resurrected life.  He gives this prized car to this Laotian boy – the very boy who tried to steal it now gets to use it and then ultimately own it.  Walt has gone through the cross of letting his ego be transcended by his truer Self and has experienced a resurrection of love, compassion and kindness.  The very Gran Torino he hung on to as his old way of survival and security becomes transformed into a symbol of his expanded life – a sacred portal, a thin place.

QUESTIONS:  So where might you see yourself in Walt Kowalski’s story?  What are your ego defenses – how do you tend to respond when you don’t get your way or when you feel threatened?  What is your Gran Torino that you’re using to protect your ego?  What do you tend to hang on to that symbolizes your desire for security, autonomy, attention?  Where in your life do you need the resurrection of your true Self?  What does the cross look like for you – where does your ego need to die so that your truest Self can be resurrected?