"To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try at all is to risk failure.
But to risk we must
Because the greatest hazard in life
Is to risk nothing.
The man, the woman, who risks nothing,
Does nothing, has nothing, is nothing."[1]
Being the father of sons can be hazardous to your health. I have two of them. - age 30 and 32. They like to do things - physical things - exciting things - and sometimes they want me to do these things with them. Thank heaven.
About ten years ago our younger son Douglas and I drove to Mount Marcy, the highest peak in New York State, for a little climb. In the fall of 1958 I had climbed Marcy, a little over 5,000 feet - not very lofty as mountains go, but a good hike. It was the beginning of my theological school career at St. Lawrence University. About thirty of us - students, faculty and their partners - climbed as a community-building exercise. We reached a lean-to about two-thirds of the way up, stayed overnight, and finished the next day. It was truly a peak experience - an incredibly clear Adirondack day with a view of Vermont's Green Mountains and New Hampshire's White Mountains in the distance. We lingered so long we had to finish our descent in the dark. No matter! It was a memorable experience and I wanted to share something similar with my family.
But with one thing and another we never could quite schedule it until one early September day Douglas and I decided to go for it. It was a brisk and beautiful climb. We ate lunch on the summit enjoying the view, sheltered from the chilling wind. We didn't linger too long this time, but determined to descend by a different route - which turned out to be a mistake. Though we are both Eagle Scouts, we misread the map and had to climb three other 4,000 foot-plus peaks on our long and circuitous descent. At one point I noticed climbers on a steep and rocky slope across the valley and said I was glad we didn't have to climb it. I spoke too soon. We had to do it or retrace our steps, risking darkness before we could return to our car.
To make a long story short, we made it down at dusk - rewarded our exertions at the nearest fast-food place, and drove back to Rochester - exhausted. At least I was. But what a great experience for a father to share with a son!
That should have been a lesson to me, but I am a slow learner. Last summer Matthew, our older son, invited me to do some indoor rock-climbing at a facility near here. He had taken up the sport - both its indoor and outdoor variations - and wanted me to share in his excitement. I wasn't too excited - given my tendency to overdo with my problematic back - and remembered the last time I did some climbing with his brother. But he assured me it was quite safe and I would enjoy it - so off we went.
Rock Ventures on University Avenue is in a large building. Glued onto every wall are these protruding rocks. Some walls go straight up - about 40 feet. Some walls actually lean out so that you are literally hanging suspended in mid-air. The climber gets into a safety harness which is held by a rope running through a pulley in the ceiling. One's partner ties the other end of the rope around his waist and holds it with a non-slip device. So when, or if, you fall off the wall, you are held safely suspended in the harness and your partner lowers you easily to the floor.
O.K. Here goes. I did four climbs, clinging to these incredibly small surfaces of rock with hands and feet. It is tough going, but it is very satisfying to make one's way up the wall. However, after about 20 feet or so, I made the mistake of looking down - a long way down. And I thought, what's a 60-something like me doing climbing these rocks? Intellectually I knew there was no danger. My trained and certified son held the rope and would lower me carefully if I needed help. I did. I thought I had gone as far as I could go, or wanted to go. "Now what?" I asked. "How do I get down?" "Just let go and push yourself off the wall," he said matter-of-factly. "You've got to be kidding!" I exclaimed. But there was no other way down. I gathered my resolve and pushed. Sure enough, just as he said, I was held gently by my harness and lowered slowly to the floor - a bit nervous but strangely exhilarated - though that might not have been the way I looked to Joyce, who was a more-than-interested spectator of this father-son bonding. It was unforgettable!
Last summer's climb reminded me of a gripping narrative by the Quaker Parker Palmer, a social activist with a mystical bent. He quoted Annie Dillard's words about the human deeps, riding down our fears to the "substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for one another, and for our life together here."
Palmer likened this to the spiritual quest which is not only "challenging but even frightening in a culture that seeks wholeness in atmospheric generalities rather than in subterranean stuff. . . "We will find the hidden wholeness on which contemplation-and-action depends only if we are willing to go down and into our lives, not up and out of them as we are sometimes urged to do.
"For example, if I allow my life to be deformed by the fallen angel called 'fear of failure,' I will never be fully alive." But if he could transcend that, Palmer said, he would learn that "failure and the fear of it is universal. . . .a natural fact, a way of discerning what to try next. I would be empowered to take more risks, which means to embrace more life, and in the process I would become more connected with others."
He participated in the Outward Bound program in his early forties. He writes: "A gossamer strand was hooked to a harness around my body, I was backed up to the top of a 110-foot cliff, and I was told to lean out over God's own emptiness and walk down the face of that cliff to the ground eleven stories below.
"I remember the cliff too well. It started with a five-foot drop to a small ledge, then a ten-foot drop to another ledge, then a third and final drop all the way down. I tried to negotiate the first drop; my feet instantly went out from under me, and I fell heavily to the first ledge. 'I don't think you quite have it yet,' the instructor observed astutely. 'You are leaning too close to the rock face. You need to lean much farther back so your feet will grip the wall.' "That advice, like the advice of some spiritual traditions, went against my every instinct. Surely one should hug the wall, not lean out over the void! But on the second drop I tried to lean back; better, but not far enough, and I hit the second ledge with a thud not unlike the first. 'You still don't have it,' said the ever-observant instructor. 'Try again.'
"Since my next try would be the last one, her counsel was not especially comforting. But try I did, and much to my amazement I found myself moving slowly down the rock wall. Step-by-step I made my way with growing confidence until, about halfway down, I suddenly realized that I was heading toward a very large hole in the rock, and not knowing anything better to do - I froze.
"The instructor waited a small eternity for me to thaw out, and when she realized that I was showing no signs of life she yelled up, 'Is anything wrong, Parker?' as if she needed to ask. To this day I do not know the source of the childlike voice that came up from within me, but my response is a matter of public record: 'I don't want to talk about it.'
"The instructor yelled back, 'Then I think it's time you learned the Outward Bound motto.' 'Wonderful, I thought. I am about to die, and she is feeding me bromides.' "But then she spoke words I have never forgotten, words so true that they empowered me to negotiate the rest of that cliff without incident: 'If you can't get out of it, get into it.' Bone-deep I knew that there was no way out of this situation except to go deeper into it, and with that knowledge my feet began to move. . . .
"When we live a full life of contemplation-and-action, . . . we will be compelled to search the depths, (where) we can find the hidden wholeness that unites and energizes us, the source and the power that make us fully alive."[2]
Palmer's experiences and mine have led me to explore the concepts of risk and trust. Why do people risk their lives to climb mountains, paraglide from towering heights, ride rapids and engage in what have been called "extreme sports"? I remember hearing a conversation between National Public Radio's Bob Edwards and some mountain climbers just a few days before several of them died in an unexpected snowstorm. I recall the incredibly moving conversation between one of those doomed to die and his pregnant wife - helpless to save him - in far-off New Zealand. He was on a cell phone with her up until the moment of his death.
Reading accounts of such risk-taking was frightening, but fascinating. Eric Perlman, mountaineer and filmmaker, said, "We are designed to experiment or die." Jonathan Senk, a former Army Ranger and adventure racer, put it this way: "Our society is so surgically sterile. It's almost like our socialization desensitizes us. Every time I'm out doing this I'm searching for my soul. It's the Lewis and Clark gene, to venture out, to find what your limitations are."[3]
"Death is only one of many ways you lose your life," said Alvah Simon, a polar sailor who had "decided at an early age that if he wasn't living on the edge he was taking up too much room."[4]
Maurice Herzog, after he reached the summit of Annapurna, said, "Never had I felt happiness like this - so intense and yet so pure. That brown rock, the highest of them all, that ridge of ice - were these the goals of a life-time? Or were they, rather, the limits of human pride? . . . we turn the page: a new life begins. There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men."[5]
Clearly, most of us will not scale the world's tallest peaks, throw ourselves out of airplanes to sky dive, body surf the waves at Waikiki. Yet each of us knows that life is full of risk. We don't have to be day traders or venture capitalists to know that this can be a very dangerous world.
Some few of us will illustrate the point that humans are the only species so far as we know to deliberately put themselves in risky situations. Some few of us will test the limits and risk everything to live on the edge - whether responsibly or irresponsibly.
Most of us are content with the risks of daily living. Choosing a new religious faith when we had been told the old one was the one truth faith - but we begged to differ; choosing a life partner, a choice fraught with incredible danger to the heart and psyche; setting out upon a career with uncertainty of success; entering into parenthood, a risk without parallel, that we should presume to bring new life into being, much less prepare it to make its own way in the world.
I think of another kind of risk that was important for me. As many of you know I am musically challenged. However, a few years ago a strange desire to learn to play the recorder swept inexplicably over me. I bought a cheap one, a couple of instruction books and proceeded to practice. I took my recorder to a religious education conference on Star Island, off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I went off by myself to serenade the gulls - who didn't take to it very well.
In the course of a worship workshop I took, the leader had us lead worship for this small group of about a dozen by doing that part of worship in which we were not comfortable. I can preach at the drop of a hint, while others fear to speak in public. But I was assigned to make music - on my recorder. A friend, a fine oboist, took me under her wing, and we practiced a very simple duet for several hours before going public. I was never so nervous - nor pleased with myself that I actually did it.
That same kind of panic-and-pleasure response came at a Church Council retreat in the Bristol Hills when I provided prelude and postlude for a worship service I led. How frightening to risk the unknown when one is uncertain; yet what pleasure in survival.
To experience life deeply is to risk everything, even life itself. No one ever promised us an easy time, roses without thorns, a life full of pleasure and without pain. From that first spank on the bottom we live our lives precariously. We choose or avoid risks each day. We choose to live that kind of life every morning we get out of bed.
I think we choose it because it is full of risk, replete with uncertainty. We do not know what will happen tomorrow, and it is good we don't, for that tomorrow we can anticipate as the great unknown. I do not know which is most meaningful, the memory of yesterday, the reality of today, or the mystery of tomorrow. All I do know is that there are risks to be taken, life to be lived in ultimate uncertainty.
The price we pay for the joys of living is uncertainty, pain, suffering. We cannot find a tote sheet that will neatly balance the equation; that will in computer-like precision, tell us life is worth it. Only a supreme act of faith in life, an illogical embrace of existence will answer the question for us. If the cup at times seems half empty, it may be because it is also half full. Is or is not life worth the living? That question each of us must answer in our own way, and only those who ask it will know the agony and ecstasy of an answer.
This is where trust comes in. Climbing Mount Marcy I had to have a certain amount of trust in myself - knowing it was worth the while - having confidence in my companions. So it was on a smaller physical scale rock climbing this summer. My life - at least my bodily well-being - was in the hands of my son. I had to have trust I could do this - that a new experience would not scare me away despite advancing years and aging body. I learned to trust myself, trust my companion, trust life - believe that life is not a walk from boredom to tedium and back, but always and ever an adventure.
Life has been likened to driving a car in the fog. Your headlights only show up the next 10 feet, but that's all you really need to see. If you drive the next 10 feet, then your lights will show up another 10 feet. We need to believe in tasking the next step. We don't have to see the whole thing, take the whole journey at once. But if we see the next step only, then is it possible to take it? We have to believe that in taking this one, the next one will open up. Everything depends on our being faithful to the next step, however great or small it may seem to be.[6]
Religion has to do with risk. If there is no tension, no conflict, no suffering, there is no life. We then live in passivity, mediocrity, insignificance. "Everything worth doing in the world is a desperate gamble, a game of chance, where nothing is certain."[7]
Philosopher Heinz Pagels had a dream that suggests our basic trust must be in the life process itself - in its goodness, its worthwhileness, its ultimate joy.
"I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock but it would not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. "It is written in the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness."[8]
I'm not sure I'll ever go rock climbing again - inside or outside - but I have the treasured memory of having taken the risk, allowed myself to be challenged, permitted myself to trust in the goodness of life and those who share it with me. If life is a throw of the cosmic dice, so be it. Is it worth the gamble? Of course! Of course!
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