Stepping OUT

This is Sarah. She and her boyfriend Scott recently went to Trapeze School, on Pier 40, in New York City. I asked her to tell the story in church, to help us think about what it is like, to Step OUT into God's unknown. Imagine being strapped into a safety harness, clipped to another safety cord, and sent off to climbup a 25 ft. ladder. Imagine meeting a tiny girl at the top, whose job is to hold your entire body weight, as you lean over the edge of the platform to grab the trapeze bar that seems miles away and way beyond your reach. Is your heart racing yet? Have you begun to question what you are doing way up there, and why you are even considering launching yourself off the platform into the air?! Go ahead and look down. Do you see the instructor who will use his body weight to pull the safety harness, so your face won't smash into the net and then the ground? Are you wondering if it's too late to turn back now?

It’s all a process of timing, weight and motion. The instructor will get the rhythm going 1...2...3... hut!' On 'hut' you are supposed to jump off the platform and swing forward, and backward, while flipping upside down. How many tries do you think it will take to convince your feet to budge and leave the platform? What questions are running through your head now? Do you trust the process? Here's what happened, eventually, for Sarah...

"As I climbed that ladder I took a moment to embrace the experience. I realized that the view was beautiful, the sun was setting as I enjoyed the beauty of the city skyline and now it's time!!! Now I'm ready to step off and take a LEAP OF FAITH! I loved the feeling of swinging in the breeze, hanging upside down by my knees and finally letting go and free falling. What a rush!!

My heart was pounding and the adrenaline was flowing!!!!! Before I knew it, I was lying in the middle of the net, thinking, 'I made it' , 'I survived'!! That day, at Trapeze School, I learned a lot about going beyond my comfort zone, trusting my life to complete strangers and a single cable."

Listening to Sarah's story, I wondered how I embrace both uncertainty and exhilaration, as I step out beyond the familiar territory of known experience. With trust? Yes. Courage? Surely. But also with a beginner's mind. In his book, "a life of being, having, and doing enough," Wayne Muller makes a distinction between the beginner's mind of child-like awe, filled with wonder and curiosity and the expert's mind, which just 'knows' how things ought to be done, how they will work, which way is the right way, and which is clearly wrong.

This distinction may have been at play in a conversation Jesus once had with a so-called expert named Nicodemus. Jesus said, “The wind blows where it will, and we hear the sound of it, but we do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8

"We do not know," Jesus said. With a beginner's mind, frontiers of new experience may become a source of birthing as well as blessing. If I am willing to be surprised, I may learn something new about myself. I may learn something new about God. Stepping OUT beyond the frontier of known experience, I may be born again.

Stepping OUT,

Cheryl