What Is Courage, Really?

August 6, 2024
Beloved:
    This thirteen minute film was extra interesting to me this morning.  I hope you are able to see and will take the necessary thirteen minutes to watch this Swedish film in which ordinary people are challenged to overcome their fear and self-doubt by stepping off a 33-foot diving platform into a swimming pool.  I found it enormously interesting to see them work up their own courage and encourage each other, or to give in to their fear.  If it were a cliff into a lake or rushing water, I’d likely be too afraid.  But easily do I imagine being able to leap into clear water where the pool floor is visible.   
    My almost three year old granddaughter likes looking for snapping turtles in a leftover quarry at Woolery Mill when we shop at the Saturday morning farmer’s market. She doesn’t like my vice-like grip on her wrist when we stand on the  limestone blocks  around the pool.  I may be looking for turtles, but what I see most clearly is her bending for a closer look then  tumbling six or eight feet into that reedy, slimy water and me jumping in right behind her, no doubt breaking my ankle, again. Because I would jump.  Of course I would jump, and a whole crew of firefighters would have to haul me out in front of the crowd who gathered to see the grammy with the algae in her hair hoisted back on land.  I’d miss that farmers’ market too.  They have lovely coffee.  But seriously, this whole movie plays out in my mind every time we look for turtles there.
    Jumping in to catch your grandkid isn’t courage, it’s what people do, and hopefully not just for their own, nor just for kids.  Even if it’s come to count for courage in a world of hyperindividualism, hopefully for folks of faith some remnant remains of the connection between community and courage, between our own lives and our life together.  We ARE our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.  No one is getting through this world on their own.  No one.  Most days, the  greater part of courage may be accepting our dependence on and need for one another.  Then living accordingly, by serving others and letting ourselves be served, as the days demand.  If only, amen?  If only we could concede our need of our neighbors, how much less  might we  wish them harm, or worse?  All I know to do is practice.  Practice. Practice. Practice.  Like the ringer at the end of the Swedish film.  To trust God’s grace as completely as they trust the water to catch them would be faith made perfect, it seems to me.  I pray this day finds you held in the grace of God’s goodness to us all. 

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette