We were officially scheduled to leave for Ireland about two months ago; however, my departure still hasn’t come to fruition. Time at home has stretched out, and I’ve become integrated into the rhythm of living at home to a frightening degree. But still at the end of the day I’m blessed to have this time at home, as well as the adventure that I hopefully will be able to undertake soon in Dublin. I look forward to the fruit of the House of Brigid experience, yet it still hangs just outside of my reach as fruit once did for Tantalus. I reached out at first for an anticipated departure date, but each time it only shrunk back another couple weeks. I have been promised that I will eventually go to Ireland, so hope springs eternal. And the fruit is all the more tantalizing.
Dealing with that kind of uncertainty is a loss of control in my life. After graduating I hoped to go out into the world, and do something cool and valuable, but here I am living a quiet life in the Midwest with my parents. I have no idea when I will leave to go to Ireland, what job or school I will work in afterwards, whom (if!) I will marry, where I will live. There is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk, in the life of a person, and I’m going to argue here that we should treat this uncertainty the same way that we should cliff jump.
I throw myself off cliffs into cold water because it makes me feel fully alive and joyful. In the moment after the jump, there is no longer any control over whether or not you hit the water. You have accepted the risk, but you still have two choices before you as you deal with the risk. One is to focus on the fear that you’re feeling: “Why did I do this? No, no no!” (When I listen to this voice, it inevitably becomes, “I hate this!”) The other choice is to let go of your fear, and live in the moment. This “letting go of fear” is abandonment, and I think it’s the way that we should react to fear in general.
In the moment after I decide to step off, I feel wild and free and powerful, even though I have just thrown away some of my “control” for the next few moments. Afterwards I feel a more subdued, but long-lasting sort of joy alongside a lingering pride that I jumped, even if I am nursing a bruise or two. Finally, I am left with a sweet memory, and a greater ability to face my fears. That’s why I cliff jump.
When I feel fear on the top of a cliff, it communicates to me the reality that I may die or find some bit of success in the next moment. Isn’t mundane life like cliff jumping in this way? Is not every moment a chance for success or failure where we ultimately don’t know what will happen? On my daily drive to work I may feel quite comfortable, but the reality is that my next moment is still a mystery to me, and probably a crucible. I may be rear-ended, realize that I left the oven on, or remember a friend’s birthday. Our ignorance of the next moment is a reality of our lives; the belief that we can totally control our lives is a harmful illusion.
By abandoning the belief that I can dictate the next moment, I am consequently abandoning any sort of total reliance on myself. (I cannot totally control what happens to me, so I cannot totally rely on myself to make sure that I am okay.) So how do I know that I’ll be safe? It seems to me that a nonbeliever is forced to say, “I don’t know that everything will be okay. My life is partly in the hands of an indifferent universe.” It follows that for a nonbeliever, it doesn’t make much sense to voluntarily give up control over one’s life, and put it in the hands of no one. Wild abandonment doesn’t seem like a pragmatic choice for the nonbeliever in cliff jumping or in mundane life. Yet we know that the pragmatic response to uncertainty as humans is to live fearlessly. This sort of abandonment is only rational if there is a theistic God.
And if there is a theistic God, what a clear choice it is. In the words of Marie of the Incarnation:
“If we could, with a single interior glance, see all the goodness and mercy that exists in God’s
designs for each one of us, even in what we call disgraces, pains and afflictions, our happiness
would consist in throwing ourselves into the arms of the Divine Will, with the abandon of a
young child that throws himself into the arms of his mother.”
Whether we’re preparing to go to Ireland, driving to work, or throwing ourselves into water from high places, abandonment to God’s Will seems to bring joy, and paradoxically true strength. (Even, especially for men.) If the worst is true: God is only an Idea, and Christianity a “slave religion” (as Nietzsche so kindly phrased it) wild abandonment still offers people their most joyful lives. And if Christianity’s hope is true, our abandonment is eternally and unbelievably meaningful.
