This is the text of the reflection I offered on February 3, 2019, to the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Sam Keen is, as I said during the Story time, a fairly well-known author within a certain niche of readers. He’s written books like, Your Mythic Journey, Fire in the Belly, Inward Bound (exploring the geography of your emotions), To a Dancing God, and The Passionate Life. He’s particularly well known to people interested in what’s been called the mytho-poetic movement. He’s written that we are, “bio-mythic animals. The true double helix that makes us human is an intertwining of biological mechanisms (IDNA) and cultural mechanisms (or myths). We are fabric woven of chemistry and narrative, biology and stories, flesh and dreams.”
It’s not too unexpected, then, that he would not only be intrigued by the physical elements of learning the flying trapeze, but it’s mythology-poetic ones as well. The subtitle of the book Learning to Fly, is “trapeze — reflections on fear, trust, and the joys of letting go.”
It’s a commonly accepted fact among preachers that a lot of adults pay more attention to, and report getting more out of, the story for the children than they do from the more “adult” sermon that is ostensibly written for them. With that in mind, it’s my intention to give now essentially the same reflection as I did then (with a lot more quotations and, hopefully, a bit more depth).
Keen had, as I said earlier, a lifetime dream of being a trapeze flyer. But, like most people, as he got older the dream faded into the more quotidian realities of daily life. [That’s one of the differences – I didn’t so “quotidian” to the kids.] By pretty much every measure, he had a very successful life. And yet, there was a point in his life, his career, his marriage, that he found himself troubled. He asked, “Why was my spirit so heavy? Why was I so frequently depressed? So earthbound? So grave?” Whether he was conscious of it at the time, he was asking himself questions that made use of the metaphor of the flyer.
“[W]e all yearn to fly. We are creatures of longing. We do not need to climb the long ladder to the pedestal or grasp the fly bar to be airborne. What I call the aerial instinct — the drive to transcend our present condition — is the defining characteristic of a human being. We are restless animals, eternal travelers who are forever in the process of becoming. Consciousness itself is a flight from the here and now and to the beyond.”
We are creatures of longing, and Keen still longed to fly.
So, as I also said during the children’s reflections time of this service, one day, when he was near his 63rd birthday, he saw an ad on television announcing the opening of a new school in San Francisco to teach ordinary everyday people the skill and art of the trapeze. He went to watch, and found what he described as “an alternating current of fear and fascination.” Interest turned into engagement, turned into a passion.
As with most people who develop a new passion – whether a new intellectual interest, a new spiritual perspective, a new lover, a new hobby, a new passion of any kind, really – he talked about flying all the time. His friends felt it more than a little odd that this man so known for his insightful intellect would become so passionate about something so physical and so dangerous. Especially because he was nearly 63 years old. But about passions Keen has written:
“[A]ll passions are strange passions to those who do not share them. The passions that animate individuals thrive in the most unexpected nooks and crannies. There are people who are ecstatic about collecting stamps, old motorcycles, vintage Levis. Or painting pictures of barns. I know otherwise normal people who are wildly enthusiastic about riding around on manicured lawns in electric carts and hitting little white balls into holds in the ground. [I have to digress here for a moment. I recently read somewhere that golf is the only sport in which the goal is to play less of it.] I have met numerous cabdrivers who can’t keep their checkbooks balanced but can give you the batting average of everyone who ever played in the World Series. And many a [person] has kept the smell of the salt sea in [their] nostrils while building a sailboat in a backyard in Iowa.”
He acknowledges that, “Passion is seldom rational and usually blind.” He says that he has learned, though, that, “it is hazardous to ignore passing fantasies and emerging passions.” He writes, “[I]n the degree I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears. When passion no longer waters and nurtures the psyche, fears spring up like weeds on the depleted soil of abandoned fields.” Hear that again: “in the degree I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears.”
Many of us would no doubt feel more than a little fear if we were climbing up a ladder to a platform – the pedestal – that’s only six feet long and 18 inches wide, even though it’s 25 feet off the ground. And that’s a lot of what Keen learned – both literally and figuratively. He learned about fear. In fact, as he titled one of his chapters, he became, “a Connoisseur of Fear.”
He’d always been something of a risk taker. He tells the story of spending an afternoon with the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. (Keen had done his doctoral dissertation on Marcel’s work.). At one point they were going through Harvard Square, and Keen was “dodging through the traffic.” His wife said to Marcel, “Sam likes to take risks,” to which Marcel replied (and Keen remembers there being a twinkle in his eye as he said this), “Only take interesting risks.”
Interesting risks.
Facing our fears, living into our fears, is something that most of us try our best to avoid. He notes, “It is reasonable to play it safe, not to leap — but it is not always reasonable to be reasonable.” His begins that chapter about, “Becoming a Connoisseur of Fear,” with an epigraph by Aldo Leopoldo — “It is a poor life in which there is no fear.” Keen writes,
“As nearly as I can figure, the rock-bottom truth is that life is both wonderful and terrifying. The German philosopher Rudolf Otto said that our confrontation with that ultimate reality within which we live and move and have our being (which, for lack of a better name, we call the Holy) is always a mystery that evokes both fascination and fear. […]
[T]o ask, ‘Why face danger?’ Is the wrong question. The right question is ‘What happens if I try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk?’ If ‘security’ and ‘safety’ become watchwords by which I live, gradually the circle of my experience grows small and claustrophobic.”
What happens if I try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk?
“Death says, ‘Play it safe.’ Life says, ‘Risk it.’ At the vital edge something dangerous calls my name. What will I risk to stay alive?”
Keen says that there are three basic, instinctual fears which all humans share. Only three: “the fear of falling, the fear of being imprisoned in a tight space, and the fear of loud noises.” He adds, though,
“I have noticed that once the fear of literal dangers has been mastered, a more complex fear of symbolic danger emerges. I am afraid of failure. I am afraid of what others will think of me. I am afraid I will embarrass myself. I am afraid I will lose control. I am afraid I can’t trust you. I am afraid I will be abandoned if I do not measure up to your expectations.”
Do any of you know anything about any of that that? I do. Oh how I do. And I know, too, that what Keen says about the limiting nature of a life ruled by fear is true. And I know, I know, that if I let my life be ruled by my fears I will not really be alive. And I know that that’s true for each of us.
It’s true of institutions, too. Groups, communities, organizations, (churches), can become ruled by fear, afraid to make that leap of faith from what we know, from what is safe, into the void of the unknown, because “it is reasonable to play it safe – not to leap.” We risk – again, our institutions, and us as individuals – we risk so very much when we let go, not entirely sure that we will be caught. And yet, as Keen asks, so should we: What happens if I, if we, if all of us try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk? (Even the “interesting” ones.)
It is a poor life in which there is no fear.
This doesn’t by any means mean that we should be foolhardy and leap at every opportunity. One of the things learning the trapeze taught Keen is that you should only take risks that you’re ready for. Every time he went too far beyond his ability, trying to do something that really was beyond his grasp, he hurt himself. Every time. And, really, only at those times.
Part of that preparation, as I said to our kids (and to those of you who were listening), is to practice falling. Notice how similar the words fall and fail are? Before trying a new trick he learned to practice missing the trick, to practice failing, to practice falling, because the ability to fall correctly is essential. Fall wrong, and you can hurt yourself seriously. It’s imperative, then, to recognize our propensity for failing, for falling, to embrace the fact of its inevitability, and to prepare oneself for it. There is, “a fundamental principle — learn the fall before the trick; prepare for failure. From the moment when a fledgling accomplishes the first free fall, progress in flying and falling go hand in hand. […] the great flyers have always been great fallers.”
It stands to reason, then, that if you should you prepare for the falls that are unavoidable, you shouldn’t try to avoid them. Keen writes, “If you aren’t failing frequently it is because you are too timid or too stuck in your rut to try anything new and risky.” I have heard it said that clergy and congregations need to get better at doing memorial services for ideas, things tried that didn’t work or that have simply run their course. We too, individuals and institutions, can become stuck in our own ruts. Too intent on playing it safe. Too focused on staying safe. We can make a priority of making sure that we protect what we have and our sense of who we are. It is, after all, reasonable to play it safe. It is only sensible to not take that leap. And yet, it is not always “reasonable to be reasonable.” We can limit our ability to grow, to change, to evolve. These things always involve a fairly sizable amount of risk. It’s dangerous.
Keen writes, “If I get stuck in who I am now, I will never blossom into who I might yet become. Today’s identity is tomorrow’s prison.” If we get stuck in who we are now, who we have been, we will never blossom into who we might yet become. This reminds me of something the Catholic priest and Trappist monk Fr. Thomas Merton wrote, “If the you of five years ago does not consider the you of today a heretic, you are not growing spiritually.” How many of us here this morning think our self of five years ago would be shocked at who we are today? Would find it heretical? Scandalous? Couldn’t imagine in a million years that we are where we are? Or would that us-from-the-past be unsurprised, comforted to know that we’re still safe and sound, that nothing much has changed? (What would the church of five-years ago think of who we are and where we’re going today?)
“No footbridge leads from reason to faith, from doubt to trust. Prior to the leap, fear seems more justified than trust, isolation more fundamental than communion, and the flight of the spirit an impossibility.
The short leap from the trapeze to the catcher is a flight from primal fear to basic trust, from I to thou, from autonomy to communion, that can be made only by a total commitment of the self. Flying, like faith, hope, and love, is an existential act that cannot be accomplished by a spectator.”
This is what it means – part of what it means, at least – to be fully and truly alive: not to be mere spectators of our lives. We are called to live them. And all living things must change and grow lest they stagnate and die. This is as true for you and me as for a pond, a butterfly, or a seed.
As Sam Keen learned the skills and art of the aerialist, he learned about more than the need to let go, prepared for falling while simultaneously willing to fly into the unknown. He also learned about the net.
“Initially, I thought of the net as nothing more than a safety device that would protect me if I could manage to fall correctly on my back, seat, or stomach. As I gained skill in twisting, turning, and landing, however, I realized it was more than a concession to human fallibility; it was also a platform to launch new flight. A modern nylon net is essentially a large trampoline that invites a flyer to convert a fall into a rebound trick — a somersault, a suicide dive, a high balletic leap. Professional trapeze troupes always end their acts with dramatic dives or somersaults into the net. In fact, the trick, that seems to delight audiences more than any other is one introduced by Tito Gaona [of the Flying Gaonos] in which he plummets to the nets, bounces very high, somersaults, and lands seated on the catcher’s trapeze.
Gradually, I am learning to enjoy the creative possibilities of the rebound. I suppose there are exceptional men and women whose lives are an unbroken series of successes, but for most of us the ascending path is punctuated by times of descent, downfall, and depression. My failures have taught me there is always a second chance. What I have managed to create after falling has often turned out to be better than the trick I planned. Failing gives fallible human beings the chance to start over. This is why every man, woman, and society needs a safety net.”
My friends, we can be that net for one another. We can catch each other when we fall, and help to propel us to new, and perhaps as yet unimagined (and even unimaginable), possibilities. We can, when we do this “community” thing right, trust one another so that we can more easily let go of the known in order to take the leap into the unknown because we know there is this net before us. I know that we can do this, and be this, because we have been. Because we are, now. (Yes, even now.)
As we move into this still-new calendar year, and round the corner on the second half of our church year, let us be brave, be bold, in looking for the “interesting risks,” that abound around us. Let us not live from a place of fear, knowing that fear never fixed anything. Let us, instead, live within the fundamental and omnipresent realities of faith, hope, and love. Let us live with courage, boldly, so that we might blossom into who we might yet become. So that we might fly.
I used the following passage as the Closing Words for the service:
“Paradoxically, when we invite our fears into the hearth of our awareness, they cease to be an undifferentiated mass of terrifying demons and become tolerable guests. Each day befriend a single fear and the miscellaneous terrors of beading human will never join together to form such a morass of vague anxiety that it rules your life from the shadows of the unconscious. We learn to fly not by becoming fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.”
I used the following words to introduce the morning's Closing Hymn -- #1019 in Singing the Journey – “Building a New Way”:
“[W]e have become captives, driven by the demands of our corporations, the market economy, and the pressures of globalization, which exist side-by-side with the escalating violence caused by tribalism, nationalism, and anarchy. It is a hot and heavy world. Not much joy in high places. […]
We are in the grip of the spirit of seriousness, which Nietzche equated with the devil. ‘When I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn; it was the spirit of gravity — through him all things fall.’”
Pax tecum,
RevWik
 |
| An illustration for Learning to Fly |
(2) 
(2) 
(4)
(4)
(6)
(6)
(8)
(8)
(10)
(10)
(12)
(12)
(14)
(14)
(16)
(16)
(18)
(18)
(20)
(20)
(22)
(22)
(24)
(24)
(26)
(26)
(28)
(28)
(30)
(30)
