Take the plunge

When I was on holidays in the Scottish highlands a few years ago, I came upon a beautiful valley through the mountains. My companion and I stopped by a river that flowed with great power through a beautiful gully and through to the deepest plunge pool. Perched high on the sides of its banks about 20 feet up, was an adventure group of young women. With them were two instructors and below them, two or three women who had already jumped in. One by one, the young women made their way to the edge and took the leap from the river bank, through 20 foot of open space into the river below. Each woman disappeared for a small moment and then re-emerged cheering her own bravery and strength. Each one faced the river before the jump in differing ways. Everything was moving well until one woman came to the edge. Her turn had come too soon for her. She stood in fear half listening to the instructor but unable to jump. We all cheered her on. Her instructor moved closer to her. Her friends in the water told her she had nothing to fear. But still she stood there unable to move, unable to jump, repositioning her feet, moving closer to the edge and then moving back from it. We all watched.  Unable to make her take the plunge, unable to take the plunge for her, unable, we waited. And as I watched her, I began to feel at the same time as I felt something of her fear, something of her courage for bringing herself to that place and the joy she would feel when she would jump. In that moment, I felt with someone I didn’t even know, my own fear and my own courage. In that privileged moment of vulnerability she shared with us all, the beauty of every single one of us. In a way, her experience embodied us all and when we cheered her on, we were cheering on ourselves. 

                During all our lives, we all stand teetering on the edge of fear and faith. And it is sometimes more difficult to have faith when we are fearing than to simply continue in fear on its own. Sometimes we are simply frightened of having faith, because faith does not depend on the outcome we may want. 

                Faith lives in the knowledge that life is precious but that it is nourished from a mystery that lives in all things and that pervades all things. And that mystery does not bow its head to our limited wisdom and yet loves its yearnings. It is a love that cannot explain itself; a love that cannot justify itself, a silent love that carries us though our deepest tortures, our worst and most prolonged fears and holding us closer and closer would never let us go even though we feel we are falling through the depths of all darkness. Love will never let us go. Silently it feels our pain, silently it hears our cries in the wilderness and still it never lets us go. And when we shake our fists at the Universe and the absence of all light, love gazes at us and strengthens our resolve to love life, to love and to heal. For what are our tears but the very fibres of our strength? What are our shouts of terror except the invites for love to flood us with joy? And what is our pain except the softening of our souls for an everlasting embrace? It is better to feel too much than to not feel at all. Because in that moment when we feel that our last life boat is filling with water, our souls are strengthening in courage and our spirits are sharing in the power of all broken things to be utterly and forever transformed.

                And when the final woman disappeared below the surface of the deep waters, we all held our breaths and waited. And as her head emerged from the deeps, those on the banks knew that she was in fact stronger than everyone else who had shown no fear at all. 

Ms. Helen Walsh.
28th January, 2007