opposite of courage is not only fear but security. In the story of the rich young man, Jesus told him to “go, sell what you have . . . and come follow me” (Mark 10: 21). Besides the obvious meaning of this parable, I sometimes wonder if Jesus might have also meant, go, sell your security. Stop clinging to your old ways. Let go and launch out into the deep of yourself. Where there is no risk, no new questions, there is no becoming, no growth; and where there is no becoming, there is no real life. The true spiritual sojourners are people who risk, who are willing to let go.
Some years ago, I heard a story about a lady who volunteered at a shelter for abused children. One day, this lady met a boy named Billy. He had been terribly wounded and was reluctant to go beyond the security he had found in his room. The day of the Christmas party, he shrank against the pillow on his bed and refused to leave his room. “But aren’t you coming to the party?” the lady asked. He shook his head. “Sure you are,” said another volunteer beside me. “All you need is to put on your courage skin.” His eye brows went up. He thought for a moment. “Okay,” he finally said. While the lady watched, the other volunteer helped him don an imaginary suit of courage skin, and off he went to the party, willing to risk leaving the secure place of his room. Go, sell all you have, Jesus said, and follow me into life. Sometimes, we have to leave our comfortable lives, listen to our new right questions in order to grow and gain everything. Maybe in the end, we need to be more like Billy. We need to put on our courage skin.
10. Merton, Conjectures, 1.
11. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 34–35.
12. de Mello, The Heart of the Enlightened, 38.
13. Weil, First and Last Notebooks, 99.
14. Merton, Wisdom of the Desert, 30.
15. Kidd, When the Heart Waits, 22.
16. Thoreau, The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau: Journal 1, 385.
17. Quoted in Robert Bly, The Winged Life, 58.
18. Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, 358.
19. Eliot, “East Coker,” 129.
20. Eliot, “The Little Gidding,” 145.
21. Luke, Dark Wood to White Rose, 42.
22. Nouwen, With Open Hands, 16.
4
Fifteen Ways Our Questions Influence Our Choices to Grow Spiritually and Psychologically
“We are all continually faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems”
—John Gardner
Many years ago, in the 1970s, I was working on my doctorate in theology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. In one of my classes on ethics and virtues in life, I remember participating in a very heated classroom discussion on how a person finds meaning in their life and the impact that living a virtuous life can have on a person’s psychological and spiritual development. Many students had a variety of opinions. After sharing our ideas, my professor taught us something that I have never forgotten and have often thought about. His main point was that it is our choices in life that define us. It is our choices that determine the kind of person we will become. Not our pious thoughts or good feelings but our choices. Not what we say but how we act based on the choices we make in life. “Anyone can talk of good game,” he said. “But it takes courage and commitment to live our lives in a certain way and this leads to a meaningful life and happiness.”
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