Feb 10 2009
Introduction
The Meandering Way:
Leading by Following the Spirit
SAILING IN THE DESERT
I was born and raised near the Delaware Bay in a small fishing village called Lewes Beach. This was where my father and his family grew up. He and his only brother lived with my grandparents in a converted Pullman car my grandfather bought in 1929 for 50 dollars.
I remember stories my father would tell about how he helped my grandfather in his charter-boat fishing business, how he went high diving off the mast of tall sailing ships in the channel, and the hours he spent by the bay surf fishing with rods he and his father had crafted by hand.
As a child, I spent as much time as my father could tolerate standing close enough to hear the drag on his reel or his muttered incantations over a worm, spinner, or popper, hoping to lure a fish to his hook. Something about needing to be near the water as often as possible was passed on from my grandfather to my father and then to me. These days I am never more relaxed and fulfilled than when I am near the water. Sunning on the beach, fly-fishing in a cold mountain stream, or simply relaxing by a pond, I manage to discover the better part of me. This wasn’t always the case though.
As a very young child I was deathly afraid of the water. I kept this fear mostly to myself, although I used to have nightmares about people I loved drowning at sea. Hearing reports of occasional drownings off nearby Rehoboth Beach only worsened my fears. The undertow in the ocean can be a silent, deadly foe. It seemed each summer some unsuspecting tourist went into the surf too far and never came back. Not me! I never went in deeper than my knees.
My earliest fears found substance when I had a near-drowning experience at a place called Trap Pond. I was six years old and my parents signed my sister and me up for swimming lessons. I was following instructions, as best I could, when I dove, or rather flopped, headfirst off a box just beneath the pond’s surface and landed face first in the waist-deep water. I was then supposed to point my arms straight out in front of me like an arrow and kick my feet like crazy. Instead, I hit the water so that it filled my nose and in a panic I gasped for air. Not a particularly smart thing to do when you are under water. I flailed in the cool liquid atmosphere like a newborn eaglet tossed from its nest. My feet kicked all the more forcefully, driving me deeper into the abyss. All my childhood fears of drowning were suddenly coming true. And then an arm reached down to pluck me from my watery grave. The hand grabbed me by my shorts and hoisted me back to the surface where I kept right on kicking and hitting air. I was not so gently plopped down on the sand. Red-faced and exhausted from the experience I made a promise to God. The first of many. I would never go into the water again. Near it, around it, and maybe even above it, but never in it again!
I kept that promise until I was 13 when I taught myself how to swim in a neighbor’s pool. To this day I still prefer the shallow end of the pool. And if I am unfortunate enough to drift on my inflatable raft over to the deep end of the pool by means of current or conniving, I find myself getting tense and red faced all over again.
Twenty-some years later, in my early thirties, I was invited to go sailing. My best friend, Bob, whom I always admired as fearless and strong and never tense or red faced about anything, invited me to join him in a weekend of sailing on the river. I worked through my usual list of excuses as to why I wouldn’t be able to join him, but Bob saw through each transparent lie. He knew all about my fear of the water and eventually convinced me that it would be okay. Bob and his wife Tammy met my wife and me at the river. It was a beautiful fall day. Bright, blue sky. Puffy marshmallow clouds. Calm, tranquil waters. And just enough breeze to carry us out to sea.
Did I mention that Bob is fearless? Bob is the same friend who took flying lessons when we were in high school. Once he developed his competencies and was cleared to fly with passengers, we would take his borrowed Cessna and cruise the air like teens today cruise the local strip. It was Bob who gave me my first flying lesson. It was Bob who showed me how much physical strength I really had in my fingers as I gripped the seat beneath me, hanging on for dear life as he practiced dives, stalls, and other scary maneuvers. I managed to survive Bob’s flying. Now I would see about his sailing.
Bob gave us some quick sailing instructions, pointing out things like masts and jibs and tillers and such. With a hoist of the main sail we were on our way. Not far from shore the boat listed to one side as the sail caught wind and began to glide across the water. I could feel my childhood fear of the water welling inside me. I tried to hide it even though I am sure my reddened face was giving me away.
Bob walked around the deck of the boat as though his feet had suction cups on the bottom, keeping him steady and sure-footed. I sat next to my wife at the back of the boat, once again testing my finger strength on the seat beneath me. Noticing my rigid posture, Bob reassured me, “It is virtually impossible to tip this kind of sailboat.” “Virtually” being the operative word here, I thought. “It has a keel under the hull that allows the boat to practically sail on its side,” he explained. Great consolation.
We were well underway, the shoreline shrinking to a mere hairline crack on the horizon. Bob invited me to join him on deck up front. I was sure my sandals didn’t have the suction cup grips Bob’s feet did, so, as gracefully as possible, I butt-shuffled from the back of the boat to the front of the boat. Once there my friend and I sat on the bow surveying the spectacular palate of autumn’s colors splashed among the green hills that held the river and us. It was wonderful.
In time, I began to relax and, yes, even enjoy the experience of sailing. In fact Kim and I slept in the modest cabin of the boat that night. The gentle rocking coupled with the soft lapping sounds of the river kissing the hull put me in a sound sleep. No nightmares.
Unlike most other forms of transportation, sailing is not about getting somewhere fast, unless you happen to be involved in a yacht race. Generally, sailing is not about taking the most direct route anywhere. It’s about giving one’s self over to the wind to experience a meandering journey.
Learning to Meander
As I embark on the second half of my life’s journey and reflect on these first forty-plus years, I confess that I have spent way too much time trying to get somewhere else in a hurry. Driving, high school graduation, college, another graduation, marriage, graduate school, another graduation, being appointed to one church and then the next and the next and the next, as I traveled along what I thought was the path to success. I wanted to get to the next event in my life as quickly as possible. I wanted to be perceived by others as someone important. I was eager to do something spectacular for the kingdom of God. So I stormed the gates of every opportunity that presented itself, dragging those I loved, and supposedly served, behind me white knuckled and red faced. And each time I impulsively jumped at the chance to do anything that would further my ambitions, I failed to do the difficult work of discerning whether it was the place God wanted me to be and whether I had the gifts, graces, or calling to be there.
Just a few short years ago I became willing to face this side of myself. As is so often the case, personal hardship helped to peel away the scales from my eyes. The death of my mother, the loss of some of my closest friends and staff, a financial crisis that threatened the very survival of our young church, and the discovery of some of the darker sides of myself bubbling up to the surface of my stress-laden life threatened to be the death of me. Fortunately, not everything was hopeless. My wife and sons were a stabilizing presence for me, like the keel of the sailboat that enables it to sail virtually on its side without capsizing. Still, I know how wet they got standing so close to my kicking and flailing.
This book is about my own journey from life to death and back to life again. It’s the story of a person, probably much like you, who wonders, “Why couldn’t I have accepted myself—my strengths, gifts, and limitations—earlier on in this first stage of my life? Why couldn’t I have trusted more in God’s Spirit to guide me?” Maybe it is true that the most valuable of life’s lessons rarely arrive according to our schedules and most often become apparent to us when we are way too wet or worn out to deny them. In any event, I am glad to have arrived at this new sense of self-awareness and with it this desire to live life in a much more spiritually discerning and meandering way.
This book is also an invitation to journey into the depths of your own soul and to consider following the Spirit’s lead in the next chapters of your life.
When was the last time you journeyed somewhere? I don’t mean a trip where you raced to get from point A to point B in the least amount of time. I mean a journey where the destination itself was not nearly as important as the experience of getting there? We don’t do journeys very well, do we? We are in way too much of a hurry.
Living in central Florida in “the land of the worlds”—Disney World, SeaWorld and the like—I see continual proof of this. It’s funny how people will travel halfway across the world, spend thousands of dollars on airline tickets and hotel accommodations, only to drag themselves and their families at breakneck speed from one park to the next to the point of vacation overload. All of this because they need a break from their own daily experience of a finger-gripping, red-faced rat race.
As Florida residents we have annual passes that allow us into all the popular parks. We have already learned the best times of the week to visit these parks and, more important, when to stay far, far away. My wife and I can spot a driven tourist family a mile away. Weary parents with a death grip on their children’s arms quickly walking to the next family fun-filled attraction in cadence with their constant barrage of accusations and threats. “You are so spoiled. I am never taking you on vacation again. Wait until I get you back in the room.” Ah, the joyful sounds of families on the vacation of their lives. I have been there. Chances are you have too.
We are so driven as individuals that even our dream vacations fall victim to the tyranny of the urgent. With straight-line determination, we plan to get what we want and where we want without any thought that the detours and setbacks we will encounter along the way may very well be the better part of the journey. When learning to sail, I had to understand and execute a maneuver called “tacking.” Sailboats cannot sail directly into the wind in straight-line fashion, so you have to tack, or zigzag, into the wind to get where you want to go. Unless a sailor is willing to do this, the boat may flounder or be driven terribly off course. In the same way, when we are driven to force our way forward, we may end up frustrated and off course from where the Spirit seeks to lead us, which is often the long and more winding way.
We tend to overdirect and oversteer our lives, all the while keeping our sails neatly furled and tucked away for fear that the wind may take us to places we did not plan to go. How often we settle for sitting white knuckled and red faced doing it all our own way rather than taking the risk of unfurling the sails of our deepest selves to catch the gusts of the Spirit. But it’s precisely in the wind of the Spirit that we find our soul’s breath and are more naturally led, rather than driven, to the greatest destinations life has in store for us.
I have become more open to following the Spirit’s leading in my life. Working to make my own personal shift from success-oriented drivenness to a more significance-oriented meandering style of life, I am beginning to discover a deeper sense of joy and satisfaction in my life and ministry.
Learning to loosen my grip on life and a ministry calling that compels me and to simply slow down the pace of my journey is helping me to see with new eyes and hear with new ears the quiet and unobtrusive presence of God around me. My sails are beginning to billow. I am finding myself being led to places around me—but, more important, within me—that I never knew were there or perhaps I have simply forgotten them in the midst of my white-knuckled busyness.
You won’t find in these pages a neatly outlined formula for deepening intimacy with God. And you won’t discover a carefully laid out plan for revitalizing your vocation or ministry. This is not another “how to” book. You probably have enough of those sitting on your shelf unread. What you will find here are reflections from a fellow traveler and some valuable lessons learned from trying to race through life and ministry from one success to another and discovering, by more intentionally opening the sails of my heart through the harsh desert experience of pain, a more grace-filled, Spirit-led way.
This book is your own personal invitation to learn how to sail—to join the journey from success-oriented drivenness to significance-oriented meandering. That is, to take the winding way through life and slow down enough to learn some things about yourself and God along the way. Perhaps even to learn how to sail in your own desert. Welcome aboard! And leave the suction cup shoes behind.