leaping

Enjoyable reading came home one day with M. She brought A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. Now I have seen three movies based on his writing but have not touched one of his books, so I went for it. The premise is this--- that on New Year's Eve four people head to a favorite spot in England for suicidal leapers. They unexpectedly meet each other on the roof top and leave the roof together. Hope that they will survive to the end of the book comes from the fact that all four take turns narrating the story.

I used to have a fantasy and once wrote a short story about getting a fatal disease and just hiking into wilderness to die. Times have changed and the internal angst that led to such thoughts have faded. I am glad that I was not a leaper out of life.

But am I a leaper into life? into faith?

I go slowly and how I entered a swimming pool for the first time in years this past summer is a good example. It took some hot days before I got there. Then I showed up not prepared to swim, but did immerse my feet. Eventually steps were used to enter the pool, but by the last day at the retreat center I did leap into the deep end with the desire to touch bottom.

This week when talking about following Christ with my spiritual director, I said how if I chose to stay back something inside of me would die. Imagining this I sense a void of hope and faith that would leave me empty. But I also said that if I followed Christ something inside of me would die. Writing that now I think of what I just wrote above. A desire to be dead has died.

I want to know why things come together like this when I am blogging.

I see choosing a life with Christ as a leap into a mystery. Like I said, I am not good at leaping. Even so, in the past ten years I have gotten wet.