the call to a heartfelt participation in life

"Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive."
David Whyte

"Do not be afraid."
Jesus

I'm not much of a "word of the year" guy. I'm more of a "deep metaphor" guy, and I found one that I will be living into for 2025.

I have been reading Luci Shaw's remarkable book Water My Soul, which discusses the need to care for the interior life. It is deep, life-giving, and profound. But it came with a surprise gift: an introduction by Eugene Peterson, complete with the metaphor of the year. 

Eugene Peterson opens by telling a story of John Muir, The famous explorer and conservationist. He writes,

"In the last half of the nineteenth century, John Muir was our most intrepid and worshipful explorer of the western extremities of our North American continent. For decades, he tramped up and down through our God-created wonders from the California Sierras to the Alaskan glaciers, observing, reporting, praising, and experiencing - entering into whatever he found with childlike delight and mature reverence.

At one period during this time (the year was 1874), Muir visited a friend who had a cabin, snug in a valley of one of the tributaries of the Yuba River in the Sierra Mountains—a place from which to venture into the wilderness and then return for a comforting cup of tea.

One December day a storm moved in from the Pacific —a fierce storm that bent the junipers and pines, the madronas and fir trees as if they were so many blades of grass. It was for just such times this cabin had been built: cozy protection from the harsh elements.

We easily imagine Muir and his host safe and secure in his tightly caulked cabin, a fire blazing against the cruel assault of the elements, wrapped in sheepskins, Muir meditatively rendering the wildness into his elegant prose. But our imaginations, not trained to cope with Muir, betray us.

For Muir, instead of retreating to the coziness of the cabin, pulling the door tight, and throwing another stick of wood on the fire, strode out of the cabin into the storm, climbed a high ridge, picked a giant Douglas fir as the best perch for experiencing the kaleidoscope of color and the sound, scent and motion, scrambled his way to the top, and rode out the storm, lashed by the wind, holding on for dear life, relishing Weather: taking it all in—its rich sensuality, its primal energy.

Throughout its many retellings, the story of John Muir, storm-whipped at the top of the Douglas fir in the Yuba River valley, gradually took shape as a kind of icon of Christian spirituality for our family. The icon has been in place ever since as a standing rebuke against becoming a mere spectator to life, preferring creature comforts to Creator confrontations."

REFUSING TO BECOME A SPECTATOR OF LIFE

At my age, firmly walking through my middle years, the temptation can come to prefer creature comforts to Creator confrontations. 

I don't want to avoid the storm and retreat to the cozy parts of life. 
In 2025, I want to climb the tree and face whatever comes. 

I don't want to retreat into the numbing comforts of YouTube binging when things get hard.
I don't want to retreat to a kind of passivity that says things will take care of themselves if I pretend they are not there.
I don't want to retreat to small ambition, small faith, a small God.

I want to climb the tree and courageously face what comes this year with open eyes and a full heart. I want to ride out the storm, lashed by the wind, at the top of the tree.
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In David Whyte's book Consolations, he points out the surprising nature of courage compared to the cultural stereotypes of the idea. 

"Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything, except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences."

It's not about escaping our current life, going somewhere else, or doing something dramatic, as much as it is about facing and leaning into the storms that come, both interior and exterior.

I am leaning into this for 2025: a heartfelt participation in life. Climbing the tree and riding out the terror and wonder of what's within and ahead.
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This is not a mere metaphor; it's an invitation to a cruciform life. Muir climbing a tree is strong, but Christ climbing the tree to face the reality of sin, brokenness, wrath, and isolation is infinitely stronger. 

We are called not to avoid but embrace what comes, shedding the illusion of retreat into safety and comfort, with a heartfelt participation in the work of God in our lives.

Climb the tree.
Face the storm.
Embrace the cross.

Here's to a heartfelt participation in the glory of life in 2025.

Cheers.

Jon.