I am actually by nature anxious about the world. I
worry that we won’t have enough to go around.
I worry about my children. I
worry about you all as well. My entire
spiritual practice is built around trying to find and hold peace at the center
of my life. I meditate, I walk, I read,
and I breathe, deeply. I have come a
long way.
Recently I heard a story from my colleague Rev. Denis Paul about a boy who was very
anxious. It was his first day in first
grade, in a new school. He had hurried
to get to class and had forgotten to go to the bathroom before he left
home. He knew he had to go but he didn’t
want to be singled out, so he tried to hold it in. His new teacher, kind soul that she was, saw
him fidget. Just then, without any
warning he could feel his leg warm with the very accident he so wanted to
avoid. He hadn’t been able to hold it
in. He was mortified as the yellow pool
gathered under his desk. He knew he
would be the laughing stock of the whole school.
Just as he was about to raise his hand the
teacher, picked up the fish bowl from her desk, walked purposely down the
aisle and pretended to trip dropping the fish bowl, water, goldfish and all, at
the feet of the boy. Water went everywhere
including onto his lap and all over the floor.
The teacher apologized profusely and other kids went to get towels and
helped to clean it up. Someone saved the
gold fish. And suddenly the boy, went
from the potential of deep shame to heroic victim.
It’s not so far from a
scared little kid who has an accident in the first grade to being a community
leader if we understand that at the center of life is peace; glory and grace be
to that impulse which still beats within us. As Lao Tzu put it so
poetically: “The one with outward
courage dares to die; the one with inner courage dares to live.”
With Grace and Grit, John
