Page 5 - Salesian Bulletin 2014 [01] January-March

harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." In other words we were born to participate in this life at the
DARE GREATLY
how many dreams have gone unfulfilled and how much of our potential we have left dormant or frittered away. The choices we have made, or not made, determine the story of our lives. Ware concludes: “Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”
highest possible level experience and adventure. “Staying safe” in the harbour, can often be a fear-based or scarcity-based stance towards life. We have all seen boats tied up to a pier gently bobbing in the calm, unchallenging tides of the harbour. One day they will have to face the storms of the open sea. That’s what they were built for. Life, too, invites us to leave our safe harbours and engage creatively by using all the gifts and talents with which we have been blessed.
The challenge and ability to ‘dare greatly’ is somehow related to how we see ourselves, how we trust ourselves. It is related to the extent we are prepared to risk and even seem foolish. It presupposes that we accept that we will never be perfect and that we will have to move off the fence while we are still imperfect and never fully ready. Maybe our biggest obstacles to ‘daring greatly’ are our fear of failure, our fear of being vulnerable and our attachment to the approval of others.
OVERCAUTIOUS
“No,” Sunny answered.
Pope Francis wrote recently: “Life grows by being given away, and it weakens in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who enjoy life most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others.”
“Me neither,” Violet said, “but if we wait until we’re ready we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives, Let’s go.” (Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator)
CALLED TO BE MORE
To be cautious is, sometimes,
Sometimes we just have to trust ourselves and risk when the negative voices inside our heads tell us we are not ready. Otherwise failure to ‘dare greatly’ may become our deepest regret at life’s end. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent many years caring for patients in the last twelve weeks of their lives. She recorded what these people regretted most about their lives as they were about to die. Their number one regret was, ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me’.
necessary . But
self-imposed limits on our lives and destroys the God-given potential to be who we are meant to me. We can become like the man in the Gospel who was given one talent and instead of using it, buried it to keep it safe. In doing so he destroyed its potential. In keeping ourselves too safe we destroy our latent gifts and talents. Mary Oliver challenges us not to do this in two beautiful lines with her question:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
too much caution
puts
of joy ,
“Are you ready?” Klaus asked finally .
Sometimes life does not give us a choice. Circumstances hurl us into arenas which require great courage, incredible commitment and painful self-sacrifice. Some people lead extraordinary lives of courage in the arenas of their own homes either due to illness or having to care long-term for dependent family members. They are the unsung heroes of the ‘arena’.
DEEPEST REGRET
Madeleine L'Engle said, “We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.” That’s why we have to dare greatly and resist the suffocating caution that would keep us on the shore. The negative voices that tell us we are not ready enough. We all know the particular arenas where fears deter us. Paradoxically they may also be the places of incredible new life. “It is in losing your life that you will find it.” <
SDB 5
Fr John Horan
may be contacted at:
Maybe the proximity of death gives us clarity and it is then easier to see
Salesian House Milford Grange Castletroy
Co. Limerick.