learning to love small steps...

For most of my adult life I have walked fast. I have long legs and like to get places promptly. When my daughters were little I had to practice slowly down as they took four quick steps to my one. But that was temporary - and when I was on my own, it was back to the hustle. These days, however, I am learning to love taking small steps.

I first noticed a change in my gait while visiting my grandson in Brooklyn. He and I amble along at roughly the same speed. We stop and look at things on the side walk, smile at those in the neighborhood, and sometimes stop to pick up little treasures and surprises. When we're with his momma, a real New York City pro, we both have to kick up our game: even when she's pushing his sister in the stroller, she can leave us in the dust in a New York second! After really crashing hard in a recent fall that messed up my backside and legs on a slippery, wet deck, I have found a new affection for the beauty of taking small steps. Imagine my surprise while reading a recent Henri Nouwen book to come across this:

Our response to the call to follow Jesus... is to take small steps away from "me" and "my fears" toward the Lord... The great secret of the spiritual life is that you already know the little steps, even if you don't know the big ones. You don't need to know the big steps to take the little steps. You only have to take one step at a time.The interesting thing is that the person who is in touch with the Lord knows what those little steps are... If we look back (over time) we see that it was a long journey of little steps. All the great people in history stared with small steps: St. Francis o f Assisi didn't suddenly rip off his clothes and move to a cave. It was four years of struggle taking little steps... We (like to) focus on the dramatic end of it all, but that is not what I want you to pay attention to: focus on the small steps. (Following Jesus, pp. 43-44) 

For most of my life I have been torn between cherishing these small steps in life, and, hating to waste time. After all, I sensed I had important things to do, say, and create. Don't hold me back or tie me down because I'll shake myself free and leave you in the dust. They call this grandiosity - a common character flaw in all addicts - that sees the self as the center of all things creative and important. We can be introverted in our brokenness and revel in self-pity, or, extroverted by lamenting the pain and suffering the world's stupid people inflict upon themselves. We can be carping wannabe martyrs or disillusioned idealists, it doesn't matter. The result is still an obsessive, unhealthy fixation upon our superiority. Joni Mitchell captured some of this in the brilliant close to Blue: "The Last Time I Saw Richard."

To which the spirit of holiness says: stop - it is NOT all about you. First, listen to Jesus. That's the first small step. Listen to how he talks. And to whom he talks. If you listen long enough you might hear a second small step:

Step away from "mine." When making decisions we can ask ourselves, "Am I doing this out of fear for my survival or can I act in trust?" We will know when we are acting out of fear and when we are acting out of love. Always choose love. Do not act out of fear. Again it is a small change... but following Jesus is moving away from fear and toward love (in small steps.)

Another way of speaking about moving toward God is to live into "a long obedience in the same direction." The late Eugene Peterson wrote a book of the same name (from a quote by Nietzsche) that notes: "There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness... (So) I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily - open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.”

Once, when my personal and professional life was collapsing in burn-out, I sat watching the sun go down behind the Sangre de Cristo mountains in northern New Mexico. Sometimes I watched that same sun rise, too. Through a combo of therapy, prayer, reading, and exhaustion I went on vacation one summer determined to take the 12 Steps to a new level.  Step number one was a killer: I could honestly say that my life had become unmanageable (that's the second part of the confession); but I was too proud and stubborn to speak the first and essential truth: I was powerless to fix what was unmanageable. I wanted to jump to the second and third steps: turning my mess over to God and trusting God's love was greater than my pain.

And therein lies the paradox of small steps: I would not let go of control so I locked God out of my heart. God will not violate our free choice. So for the better part of two weeks I sat and argued with God. And wept bitter tears. And shouted to no one in particular for relief. And nothing changed. Not until I let go of control. One morning, watching the sun come up. probably because I was so exhausted by wrestling with God, it hit me: I am not raising the sun. I am not keeping creation in balance. I had nothing to do with this beauty and will have nothing to add once I am gone. So why not accept that I cannot manage the chaos and pain in my life? It wasn't a grand confession. More like the still small voice of the Lord coming to Elijah after the thunder and the earthquake. There was no flash of insight or mystical encounter with holy power. Just a bit of relief. A small step towards acceptance that over 25 years has changed everything. 

Driving home from that agonizing but sacred time in the mountains, a verse from the conclusion of St. John's gospel kept popping into my head: "Truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” No fooling. For decades I had refused to relinquish control of my life. Even when it became self-destructive and ugly, I still fought God's gentle grace in my quest to maintain control. Until, as some in AA like to say, I just felt so sick and tired of being sick and tired that I gave it up to God.

We live in what one writer has called the "age of sensation." We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.

(Peterson)

Sitting quietly in the presence of Jesus, walking in the snow and the woods, or joining my Brooklyn family for Eucharist is how I worship these days. Very small steps. Not only has my stride been diminished by time and age, but maybe also by grace. Take the small steps you already know how to take. I think that's why I so love Psalm 131 as Advent II comes to a close:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

my soul is like the weaned child that is with me